An article that ran in the Jasper, Texas, News Boy just before Halloween in late October 1993 interested me enough to do some investigating. It was written by Diane Cox, managing editor of the paper, and was sent to me by my sister-in-law, Juanita Williams, who lives in Jasper.
On a recent trip to visit in that interesting and pretty old town, I managed to meet with Diane, and she took me to see her house, which she wrote about in her story.
The old Browndell Community, some 13 miles north of Jasper, was once a well-established mill town, consisting of 143 buildings. There were houses for the mill workers, a post office, general store, depot, and various other buildings. The town was built by the Kirby Lumber Company. In 1903 they built a large house for the mill manager and his family. The sawmill eventually burned down and was rebuilt. The mill burned a second time, and this time the company did not rebuild. The community rapidly dissolved as workers had to move elsewhere to seek other employment. Today only the mill manager’s house remains, although a sign on the highway still states it’s the “Browndell Community.”
The old house, which originally consisted of two large rooms located on either side of an open gallery, or “dog trot,” has changed hands, and appearance, numerous times in its long and rather colorful history.
The Walker family purchased the place in 1928. It was used, over the years, for various purposes: as a residence, a rental property, a hotel, a rooming house, and even for a time, standing unoccupied, was used as a place to store hay! The house finally underwent extensive remodeling and restoration in 1965.
Today, the rambling structure sports a new tin roof, which has replaced the original. The “dog trot” has been sealed in, becoming a long and spacious central entry hall. A large kitchen, a laundry room, and a bathroom were also added during the restoration period, as was a large carport at the side of the house.
Diane Cox, who is the present owner, is a very interesting storyteller and a talented artist as well. The old house is filled with her paintings, mostly beautiful landscapes and still lifes. Cox says many people in the Jasper area lived in, or visited, the old house at one time or another, and it was the scene of many memorable, and sometimes turbulent, events. She feels there is a lot of “energy” attached to the house and the land where it is situated.
Mill manager’s house built in old Browndell Community by Kirby Lumber Company in 1903
By 1974, Claude and Sybil Walker were the owners of the place. They also owned and operated the Browndell Liquor Store on Highway 96. It probably did very well, because Jasper, the nearest town of any size, was “dry.” According to Mrs. Cox, Claude Walker came home one Saturday night with the day’s receipts in his pocket. As he climbed the steps from the carport and entered the house through the laundry room, an assailant (or perhaps more than one) awaited him in the dark laundry room, armed with one of Walkers’ shotguns taken from the house. Walker was apparently first struck with the butt of his own shotgun, then brutally shot several times with the weapon. His wife, Sybil, arrived home a little later and was shocked to find her husband lying mortally wounded in a pool of blood on the floor. (Police reports later noted it took every sheet they could find in the house to mop up the blood.) Although Mr. Walker was still alive when the ambulance arrived, he died en route to the hospital. Even today, twenty years later, one of the square white acoustical tiles on the ceiling bears deep brown stains, bloodstains, dating from the night of the murder. Mrs. Cox did not offer any explanation why she had not replaced the gruesome reminder of the tragedy.
The police later discovered Walker’s wallet lying on the Highway 96 right-of-way, where it had been tossed aside after being emptied by the perpetrators of the crime. Several firearms were also missing from the Walker house. The killer, or killers, have never been brought to justice, and the unsolved crime still remains on the Jasper County criminal records. The murderer must have known Claude Walker and his custom of carrying large sums of money late at night as he made his way home from the liquor store. Because the house was in a remote area and the people in the area all knew their neighbors, the Walkers probably left their house unlocked. This would have made it very easy for the assailant to enter the place prior to Walker’s arrival.
Soon after her husband’s brutal murder, Sybil Walker decided to sell the property. Fearing another attack, she was terrified to remain alone in the rambling country place. The Coxes, who came to Jasper from Alabama, purchased the house and the sixteen adjoining acres from her.
Diane Cox vividly recalls the first Halloween night she spent alone in the old house. It was 1976. Her three teenage children were in town attending a football game, her husband was away on business, and she was all alone. She made herself a cup of hot cocoa and sat in her kitchen, trying not to think too much about the heinous murder that had taken place in the laundry room adjacent to the kitchen where she now sat.
Just to make sure all was well, she timidly peeked into the room. As she stated in the article which first touched off my interest in the house, “The hair stood up on my arms, just recalling what had happened in that room. Although I was terribly frightened, there was nothing there, and I breathed a sigh of relief.”
