The Gailey Ghost

The Gailey Ghost

By Jeff Clark

What is it about standing in a cemetery that invites talk of ghosts?

            So I meet this guy atop Thurber’s Graveyard Hill. A friend of a friend mentions that this man knows about some ghost nearby. Before you puff up into your “there ain’t no such things as ghosts”, let me remind you I’ve been to college, go there still from time to time. Don’t be too judgmental about the science of Otherworldly Spirits. If you’ve never felt the spirit of some unseen person, your life has been, well, different from mine. I’m just the reporter.

Ask the question.

Write down the answer.

This man tells me his story.

            The tale happened at a nearby home with a documented past. Who lived in the place is known. I figured that with enough clues, we could figure out who the ghost was (through deduction and creative license, not by “asking the ghost its name” like I saw on TV the other night).

I’m not up for talking to ghosts.

Though I’m not above listening.

            This house was the J.W. Gailey home when it was built in 1903. It survived that century and a little bit in family hands, then not. Eventually the house was lived in by ranch hands or by friends on the eve of deer hunts.

            So one night, a visiting prospective deer hunter is sleeping.

By himself.

In this house.

Today, as was true when this home was nailed and mortared together, the place sits off by itself.

Remote.

Except for wild game (read: I hope you’re a good shot) and marauding Comanche warriors (read: I hope you’re a damn good shot), little has changed in this rough outpost over the last 200 years.

            During his sleep, something made the visitor wake up. He listened, hearing the soft cla-pomp, cla-pomp, cla-pomp of cowboy boots as they walked slowly across the wood plank breezeway outside his room. The boots sauntered through the center of the breezeway to the back side and stopped.

Looked out across the land.

            After a short time, the boots shuffled, turned, walked slowly the other way, this time stopping outside this visiting man’s door. Silence from outside. Silence from inside, ‘less you count the full-throttle heart beat thrumming inside our lonely visitor’s chest.

            The boots turned, descended the steps to the yard and walked off into the woods.  The man inside the cabin didn’t see anyone outside, looking through the window pane. He looked across the door yard toward the other vacant home. A light was on inside. Some of those lights were on timers, so he figured they’d come on by themselves.

            The deer hunter figured he was over-tired, that he imagined the whole thing and went back to sleep. This all happened round about midnight.

            Out of nowhere, the man sat up wide awake at 2 a.m. A feeling, a cold chill or that primeval knowing that grave danger has your name on it woke him, his instinct lit full voltage, delivering total alertness to our friend alone in those woods.

            This time he heard the boots come again up the steps, but they didn’t cross the breezeway. They walked up to the outside of his door and stopped. The visitor reached down, picked up his pistol and as we say in Texas, braced himself squarely into the firing position, his gun aimed at the unwelcome visitor on the other side of his door.

Hours later, the sun came up.

            The man questioned the ranch manager about overnight visitors when he showed up next morning. There had been none. The visitor mentioned the light that came on in the big house next door. The manager checked. The light he mentioned was off, unplugged in fact. Not connected to a timer.

            There were a series of other unexplainable occurrences down the hill from here, maybe 300 feet or so. Though I take ghost stories with ten grains of salt, I’m not prepared to defend their truth or falsity.

I’m only the writer.

I ask the questions.

I mentioned this all happened in the J.W. Gailey home. It had a cistern in the kitchen, cutting edge for its time, gutters around the house funneling rain water into its belly. There’s an open air breezeway separating one set of rooms on the left from others on the right, a dogtrot design. “The room on the left side was the boys’ room, then likely J. W.’s bedroom,” Shanon Hunt told me. This room was later used as a birthing room from which new Gaileys entered the world. Shanon is historian and keeper of Gailey tradition, long ago local communities and other magical tales up and down Tudor Road (spelled correctly “Tuder”).

When all this came up I asked Shanon about folks who might’ve met unquiet deaths out there. I watch TV. I know how this ghost thing works.

He solemnly slid the name J.W. Gailey across the table as a suspect.

