Over the next few days, we got our paranormal equipment together. We collected our digital cameras, charged batteries, cleaned lenses and did a small safety check on functionality. All seemed good.
But we needed a way to find and communicate with these long deceased tormented souls that we sought.
We looked online and most of the products we found seemed priced very high. For example, there was the GS2 Laser Sensor Array for $289.95 and worse, it would take weeks to get here. To be fair, the St. John’s Wort listed for a very reasonable $6.75 and the St. Benedict Medal Holy Water Bottle listed for only $8.00 which I thought a comparatively good deal. Both would make nice gifts during the holidays.
Instead, we instinctively went to our iPhone app store. There’s nothing an iPhone can’t do with the right app. We found it. It seemed just the perfect thing at $0.99 and a simple download. Here is an excerpt from the description on the App Store site:
“[..] is the original application to detect paranormal activity. [..] attempts to detect paranormal activity by making various readings on the device. Traditional paranormal equipment can be easily fooled when simple mundane burst of normal energy occur. [..] sets itself apart by analyzing the reading and giving indications only when interesting patterns in the readings have been made.”
That, along with its 4.7 rating and 6 reviews sold us. One reviewer wrote:
“I just love [..], I am a psychic and use it all the time to connect to the other side!!!” (I fixed the spelling of her review to help readers including the word, ‘psychic’.)
With our paranormal gear (a camera and our less-than-a-dollar iPhone app) inspected and in place, we got in the Mini Cooper, top down of course, and made north for Gainesville.
Most residents in Gainesville do not know the story of the site. It was repressed over time as a dark chapter in the town’s history. The Great Hanging took place in 1862 at the very start of the Civil War. Tensions were high in Texas — high enough to create an army, impose martial law, and secede from the US. The Governor at the time, Governor Houston, was removed from office in 1861 for opposing secession and entering into the Confederate States. In Gainesville, Texas and other towns, tensions were high enough to murder a neighbor who didn’t share your politics.
Texas was part of the South then, and it allowed slave owning as part of the economics of vast cattle ranching and land ownership. When they created the Mason-Dixon line, it went through the tip top of Texas. Leaders simply adjusted the border and gave the rest to Oklahoma. It became the lawless and awkward looking Pan Handle also known as the Badlands. Still, many in northern Texas did not want to secede and certainly didn’t want a civil war.
Gainesville sat on the route to California and was thriving. It was similar to the towns that thrived along Route 66 a century later. To add to the tension, there were many newcomers to the area from other states including Kansas, which was the home of the ultraliberal abolitionist John Brown and his followers. Brown was quoted as saying, “Moral suasion is hopeless, violence is the only answer.” He led the Pottawatomie massacre, killing a handful of slave owners in Kansas, and led a number of other massacres across the country in the name of emancipation. He was later hanged while leading a now memorialized violent uprising at Harpers Ferry Virginia in1859. Any person coming to Texas in 1860 to homestead from Kansas was treated with suspicion as a possible disciple of Brown’s. If there was a natural wild fire or an Indian uprising, locals blamed it on Brown supporters.
That said, in 1862 only 10% of the population in Gainesville owned slaves and as few as two men owned a quarter of them. One was Young.
The catalyst for this horrific event was a newly ordered conscription into the Confederate army and then law. The law was written so as if you owned slaves you didn’t have to go into the army. The penalty for not joining the army? You got shot. The law implied that men and boys from families who did not have slaves were forced to fight for the rights of the slave owners who did not have to fight. That didn’t sit well with a lot of peacefully minded citizens in Gainesville, Texas, all of whom had their own farms, ranches, stores, and families to attend, and who didn’t really want to secede in the first place. A group of men got together and wrote a letter.
It didn’t go well.
The letter was intercepted and sent to the Confederate general overseeing the area. He assigned Young in charge of putting together a citizens’ court and collected some 150 residents on the word of a man named Montague from the 90% of homeowners who didn’t own slaves. If you owed someone money, say, all you had to do was give Montague a name. Your debt was done.
Montague, being the only surveyor in the region, amassed a vast amount of land holdings and wealth. Earlier, after arriving along the Red River near Gainesville, Texas from Louisiana, he led the settlers’ fight against the Indians. In 1843, he led what is known as the last Indian fight. In the Mexican War, he was a Captain under the command of Col. Young. He was a fervent supporter of the Confederacy.