Then Diane heard a ghostly wail . . . an “Oooooooh” sound that really got her imagination going. She first thought it might be her three youngsters just trying to give her a good Halloween scare! The sound was repeated several times. Finally, when the young people arrived home she accused them of standing outside and making weird noises to frighten her. They assured her they had just that minute arrived home, and to back up that claim, they all heard the same mournful moan as they stood together in the living room!
Several times during the next few weeks the sound was heard again, always at night. Cox became increasingly nervous whenever she was in the house alone.
Then, about three weeks after the strange noises began, Mrs. Walker, from whom the Coxes had purchased the house, called Diane to say she hoped that she wasn’t afraid, but their old “yeller dog” kept running back to his old home. Anytime the hound would hear a train whistle or a siren off in the distance, he’d start to howl. Mrs. Walker said she’d gone to bring him back home several times in the daytime, when the Coxes were all away, but she still had trouble keeping him home at night. This explained the “Oooooooh” sound that had slowly been driving Diane up the walls for nearly a month!
At least that problem was solved. But Diane says there are other strange things that keep happening in the old house. The children are all grown and gone now. Mr. Cox has passed away, and Diane lives there all alone, except for two very large dogs that I’d hate to tangle with.
Diane says there are several “cold spots” in the living room, with a “magnetic place” in the air, that makes the hair stand up on her arms and the skin prickle. Lights go on and off at will, and then there are the “voices” which are heard, engaged in nocturnal conversations in various parts of the house.
Several years ago, Diane decided to have what she called a seance to try and learn more about the house in which she lives alone. A gentleman named Ray Nevels from the nearby community of Brookeland whom she variously described as an herbalist, an Indian shaman or healer, and a hypnotist, was invited to come and help her make contact with the spirit world. Besides Diane, her mother and stepfather and a lady friend were present. The hypnotist succeeded in placing Diane into a hypnotic trance. While “out,” she said she distinctly saw a young woman who looked to be in her early 30s standing in the kitchen in front of an old wood stove, which is no longer there. She wore a long dress with an apron. Diane said the dress was in a geometric type print that was very popular back in the 1920s. The woman also had a hair style that dated to that era. Diane said she recalled the apron had a bib front and was safety-pinned to the bodice of the dress she wore. A toddler, no more than about two years old, and still in diapers, was hanging on to her skirts. The woman was stirring something up in a big mixing bowl, and Diane distinctly felt that she was making a birthday cake! Diane also had the name, “Rini,” come to her while in the trancelike state.
Then, Diane said, she suddenly felt she was in the laundry room and had “become” the victim of the Walker crime. She said she “saw” and “felt” the awful murder that had taken place there. She said she could actually feel the bullets as they entered her body! And she experienced a terrible fear, just as Mr. Walker must have felt, on that last night in his life. She said she then snapped out of the trance, but the memories of that evening still remain very fresh in her mind.
A couple of years after the seance, or psychic experience, Diane met a lady whose husband’s grandmother had once lived in the house. She described her vision to her and also asked her if the name “Rini” meant anything to any of her family. The woman’s husband said, “Why, Rini was a close friend of my grandmother’s,” but he had not heard her name mentioned in many years!
Diane said she also once had a distinct vision of a group of men, probably sawmill workers, engaged in an animated conversation on the back porch of the house. (The porch is no longer there. It was altered to make room for a bathroom.) It must have been a hot evening, as the men were shirtless, wearing just their customary work overalls.
To this day, Diane says, often when she is reading in her front living room she suddenly hears a lively conversation “like a party going on,” in the kitchen, or when she’s in the kitchen, the same sounds emanate from the living room! She does not find these “otherworldly” conversations particularly frightening. By now she seems to take them for granted.
There are two big dogs that live with Diane. They won’t go into the central hallway (which used to be the open “dog trot”) after dark. And her brother absolutely refuses to remain in the house at all after the sun goes down. Diane herself admits she always reaches around the corner and flips on the light switch before entering a darkened room. However, she is not particularly uncomfortable about living alone in the mysterious old house. She says she’s trying to take good care of the place, and she calls herself a “caretaker.” She has the theory that “they” don’t threaten “caretakers.”
It’s an interesting house. And Diane Cox is a very interesting lady . . . and pretty brave, too, in my opinion.