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The Black Hope Curse | Black Hope Cemetery · The Grim: Haunted Cemeteries & Graveyard Tales

0:13
Kristin: Grim morning and welcome to the Grim.
0:16
Kristin: I'm your host, Kristen.
0:18
Kristin: On today's episode, we'll be opening the gate in entering Black Hope Cemetery, located in Crosby, Texas.
0:25
Kristin: The aroma of coffee mingles in the air.
0:28
Kristin: The gates stand open.
0:30
Kristin: Step carefully.
0:31
Kristin: It's time to descend into the hauntings of history.
0:35
Kristin: Rounding out Black History Month, we're taking a slightly different path for today's episode.
0:40
Kristin: It's been a while since the Grimm has welcomed a true haunting into its shadows.
0:44
Kristin: And today's cemetery offers very little in the way of clean written history.
0:48
Kristin: When it lacks in records, it makes suffer in whispers, in stories past, hand a trembling hand, and an unease that refuses to fade.
0:56
Kristin: It makes it the perfect closing chapter for February.
1:00
Kristin: Now, if you've ever heard of Black Hope Cemetery, you already know exactly where this episode must begin.
1:06
Kristin: Because Black Hope is not remembered for who was buried there.
1:09
Kristin: It's remembered for what still refuses to leave.
1:12
Kristin: In the last few episodes of The Grim, we've been tracing a familiar and painful pattern.
1:17
Kristin: A man in African American burial grounds, stripped of their land, swallowed by subdivisions, and paved over for someone else's version of progress.
1:26
Kristin: Black Hope's story is not much different.
1:28
Kristin: But first, what do we actually know?
1:31
Kristin: The area of Texas where Crosby now sits was once deeply rural.
1:35
Kristin: In the late 1800s, the land was shaped by farms and by enslaved labor.
1:40
Kristin: And after the Civil War, many white landowners didn't easily accept that the people who had worked their fields were no longer their property.
1:48
Kristin: With little chance of settling inside established towns, newly freed African Americans began forming their own communities, small fragile settlements tucked into lowlands and forests.
1:58
Kristin: They were called freedom villages, freedom towns, or freedom colonies.
2:03
Kristin: They were known, though, but rarely recognized by the law.
2:06
Kristin: Roughly between 1863 and the 1870s, these communities became lifelines for former enslaved people.
2:13
Kristin: They built homes, churches, schools, and they carved out sacred ground for the dead.
2:19
Kristin: The land where Black Hope Cemetery rests today was originally owned by Mercer McKenney.
2:23
Kristin: Shortly after the abolition of slavery, the surrounding area became one of these freedom settlements, a quiet self-made village on borrowed land and borrowed time.
2:33
Kristin: Then came the fire.
2:34
Kristin: The entire settlement was erased, and it was never rebuilt.
2:38
Kristin: Warmain was not a town, not a church, not a school, but Black Hope Cemetery.
2:43
Kristin: And even that over time began to slip from memory.
2:46
Kristin: Black Hope slowly transformed from a real place into something far more fragile, a rumor, a legend, and a whisper of history buried beneath development and disbelief.
2:57
Kristin: The cemetery is believed to hold around 60 burials, 60 lives, and almost no markers left behind to defend their names.
3:06
Kristin: An entire black community once stood on this land, homes rising beside schools, prayers filling small churches, and a burial ground carved carefully into the earth.
3:16
Kristin: All of it vanished when the fire swept through the settlement and reduced it to ash.
3:21
Kristin: Years later, what the flames couldn't finish, development would.
3:25
Kristin: The land was sold to Purcell Corporation, which began construction of the Newport Subdivision, a new neighborhood built around and partially over the forgotten dead.
3:34
Kristin: The lots were cleared, the foundations poured, and families came as families do, drawn by the promise of something new.
3:42
Kristin: One of those families was Sam and Judith Haney.
3:44
Kristin: They would soon discover there that Black Hope had not vanished with the fire, it had only been waiting.
3:50
Kristin: For the Haney family, their encounter with Black Hope Cemetery began like many American dreams in the 1980s, with a home, a brand new home on rural, undeveloped land, and a dream come true.
4:02
Kristin: Wanting to take that dream a step further, and not long after moving in, Sam and Judith Haney decided to build a swimming pool.
4:09
Kristin: And at first digging felt innocent, ordinary.
4:13
Kristin: But a few days into the project, the man rang their doorbell, a longtime resident of Crosby.
4:18
Kristin: He said he needed to clear his conscience, and he came with a warning.
4:21
Kristin: He told the Haneys that they were about to find human remains in their own backyard.
4:25
Kristin: Heeding his words, Sam, following the man's instructions, went into the yard later that same day and began opening the earth.
