Ep. 99-Haunted Jefferson, Texas

A foggy bridge, a missing suitcase, and a town that points every road toward the water—our trip to Jefferson, Texas dives into the places where history refuses to stay quiet. We start with Jefferson’s unusual street plan and river-first identity, then trace how the rise of the railroads drained a booming port and left behind preserved buildings, empty rooms, and a perfect stage for ghost stories. The Jay Gould “curse” gets a reality check, but the town’s legends gain power from the facts that remain: a population dip, a preserved past, and a culture that remembers.

From there, we step into the lore of Diamond Bessie—born Anne Stone—whose life as a traveling companion turned tragic after a fog-shrouded picnic with Abraham Rothschild. Her death shaped Jefferson’s identity, fueling notorious trials and a century of whispers. We compare the stories that swirl around two iconic stays: the Jefferson Hotel, which leans into its Book of the Dead, YouTube uploads, and tales of the Vanishing Man, mill children, and Judy in Room 19; and the Excelsior, where owners downplay hauntings even as rumors persist about headless figures, a woman in black, and a famous filmmaker who checked out early.

We close at The Grove, a Victorian home where footsteps, door sounds, and a glowing woman suggest that renovations can’t wall off memory. Along the way, we ask what makes a “ghost town” in the modern era: is it decline, or a different kind of life that rises when commerce fades? Whether you’re a skeptic chasing architectural history or a believer following cold spots, Jefferson blends true crime, Southern Gothic atmosphere, and small-town charm into a vivid, late-night walk through time.

If this story pulled you in, tap follow, share it with a friend who loves haunted history, and drop your Jefferson sightings or stay tips in the comments. Your rec might set our next road trip.

Transcript

Road Trip To Haunted Jefferson

SPEAKER_01 0:00

We're going to take a little road trip to the historic town of Jefferson, Texas, and talk about its residents that are no longer alive. This is Hold My Sweet Tea. And I'm Holly.

SPEAKER_00 0:55

And today we're gonna road trip it to Texas. Texas. Texas is a road trip in itself. Oh my god. It takes like ten days to get from one side to the other.

unknown 1:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

You're like, is it ever gonna end? It feels like a month.

SPEAKER_01 1:11

Yeah. And then there's so much of that stretch that's nothing.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

Nothing. It's just desolate. It smells like horse poop and nothing.

SPEAKER_01 1:20

And regards. And regurts. Tumbleweeds and rattlesnakes.

SPEAKER_00 1:27

They're like, oh look, a rest stop ahead. It's literally a garbage can and a picnic table. And a picnic table. That gives you splinters in your batocks. Yeah. So like, where do I pee behind the garbage can?

unknown 1:39

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:40

There's a tumbleweed over there. Right. Hold it still while you pee.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

It will hide you. It's tumbling away. Oh my god. I'm exposed to the 10,001 wheelers going by. Exactly.

River Port Roots And Odd Street Plans

SPEAKER_01 1:55

Because there's nothing. There's nothing. Some broke down used to be somebody's house. Now it just looks like a lean to. Yeah. It's crazy. Yep. Yep. Craziness. This little part of Texas is very close to Louisiana. Oh. It's closer to like Shreveporty area. So it's actually the county seat, Jefferson, Texas, is the county seat of Marion County in Texas. It sits at the junction of U.S. Highway 59 and State Highway 49. Right along the Big Cypress Creek and Caddo Lake.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

So that's up there where Bonnie and Clyde were uh All the Water. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:45

And it's a nation. Actually named for Thomas Jefferson.

unknown 2:48

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Because it was actually founded in eight the 1840s.

SPEAKER_00 2:53

Oh, okay.

Railroads, Rumors, And The Decline

SPEAKER_01 2:55

By I have no idea how to say his name, so I'm gonna mess it up. It's Alan Yerkhart. I don't know. It's U-R-Q-U-H-A-R-T. Urkhart? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe it is Erkhart. Who knows? I don't know. In Daniel Alley. Nice and simple. Easy. Easy peasy. So Alan immigrated to Texas from North Carolina. And he owned like what they call a head right on the bend in the creek. So that's where he decides he's gonna plan his little town. Yeah. Well, Allie, the other guy, Daniel, we'll call him by their first names. Okay. So Daniel actually owns what's right next to, like butts up against Alan's stuff. And so he's like, you know what? I'm just gonna lay out some additional streets for this. But it's funny because they both design this very differently. So most towns that were planned, they would arrange it so there's like a central square, so your town square. Right. And then everything else like around it. But Alan decided he's gonna lay this out a little weird, and all of his like streets run strangely like all but all lead to the river, basically. Yeah. He wanted a town triangle, right? Not a square. It made it like a weird V instead of a so it's just a weird V. Yeah. And um Alleys, Daniel Alley Streets were actually like following points on a compass. Right, right. So they both just did were winging it, did their own little things and made their roads go all these crazy ways. So this is not your typical town. It was like really reliant on that river. So it was a big river port, and that's what made it so popular. It's just like all the river traffic. And that kind of caused like some contention when railroads came about. So there's this whole story that Jay Gould, who was a big railroad guy, was like kind of like snubs his nose at this town. He like visits wanting to do the railroad. Yeah. But because the guys are like, meh, we've got the river. Who needs a stinking railroad? Noisy trains coming through here. Why? You know, so he's he's a little irritated and he's like, meh. So there's this rumor, which is not true, because this guy couldn't have been there during this time, right? That he literally stayed in the Excelser hotel and left, like in their little sign-in book, that the fact that he was going to deliberately pass this town with his railroad would quote be the end of Jefferson.

