Trip to Devil's Backbone, TX

I have enjoyed Maxine Strickland's stories and asked her to tell me about her trip to the most haunted place in Texas. I was on the edge of my chair while reading this. I post it, with her permission.


A while back you asked me about my trip to Wimberly, Tx with my daughter. Well, I knew it would take a few minutes to tell you about it, so if you have time to read it now, go get yourself a cup of coffee and sit back to enjoy this long mystery filled with adventure and fear.

For those of you who don't know, for Christmas last year, I asked my children for 3 days alone with each of them. I didn't want anything that had to be fed, watered, worn, dusted, or placed on a shelf. Three days without responsibility, and eyeballs looking at me for food, sounded like paradise.

My oldest daughter chose a place in Wimberly, nestled in the hill country of Texas, where we would spend 3 days in a log cabin with a hot tub. Yeah Buddy !!! Little did I know exactly where this place was.

We left here early Friday morning for an hour and a half drive through scenic countryside. We had packed all the provisions that we would need so that we wouldn't have to leave the cabin once we were there.

When we arrived, the cabin was a two story log cabin with an open forum living room as you walk in. Downstairs, there was a living room dinette, kitchen, bathroom, and a bedroom with a small double bed. This led out onto a deck with a hot tub. This overlooked a beautiful canyon that was shrouded with a misty gray fog facing west into a beautiful sunset.

Upstairs was another very large bedroom with a king size bed and sitting area and another deck. Debbie, my daughter, was going to take this bed since the stairs were too precarious for me to navigate, following foot surgery. I was satisfied with the small bed downstairs.

We ate supper, then got into the hot tub for a couple of hours and watched the sun set behind the hills. The shadows were taking on strange eerie forms as the sun disappeared into the night. We could hear coyotes far off into the night and we talked about life in the country. We had observed a bobcat watching a squirrel about 15 feet from the deck. The bobcat was well hidden and we wouldn't have noticed if we had not heard the barking of a terrified squirrel.

While we were in the hot tub, just before sunset, we heard footsteps coming around the side of the cabin, and I asked her if someone was coming to join us. She said, no!, but got up to look anyway. There was no one there. We were alone in the woods for miles. So we decided it was a rabbit hopping in the dry brush and leaves.

After a while, we got out of the tub and went in to watch the 10:00 news and weather. About 10:30 we heard heavy foot steps on the metal roof. It sounded like a two footed something, similiar to the footsteps that we had heard earlier.

Being the "Country Girl" that I am I knew there had to be an explanation, and nothing to be afraid of. This walking went on for several hours. We looked outside, but there were no trees close enough for a raccoon or 'possum to climb and get onto the roof, and from the deck above, she couldn't see anything. We decided it was an owl. We didn't bring a gun with us. We had our cell phones with us but couldn't get a signal out.

She said, "Mom I think we should leave." Then I reminded her that the car was parked 50 feet away from the cabin, and she would have to help me to the car and return to get our things by herself. And we didn't know what was out there in the night, and if I fell, what would she do. So we decided the best thing to do was to go to bed.

I had not taken a pain pill since 1:30, so I was of clear mind. It was now 12:30, so I told Debbie that I was going to take a pain pill and go to bed, in the small bed. I went to sleep. About 1:30 I was awakened to see someone coming into my room with just the light of a cell phone. It was Debbie and she had a fireplace poker in her hand. She said, "Mom, I know you are scared, so I am going to sleep with you, so move over." I asked her if she was going to sleep with that fireplace poker and she said, "You're darn right I am." We listened to the walking on the roof and slowly drifted off to sleep. I was NOT scared, but she was.

The next morning, we got out and drove around to see the town of Wimberly and the Market Days that were going on. While going into town, we drove over THE DEVIL'S BACKBONE. Look up texasghosthunters.com/stories/central#devilsbackbone. It is the most haunted place in Texas. Unsolved Mysteries did a story on this. I did not realize this is where we were staying. I told her as much about this place as I could remember, and she called her husband to have him look this up on the internet. He confirmed what I had told her was true. Legend says that if you build a fire, soldier would come to the fire for food and warmth, and we had cooked the night before.

The next night we were not going to cook, and since she had already paid for the 3 days, I didn't want her to lose her money, and surely we wouldn't be bothered a second night. WRONG

Sure enough, Saturday night, about the same time, the walking started again on the roof. I told her that whatever it was, was not trying to get inside. Again I went to bed and she crawled in beside me and we slept soundly until 3:45 AM. A precious little boy about 8 - 10 years old, dressed in khaki clothes, brown hair and eyes, looking like he was right out of the 1800's appeared by the side of my bed. He tapped me on my left shoulder 3 times and woke me up. I turned on the lamp by the side of my bed and asked him who he was. He told me his name was Ted. He was holding 3 faded brown books, and the top book was "Where is the Monkey Boy?" I asked him what he wanted and he said, "I brought you these books to read." That was so sweet of him, so I patted the bed and told him to "Put them right here." This woke up Debbie and she asked, "Who are you talking to?" I told her "TED". She didn't see Ted, but she got up and started looking for the books. It would have been so funny if she had found them, but the drawers were empty. We left as soon as it got daylight.

As soon as I got home, I looked up the book about the Monkey Boy and found out there was a real book written about a family. The father died leaving the Mother pregnant with their 9th child. The little boy was born with a lot of hair all over his body so they called him a Monkey Boy. The family almost starved to death, but the little Monkey Boy, named Jason (not Ted) brought his mother a hand full of beans and rice, and she cooked them and had enough to feed the whole family, so everyone was looking for the Monkey Boy. This was written in the late 1700's. I had not heard of this book before I met "TED".

We have tried to get the other girls in the family to return with us to this cabin for a repeat week-end, but I get a big response of NO WAY.

I hope you enjoyed reading this. I told it as best as I could remember.
Next time I will tell you about my trip to Hot Springs, Arkansas with my son.

Maxine