4:32
Kristin: They didn't take long.
4:33
Kristin: He struck a coffin.
4:35
Kristin: Then after finding nothing but dust inside, he struck another.
4:38
Kristin: Because who better to tell you where a body is buried than the man who helped dig the graves himself?
4:44
Kristin: Horrified, the Haneys immediately contacted the authorities to investigate and exume what had been uncovered.
4:50
Kristin: But who was buried in their backyard and why?
4:53
Kristin: Why had the corporation that built Newport subdivision not know or not disclose what lay beneath the soil?
5:00
Kristin: The investigation revealed the remains of a couple in the Haney's backyard, still wearing their wedding rings.
5:06
Kristin: Determined to learn who they were, the Haneys contacted longtime resident Jasper Norton, the same man who had knocked on their door.
5:12
Kristin: He confirmed what they were beginning to fear.
5:15
Kristin: The subdivision had been built directly on top of a cemetery.
5:18
Kristin: Through local testimony, the couple were finally identified, Charlie and Betty Thomas, African Americans who had been born into slavery free during the Civil War, and who had died in Black Hope in the 1930s, just before the fire.
5:31
Kristin: Riddled with gill, Sam and Judith reburied the Thomases in what they believed to be Black Hope Cemetery, not realizing the entire subdivision already stood on its graves.
5:41
Kristin: However, finding the remains was not the worst of their problems.
5:45
Kristin: What came next was worse.
5:47
Kristin: Strange things began happening around the Haney's home.
5:50
Kristin: One evening an alarm clock began to glow and then it sparked.
5:54
Kristin: The only problem was it wasn't plugged in.
5:56
Kristin: Another night, while Sam was away at work, Judith stepped out of the shower and thought she heard the glass lighting door to the backyard open.
6:04
Kristin: Then she heard a whisper, What are you doing?
6:07
Kristin: Trying to dismiss it, the couple told themselves it was only their imagination, until one day Judith couldn't find her red shoes.
6:14
Kristin: They searched the entire house.
6:16
Kristin: They were nowhere to be found.
6:18
Kristin: Later, though, the couple discovered the shoes outside, placed directly on the spot where Betty and Thomas originally had been buried.
6:25
Kristin: The shoes had vanished on the same day as Betty's birthday, something the couple could no longer explain or ignore.
6:32
Kristin: Yet the Haneys were not the only ones in the Newport subdivision experiencing strange events.
6:38
Kristin: Around the same time, Ben and Jean Williams also moved into the neighborhood, annoyed that their home too stood on former cemetery ground.
6:46
Kristin: Jean was the first to notice something was wrong.
6:49
Kristin: Her plants kept dying.
6:50
Kristin: In their backyard, sinkholes began to appear, not randomly, but in the unmistakable shape of coffins.
6:56
Kristin: They filled the holes days later, though they returned, as if nothing had ever been placed there at all.
7:02
Kristin: The couple also noticed unnatural markings carved into a nearby tree, horizontal slash marks.
7:08
Kristin: A longtime resident of Crosby later came forward and admitted he had made those marks.
7:13
Kristin: They were meant to locate the graves of his two sisters, graves that lay in the Williams' own backyard.
7:19
Kristin: The couple were horrified to learn that their home had been built directly over the cemetery, just like the Haneys.
7:26
Kristin: Soon after more disturbances followed, a putrid smell crept through their brand new house, unexplained shadows, whispers, and their granddaughter, who also lived in the home, reported sudden cold spots, even during the height of summer in the Texas heat.
7:41
Kristin: For the Haneys, it was only the beginning.
7:43
Kristin: The family began seeing ghostly figures inside their home.
7:47
Kristin: One night, after returning from a late ship, Sam came home and found two figures standing silently in his living room.
7:54
Kristin: He watched in horror as they drifted toward the master bedroom, for Judith was sleeping.
7:59
Kristin: Fearing for her safety, Sam ran after them.
8:01
Kristin: The figures though hovered above the bed.
8:04
Kristin: He lunged forward, and in an instant they were gone.
8:07
Kristin: Only months later, three of the Hades' closest relatives were diagnosed with cancer.
8:12
Kristin: All three would die.
8:14
Kristin: Tormented, horrified, and overwhelmed by grief, Sam and Judith sued the corporation that had constructed the development.
8:21
Kristin: They argued that the failure to disclose that their home had been built atop a cemetery had caused severe emotional and psychological anguish.
8:29
Kristin: At first it seemed like justice.
8:31
Kristin: The jury awarded them$142,000, but the victory quickly turned bitter.
8:37
Kristin: The judge overturned the ruling, the verdict was thrown out, and the couple were ordered to pay nearly$50,000 in court costs.
