Ghosts along the Texas Coast Read Free

the community, although it was Spanish territory at that time. Lafitte is said to have burned Campeche and “disappeared.” Actually, after being ousted from Galveston Island, many of the pirates just settled down in the coastal area. The final meeting of the great buccaneer and his men is reputed to have taken place at False Live Oak Point after they had been cornered by British and American navies. Here the booty was divided up and Lafitte supposedly cached most of it at False Live Oak Point in heavy chests, among the oak trees. This done, the pirate and his remaining followers attempted to slip through the American and British blockade. For three days and nights a cannonade was heard by the residents of Cedar Bayou, and Lafitte finally eluded his pursuers.
    Later on, it is said that Lafitte conducted most of his activities on the “Spanish Main,” which could have been just about anywhere in the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean. The famous pirate died of a fever at Losbocas, on the north coast of Yucatan, about fifteen miles from Merida, in 1826. He was forty-six years old. He was buried in the “Campo de Santos” in the little Indian village of Silan.

    Historical marker at Galveston
    Now, there are lots of legends concerning Lafitte and his crew. Their latter-day haunts greatlyresembled the Barataria waterways they had known in Louisiana. They centered in the marshy Texas coastland below Beaumont and Port Arthur, and around the vast, brackish Sabine Lake, which emptied into the Gulf of Mexico at dark-running Sabine Pass. These secretive waterways and marshes harbor stories of buried treasure and pirate ghosts to this day.
    According to a story that appeared in the
Houston Post
many years ago, one of Jean Lafitte’s ships was chased across Sabine Lake and made anchor in Port Neches at the mouth of the Neches River. To keep the treasure aboard the ship from falling into the hands of the Spanish pursuers, it was carried ashore and buried in a marsh. Maps purported to show where this treasure was secreted have appeared from time to time, and there has been much digging for it. It is supposed to have never been found. Maybe this is because it was never placed there. Lafitte’s treasure simply can’t be buried at every place it is said to be!
    The late Thomas Penfield wrote a fascinating little book entitled
A Guide to Treasure in Texas
, published by Carson Enterprises, Inc. of Deming, New Mexico. Mr. Penfield really researched the Lafitte treasure locales, and while he didn’t find the buried chests, he certainly told some good stories! I’ll just bet one reason the treasure has not been discovered is because there are pirate ghosts out there doing a great job of guarding the burial sites!
    In his book,
Ghost Stories of Texas
, the late Ed Syres, storyteller extraordinaire, tells us that Henry Yelvington, a notable lorist, discovered the sunken outline of a low-slung schooner. It was the type often used by the Lafittes as a raider. This was in 1921, and the locale was in a lonely stretch of reeds and bayous flanking the narrows of Sabine Pass. From an old coastal dweller whose trapper forebears had settled Texas in 1833, Yelvington learned that the hulk was indeed one of Lafitte’s ships. Indians, whose story was told to Yelvington, had seen the ship sunk under pursuing fire. They were unsure whether the crew drowned, or fled. Since we know that Jean Lafitte died in Mexico, we have to assume he was not on this particular ship, or else he managed to escape.
    According to Syre’s account, “of something else the Indians had been certain. For many years, the waters remained still, the land empty. Then one day, at the lone tree beside the sunken ship, an incredible figure appeared. Running Snake, the Attacapan chieftain, knew this man; he was Jean Lafitte, the chief of boats that had been driven awayby the big ships; the man that Indians, far southward, claimed to have seen