The Lipan Tribe by Lind Anthony Hill copyright 2014
In the far northern edge of central Texas near where the Red River divides the state of Texas from the state of Oklahoma there is a house. This house is known to be “haunted”. It has so much paranormal activity that people come from all over the world to spend the night in hopes of having a paranormal experience. Some of them come as teams with cars full of investigational equipment. They are looking for concrete evidence of the paranormal. They are hoping to get a spirit on video or in a picture or on a voice recorder.
Some come as couples or families in search of an experience and maybe some answers. Some come to try to disprove the claims. Few leave without an experience.
One such “party” came on a Saturday afternoon to celebrate a 13 year old’s birthday. It was more people than the owners usually allowed and most of the attendees were 13. Some would argue that that is too young to be exploring a haunted location. However this is what the birthday girl wanted and Mom and Dad were eager to please.
There were supposed to be 15 people total, but at the final count there were 5 chaperones and 30 teens. With so many people it would be hard to get any solid evidence. It would also be difficult to know if someone was having a real experience. No one seemed to mind. The “hunt” was only scheduled from 5 to 7:30. There was an adult team coming in at 8 and all the birthday partyers would need to be gone by then.
At 13 it’s not easy to sit still and quiet to participate in an investigation. The chaperones gave up and found a more secluded part of the house to try to gather ghost pictures.
The hostess realized that the kids needed some direction. She asked if anyone knew what a dowsing rod was. No. No one had heard of them. Linda gathered them all in the living room of the main residence and began to explain.
“Dowsing rods used to be used to find water. Some people still use them for that purpose. The rods we have here are made of copper. The reason that dowsing rods will crossover water is because of an electro-magnetic field created by water. The energy of the water can actually move the rods.” She was losing them with the details. They wanted to have an experience.
“Will they point us to a ghost?” someone asked.
“No, but sometimes they will let you talk with a spirit,” she replied.
Everyone became quiet. She had their attention.
“Should we give it a try?” she asked.
The yeses were overwhelming. Everyone wanted to talk to a real spirit.
“You can only ask yes or no questions because the rods can only respond with yes or no answers,” explained Linda. First I want to make sure that my own protective spirit is here so I ask the rods to show me where my spirit guide is. You might call them a guardian angel. I call it a spirit guide. Linda proceeded and the rods pointed to a place by her right shoulder.
“Thank you,” she said. “Now show me YES.” The right rod move until it was pointing at her chest. The left rod stayed still. “Thank you. Now show me NO.” The rods crossed into an X. “Thank you,” she said.
“Okay, who has a question?”
“What’s your name?” yelled someone.
“Remember, yes or no questions only. You might start with asking if someone wants to talk. Then find out if it’s a boy. Then find out if they are over 13. See how it goes?” said Linda. She was impressed with how mature these kids had suddenly become. They were being quiet and attentive for the first time since they arrived.
“Are you a boy?” someone asked.
The rods crossed for no.
“Are you over 13?”
There was no response.
“Are you a child?”
The rods moved to yes.
“Do you speak English?”
“Good question,” said Linda.
The rods crossed for no.
“That is interesting,” said Linda. “They don’t speak English, but they understand the questions. Very interesting.”
“Did you live in this house?”
No.
“Did you live in a house near here?”
No
“Did you live in a house?” someone said laughing.
No.
“That’s crazy. Where did you live? In a tent?”
Yes
“Are you an Indian?” someone asked.
There was no response.
“Can you show us, in our minds, where you lived?” asked Linda, thinking that with this many kids there was bound to be a few that were still open enough to “see” what the spirit wanted to show.
“I can see it,” said one girl. Then several others chimed in that they could see it, too.
“It’s a girl about our age and a woman and a young child and a baby. It looks like they are some kind of Indians. They are in a ravine with a stream running through it. It’s wide. Really wide. There are Teepees at the top of the ravine. But there is room they could have built the whole villiage on the floor of the ravine where they’re standing.
The kids are playing. The ground is orange like red clay. The stream is wide in some places and almost not even there in other places. The woman is filling skin bags with water from the stream.”
“That sounds like the Red River during a drought,” said Linda. “It’s only a few miles from here. Is the ravine very deep?”
“Oh yes,” said one of the boys. “It’s probably 40 ft deep, at least. They are climbing back up to the village with the water.”
Linda began to see it, too. It was like they were watching a movie together or one of those rides where you are carried along seeing different scenes and movie clips as you pass.
It WAS the Red River during drought. The village or camp seemed to be on the Oklahoma side, though she wasn’t sure why she knew that. There was no sign of civilization anywhere. No roads, no bridge, no sign of the white man.
The village was small. There were only a handful of tents or teepees, as they were commonly called. There were 2 dogs running up to the kids as they returned with the water. There was what appeared to be a small deer on the camp fire. There was also meat laid across some bushes to the side of the camp. It appeared to be drying in the sun. Maybe this was how they made beef jerkey.
“Is that where you live?” asked the child who was holding the rods.
The rods crossed for no.
“That must be why the group is so small,” said a small voice from the corner. “They must be traveling or on a hunt.”
“Why would they bring children on a hunt?” someone asked.
“Is that your whole tribe?”
The rods crossed for no.
“Are you on a hunt?”
No
“Are you going to join up with your tribe?”
Yes
“But, why is she here? What happened to make her a ghost?” someone asked.
The scene changed and they were back on the floor of the Red River. It was the girl and her family again. The kids were playing in the water which was towards the middle of what they had thought was a ravine. A man who seemed to be from their tribe appeared at the top of the hill. He was on horseback. He was waving at them and yelling something, but it was too far away and they couldn’t make out what he was saying.
He gestured for them to come up to the village. They didn’t really want to leave yet. The mother walked out to the children to get them to get out of the water. As they were coming up she looked upstream and her face changed. She looked terrified, like they were being attacked. Maybe another tribe was raiding them from the riverbed?
Now they could see it from the Indian girl’s vantage point. There was a wall of water coming towards them. In front of it was branches and tree limbs and everything that had been loose on the riverbed. They started to run for the side of the river. If they were fast enough maybe they could make it out. Most of the village had now come to the edge of the top of the riverbank. They were waving their arms frantically and yelling.
They were not fast enough. They were overtaken by the wall of sticks and branches which pushed them down and under the water that was thrusting them down and at the same time forward. There was no way any of the family could survive it.
The bodies were carried downstream for miles. They must have washed up somewhere within a few miles of where Hill House Manor now stood. That would explain why she was here.
“Is that how you died?” someone asked. The boy sitting next to him punched him in the arm.
“Is there anything we can do for you?” asked one of the older girls.
The rods crossed for no.
The door to the living room swung open and everyone screamed and jumped, but it was only Brenda from the team that would be investigating that night. She had come a little early to get things set up for tonight’s investigation.
“Brenda, you scared the life out of us,” said Linda.
“What’s going on?”
“The kids contacted a young Indian girl who seemed to have died at the Red River in a flash flood.”
“Really? Wow! I haven’t heard of anyone contacting any natives before,” said Brenda. “Is she still here?”
The rods did not move.
“She must have been curious about such a large gathering of children near her age,” she continued. “Ya’ll probably made her feel comfortable. She seems to be gone now, but we’ll check for her tonight. What all happened?”
The kids started telling her all at once about the rods and the visions and the village.
The “chaperones” came in and started to get the kids ready to leave. It had been a hauntingly fun afternoon for the kids. What the adults encountered is a story for another time.