John William Gailey was born in Aiken, Bell County, Texas in 1861 to Asahel "Asa" Lomax Gailey and Permelia Jane Tuder. His father served in the Civil War and did not "officially" return to Texas after being captured. J.W.'s mother Permelia moved with her parents and siblings from Bell County to Eastland County about 1872. J.W. had two full blood siblings, Jane Jemima Gailey Harding and Asa Nelson Gailey, one half sister Starrett Annie Smith Lee through his mother and two more half siblings Lola and Lester from his father, both born in Chicago.

J.W. married Mary Ann Ada Bigham in 1880 and together had nine children. Mary died in 1904. He married Leora Jones ten years later, fathering two more children, J.W. Jr. and Asa Lee Gailey (both boys).

“J.W. Gailey was known as a kind and respectable man,” Shanon told me. “He was primarily raised by his mother and Tuder uncles. His family relocated to Eastland County when he was around 12. His mother died when he was around 18. He married Mary Bigham soon after. In the years that followed, the two began having children every two or so years, beginning with Nora. He made his home on a part of the original Tuder land on the far eastern border of Eastland County.”

During these years, J.W. gained local prominence as a cattle man. He would eventually join a locally-famous partnership with Mr. Fulfer and Mr. Ivey. The men became known as the Three Bills. They supplied beef to Thurber and surrounding areas for many years. During this time, Gailey began accumulating a good deal of ranch land in northeastern Eastland County. By 1904 his property reached from the road south of Thurber to the road south of Strawn (about eight miles wide, east to west).

Around this time he and his family were constructing a new home south of Thurber. That’s this home we’re talking about. Before the house was completed his wife Mary died of pneumonia, leaving her husband with nine children (including one infant). The family would stick together and continue for another ten years, until J.W. married Leora Jones.

I ask about death. About the ghost.

“J.W. Gailey is the most logical candidate,” Shanon told me. Gailey’s son Loddy inherited that portion of the land in 1927. J.W.'s will stated that the land could not be divided until five years after his death. Loddy and his wife Cari lived out there until her death in the 1940s, when he decided to move into Strawn. Loddy was known to have a sixth sense and was known to some in the family for having remarkable cures for certain ailments. He was known to some as cantankerous, especially in his later Strawn years.

“J.W. Gailey was known as a very stern business-like man to his family,” Shanon wrote. “He was born into a fairly poor situation, with the family moving to Eastland County prior to county government being established. He never knew his father (who never returned from the Civil War), but lived and started a new life.”

J.W. was a man of deep faith. “His wife, children, brother and uncles were all very active in the family church,” Shanon shared. “However, there is no indication that J.W. was ever present at the church and he was certainly never a member. Being that it was a small church and very descriptive records were kept it strengthens the case that he did not attend. It’s hard for me to believe that he was a lost soul. His actions in life (business and family) were very much Christ-like.”

The Tragic Accident.

J.W. Gailey had a horse roll over on him in 1917 or 1918 out there on that place, ultimately causing his untimely death. It was very unsettling to the family. Unsettling to hear about now. He contracted tuberculosis or already had it, and the two-fisted health stomp on his system was just too much.

Mr. Gailey relocated to San Angelo, seeking drier climate. Death circled J.W. three more years, then declared his time was up. J.W. Gailey’s body died in San Angelo.

“I don’t think he liked the idea of moving away from the great ranch he’d worked feverously to obtain,” Shanon said. “Not to mention how beautiful his ranch was compared to the barren flat lands of San Angelo. If he had a ghost, there’s no doubt in my mind it would be looming on that ranch and around that house.”

No other Gaileys died on the place, as far as Shanon knows. J.W.’s first wife Mary died in the area, but at the old house about a mile to the west.

Here’s what I think.

J.W. Gailey was awake that night not too long ago, the patriarch walking across the dogtrot breezeway, checking out who was asleep in his beloved home. We heard his cowboy boots. We know he stopped at the back of the house, looked out across his land, took in all that he had worked so hard for, took it all into his soul that quiet moonlit night. Whether he felt peace or sadness, or like most of us, a little of both is unknown. Land is a mystical force in Texas. We are but passing across its surface, always leaving something of ourselves behind.

Always leaving something behind.

See more information about J. W. Gailey and his family at http://www.gaileyhistory.com/jw.asp. Special thanks to Johnny Caudle, Shanon Hunt and J. W. Gailey, may he rest in peace.