8:45
Kristin: When further legal action was attempted, the corporation demanded proof that the cemetery had ever existed.
8:51
Kristin: It was Ben and Jean Williams who tried to prove them wrong.
8:55
Kristin: They began digging immediately, but Blackhood Cemetery had other plans.
9:00
Kristin: Not long into the search, Jean suddenly became violently ill and was unable to continue looking for evidence.
9:06
Kristin: Her daughter Tina then stepped in, hoping to help.
9:10
Kristin: Within an hour, Tina began to feel dizzy, then weak, then barely able to stand.
9:15
Kristin: As her condition worsened, the family called 911.
9:18
Kristin: Tina was rushed to the hospital, but the damage was already done.
9:22
Kristin: Two days later, she died of a sudden heart attack.
9:25
Kristin: She was only 30 years old.
9:27
Kristin: The Williams family believed her death was the result of supernatural forces connected to the land.
9:33
Kristin: The Haneys, having lost their dream, their stability, were forced to file for bankruptcy.
9:38
Kristin: They moved to Montana and later returned to Texas, but far away from Black Hope.
9:43
Kristin: Unexplainable events continued to be reported throughout the Newport subdivision.
9:47
Kristin: Built within the boundaries of the old cemetery, numerous residents spoke of strange experiences.
9:53
Kristin: But it was the Haneys and the Williams who endured the most severe and terrifying accounts.
9:58
Kristin: After both families left the area, the reports abruptly stopped.
10:02
Kristin: New residents moved in.
10:04
Kristin: No figures, no whispers, no shadows, no disturbances, which only made the story more unsettling.
10:10
Kristin: Even now, many who visit the area describe the same sensations.
10:14
Kristin: The feeling of being watched, a heavy, unsettling presence, and the unmistakable sense of being unwelcome.
10:21
Kristin: For Avant Horror fans listening, you may be thinking you've heard this story before.
10:26
Kristin: That it sounds strangely familiar, and you wouldn't be wrong.
10:29
Kristin: In 1982, at the height of America's growing obsession with the paranormal, Poltergeist was released, a story about a family whose suburban dream collapses into something unspeakable when the dead beneath her home refuse to remain buried.
10:44
Kristin: A cheerful new development, a little girl pulled toward the other side, and a house raised not on land, but on bones someone hoped history would forget.
10:52
Kristin: The film is often cited as inspired by the Herman family poldergeist case off of Long Island in 1958, but the story of Black Hope, discovered and lived in real time throughout the same decade, carries an eerie parallel that the filmmakers couldn't have scripted better: a black burial ground, a white suburb, and the stubborn, furious persistence of the dead.
11:15
Kristin: Whether poldergeist drew from Black Hope directly, or whether the truth of what happened in Newport simply rhymes with the film.
11:22
Kristin: It's something history hasn't settled.
11:24
Kristin: What it has settled is this the horror movie version had an ending.
11:28
Kristin: The Haney's and Williamses didn't get one.
11:31
Kristin: A corporation demanded that the couple prove the cemetery even existed.
11:36
Kristin: Sit with that for a moment.
11:38
Kristin: Bodies had already been exhumed from backyards across the subdivision.
11:42
Kristin: A man who came forward who had dug those graves with his own hands, and still the burden of proof fell on the grieving, the displaced, and the haunted.
11:52
Kristin: It wasn't ignorance, it was a razor dressed in legal language.
11:56
Kristin: The grounds were never officially recognized by authorities, not by city records, not by historical registries, and not even by the legal system, whether documented by families, by those who had personally dug the graves, or confirmed their physical evidence pulled from the very earth.
12:13
Kristin: None of it was enough.
12:15
Kristin: All because they were African American in America.
12:18
Kristin: Relatives would later recount stories of how many had tried legally to have their settlements, schools, and burial grounds properly documented, only to be threatened by men in white caps, denied their rights, and have crucial documents discarded.
12:33
Kristin: The razor of a settlement, its people, its history, its loved ones.
12:38
Kristin: It caused years of anguish and sorrow for those who came after, leading many to question: is Black Hope cursed?
12:46
Kristin: Do these events truly happen?
12:48
Kristin: Or should developers simply be required to disclose what lay beneath the land they built on?
12:53
Kristin: These are questions, though, only you can decide.
12:57
Kristin: For now, the stories of Black Hope slid back into stone, and the dead return to their uneasy rest.
13:03
Kristin: Yet they're never silent for long.
13:06
Kristin: Thank you for walking with us through the veil into Black Hope Cemetery, descending once more into the hauntings of history.
13:13
Kristin: The gate is sealed, the veil drawn, yet death keeps no calendar, and so we shall return, as we always do, on the grin.