Unexplained occurrences are routine in this historic neighborhood
Shawn Carroll: Danny Fulgencio
It’s 2 in the morning, and you’re awakened by a noise. Was that footsteps? Rustling? Whispering? Before you dismiss it as the cat’s annoying nocturnal hijinks or your creaky old Tudor, think again: Our neighborhood may be full of spirits.
Ask Shawn Carroll. A lifelong resident of East Dallas, Carroll has lived in several houses in Junius Heights and owns close to 50 properties in the area. Carroll matter-of-factly tells story after story about paranormal activity over the years. It began when he was 12 years old, living in a house on Tremont. He awoke at night to see a small, shadowy figure slowly rise and disappear through the ceiling.
A few years later, in the early 1980s, Carroll’s parents bought another house on Tremont. The previous owners had lived in the house, which was built in 1910, “forever,” Carroll says. The family patriarch died in his room, and later so did a daughter, “Miss Evelyn.” Carroll recalls the room had a “truly haunted look” — covered with thick dust and cobwebs, the old gentleman’s clothes laid out on the bed as though he were about to dress. But a peek in the closet was the spookiest: There Carroll found a tombstone, inscribed for an infant who died at the turn of the century.
Despite the creepiness, Carroll moved in alone, his parents remaining across the street for a time. Soon enough, things started happening: Refrigerator doors opened on their own, window shades abruptly flew up. A most unnerving incident involved a grandfather clock his parents had delivered to the home. Reminiscent of a scene from Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol,” the clock began chiming at midnight one night — “extra loud, like it was Big Ben,” Carroll says, referring to the enormous, thundering clock in London. The next morning Carroll discovered the clock had no weights and had not been set, making chiming impossible.
Some time later, while getting ready to go to an early-morning class at Richland College, Carroll stopped to straighten up his room. A large jar of coins sat atop his dresser. He returned a couple of hours later to find his comforter balled up in the middle of his bed and every coin spread across the room, perfectly placed about one inch apart.
Carroll and his wife, Mary, and their five children still live in Junius Heights, and ongoing paranormal activity is business as usual in their household.
As Carroll told tales of phantom footsteps upstairs, shadowy figures and disembodied cries, Mary and the children passed through the room, interjecting reminders. “Hey, Dad,” said one daughter, “be sure to tell about the two little boys.” In 1982, before the family bought the house, a fire killed two young boys, and the Carrolls believe some of the mysterious cries could stem from them.
The family points out a hallway where a dense, cone-shaped figure is often seen darting back and forth, at “incredible speed.” Small orbs of light fly through one of the girls’ bedrooms almost nightly, and the family has grown accustomed to heavy footfalls in the unoccupied and locked upstairs bedroom.
At one of his properties on Victor Street, Carroll has witnessed fast-moving shadow figures and footsteps, and experienced “an intense feeling of dread.”
Recently his friend Mitchell Hernandez was helping with the home’s restoration when he crashed there one night. An avowed skeptic, Hernandez laughed off Carroll’s warning that “the place is haunted.” That night as he was settling in, Hernandez heard footsteps in the house and grabbed a pipe wrench, but he found nothing amiss. He says that about an hour later, right at midnight, he clearly heard footsteps going up the stairs. The next-door neighbors later told Carroll and Hernandez that the former owner, who died there, habitually watched television, then headed upstairs at midnight. Hernandez says that he has felt the vibration of someone walking through the house when he is alone there and that he often feels “cold spots” even on the hottest of days — this in a house with no fans or air-conditioning system of any kind.
Hernandez’s wife, Terri, has her own story. One day she visited her husband as he worked on the house, and she says that as she looked around upstairs, she distinctly heard a female voice telling her to “get out.”
Carroll says he always sees an increase in activity in the fall, so listen closely. Maybe the cat isn’t the only one who’s restless in the dead of night.