Young presided over the trial and Montague was the jury foreman. The jury only needed a simple majority (7 out of 12) and was made of 7 slave owners. Seven men were immediately sentenced for treason and executed by hanging the same day as a crowd and their family watched. In one account, Nathaniel Clark, who moved from Missouri with his wife and sons five years earlier in 1857, was taken from his home and family and hanged without trial. He was neither a Yankee sympathizer nor an abolitionist. He did not own slaves. The whole experience took only hours.
 | | Photo: Nathaniel Clark circa 1862. His photo still hangs on the wall of his family's home generations later. |
A mob formed and wanted twelve more. Men were randomly brought out and hanged on the same tree in pairs as others watched. The jury exonerated other captives only to bring them back. They hanged a total of 41 men over the few weeks before Halloween in 1862. The crime was conspiracy. Many were not even questioned. Most of them were not even sympathetic to the North and a handful had their own sons in the Confederate army.
One poor guy was having dinner with his wife and four daughters at the table when a mob broke through the door and took him captive for no reason he could fathom. He later hanged. Two men tried to escape, mattresses tied to their back to stop the bullets, and were shot. Finally, the blood lust was over and the mob went back to their own homes. The press loved it, and even the new Governor of Texas applauded the vigilante justice. The justice of adhering to group ideology.
Forty one men hung from the tree on October 22 1862, all of them innocent and without a legitimate trial. This is the site we were going to with our iPhone app.
Gainesville is a quaint small town in northern Texas close to the Red River and the border with Oklahoma. They have a small passenger train station and the typical southern town square with small stores and restaurants that form a square perimeter around a huge monolithic court house with a large Civil War memorial in front. They have a museum near the square which is basically a bunch of family photos and newspaper clippings from 1900 to 1950 pinned to the wall. It is run by ten very charming old ladies who can tell you many historical facts. There was no mention of the Great Hanging.
We parked the car in the square and walked the short distance away from the courthouse. We got to the site and the monuments, including the original one placed by the tree which was very sympathetic to the mob hanging. The marble has long since faded. A few steps away there was another monument recently placed and much more factual in its account of what happened.
“With Daniel Montague presiding [the spy who came up with most of the names] and Young [the large slave owner] interrogating, they met in a store on the square [near our parked car] and convicted 7 [of the 150] prisoners of conspiracy to commit treason. They were promptly hanged from a giant elm at this site.“
Even though the weather was pleasant, there was a a dark foreboding feeling at the location made even more ominous when we noticed a dead bird below the tree. We walked around the small park next to the train tracks and a small creek. Then we decided to bring out our ghost communicator iPhone app. Surely, there were lingering souls here, and we were positive our iPhone could bridge us to the other side.
It didn’t let us down. We brought the phone out and walked close to the names on the granite monument. The instructions told us to try to communicate out loud with the spirits. Our iPhone app would pick up energy and listen for a response back and type it on our screen. I was happy we weren’t looking for ghosts in a supermarket or crowded mall.
“Hello, can you hear us? Are you here? Is anyone there?”
Our screen popped up,
MONTHS
HAIR
COMPOUND
SONG
These words seemed gibberish to us. Close to a dollar wasted. And then popped up:
NOAH
Perplexed, we looked at the list of 41 names chiseled in granite and didn’t find a Noah. There was an Abraham, so we tried that. Talking out loud in the small grassy park,
“Are you Abraham?”
HAIL
USSUALLY
HI
SNAP
SUIT
LEADED
WEAR
Deciding that we were getting somewhere we asked,
“Abraham, were you hanged from a tree at this spot?”
MEDIUM
LOCK
MEASURE
BUILD
NOSE
YES
“Abraham do you want to go home?”
SHEPPARD
POUT
DEATH
It was obvious to us that our $.99 app worked perfectly. We didn’t have any more questions and we were getting hungry. We packed up our paranormal equipment and headed for a pizza place which was only a short distance from the town square. The square was the location of the store where Young, Montague, and the jury met.
We sat at the counter and looked at some of our photos. We talked to our server, a younger woman named Trixie, who has lived there 30 years and more. She didn’t know anything about the Great Hanging of Gainesville. The Great Hanging is considered the largest mass hanging in the history of the United States.
Just moments before, we were there breaking through the barrier of life and the afterlife and conversing with Noah with our 99 cent iPhone app. We were very proud. And we hoped we made Noah’s day just a bit more pleasant, as he did ours.
Nathaniel Clark stood at that exact same spot under a tree with Abraham (or Noah) watching and waiting his turn. Nathaniel had a rope around his neck with the other end swung over a tree branch and tied to the pommel of a horse’s saddle. A dozen townsmen he knew were already hanging dead on the same branch. Before he was about to lifted into the air with his hands tied behind his back, he was allowed some last words.
He said,
“Prepare yourself to live and die. I hope to meet you all in a future world. God bless you all.”
Dain Ehring
Photos by Cameron Ehring
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 | | This is a circa 1862 reporter's rendering of the Great Hanging of Gainesville that swept the divided nation. |
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