SPEAKER_00 6:51

He was being petty. He was like, mm-mm, I'm gonna end you. So then they say, Oh, he put a big curse on the town because of this.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

No, you put a curse on your own town. You should have had the railroad come through. But the thing of it is, like I said, he didn't actually acquire the Texas and Pacific Railroad stuff until like the early 1880s. And he didn't visit the town till like much, much later. Yeah. So there's really no real reason for that. But that's how they try to explain the fact that the rise of the railroads leading to the decline of the river traffic did in fact have dire results for Jefferson. So they're just kind of blaming it on this.

SPEAKER_00 7:42

Like you cursed us. Right. This is what happened, this is why everything went awry.

Diamond Bessie’s Life And Murder

SPEAKER_01 7:48

And so by like 1885, like there was a steep decline in population. So it had fallen to some like 3,500 people, like it was a bustling big boom town, and then all of a sudden, 3,500. And that's it. So in the 1930s, they come back a little bit. But by the time we get to like the 1970s, population's back dwindled lower than it was before. So in yeah, like the 3200 range, they're like, well, it reminds me of radiator springs on cars, right? So it's bouncing back and forth. So then it becomes like, I mean, it's not completely deserted, but they're still kind of referencing Jefferson as a ghost town because it's a lot of dang buildings for not a lot of people, right? So a lot of stuff is empty, it's very historic, everything that's there is like old. All the like the hotels, the churches, they're like all just really old. But there's been like a push, I guess, to kind of bring it back. They have like festivals that include like reenactments of the Diamond Bessie murder trial.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

Oh sort of civil war reenactments, they have murder trial reenactments.

SPEAKER_01 9:36

They have murder trial. Yeah, I like it reenactments.

SPEAKER_00 9:39

Let's go.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

And just so everybody's aware, Diamond Bessie was born Anne Stone, and she was actually, she was murdered in January of 1877 in Jefferson, Texas.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

So she changed your own name.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

Well, you know that everybody has prostitutes, right?

SPEAKER_00 10:08

Oh, she's like, I know stone, I'm a diamond. I'm diamond busy.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

So yeah, she was she was like, I guess that was her play on the stone, was the the the diamond bitch. Yeah. But she was actually before all that a successful shoe dealer in Syracuse, New York. Oh, okay. Yeah. But she then became the mistress of a man. Oh, it's always a man that takes you down. When, yeah, his last name was Moore. That's all the info I have on him. But she was only 15. Oof.

SPEAKER_00 10:55

When that happened. And she was a shoe dealer. And that's crazy. Like that's yeah, because they were like seven years old out there getting careers and stuff.

SPEAKER_01 11:06

It is alleged that Bessie once this guy was gone because her association with him did not last long. But she was a prostitute in Cincinnati, New Orleans.

SPEAKER_00 11:25

She traveled there. And Hot Springs. She's like, this sounds like a good place. Hot springs.

SPEAKER_02 11:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:34

So she was just like, I'm gonna travel around and and be a you know, a lady of the night.

SPEAKER_01 11:39

But she meets Abraham Rothschild.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Oh, Rothschild.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

He's a sin, he's like the son of a Cincinnati jeweler.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Maybe that's where she got.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

And he's like a traveling salesman for his father's business. So but they're saying, you know, she went from that from being with that man to becoming a prostitute. Then she meets this Rothschild person.

SPEAKER_02 12:16

Somehow or another, they're cahooting.

The Jefferson Hotel’s Restless Spirits

SPEAKER_01 12:22

So they travel together. They're not married, they're they're in cahoots. But they travel as if they are indeed husband and wife, but they are not. Oh is what I that's I I wrote that. As he's traveling, he's like, oh, this is my wife. Yeah. But they're not. So on the Sunday morning after their arrival in Jefferson, Rothschild bought two lunches for a picnic from Henrique's restaurant. And the couple were seen disappearing into the fog as they crossed the bridge that went across the big Cypress Creek. Now they say that Abe came back to town that afternoon on a different path and is seen just going about his day, running his errands, doing whatever it is that he's doing. And when they ask him about his quote unquote wife, old Diamond Bessie, he says she's in the country visiting friends, and that she'd meet him on Tuesday morning just in time to leave town. Yeah. Tuesday morning, the staff of the Brooks house where they were staying found room number four empty. And Abe was gone. They said he left town alone on Tuesday morning on an eastbound train with all the luggage. All the luggage.

SPEAKER_00 14:42

Yeah. Maybe he gave her the jewelry, so he had to take it back so it didn't look like, you know. Right.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

So it took a long time, but they extradited him back and he went to trial, but the trial became very notorious. And now all of the hotels in the area are said to be haunted.

unknown 15:07

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

Now is it Diamond Bessie? Or is it some other stuff?

SPEAKER_00 15:13

Who knows? Who really knows? Maybe her spectorial self went back to the hotel to find her stuff and it wasn't there, so she's like, I'm haunting this.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Right. Right. So the Jefferson Hotel that was initially built in 1851 used to be a warehouse that supported the cotton industry. And during Prohibition, this hotel also hosted a secret speakeasy called the Crystal Palace.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Love it. Love it. I would have gone there.

SPEAKER_01 15:55

So a lot of people have traveled through Jefferson, obviously. And they say that one of the better known, well, you know, better known ghosts that they see is called the Vanishing Man.

SPEAKER_02 16:12

Oh.

The Excelsior Legends And Famous Guests

SPEAKER_01 16:13

Just about every guest who stays in the hotel sees him somewhere, encounters him one way or another. They say that he's wears a long black trench coat and is known to randomly appear in the hotel rooms and stare at guests before disappearing. Be like, sir, stop scared staring at me. And then some guests say that you can actually follow him, but typically he'll vanish around a corner. And then you'll go around that corner and there's nothing. There are supposed spirits of the quote mill children. And these are two young boys that worked in the hotel, but they worked there while it was a cotton mill slash warehouse. And they say that the kids work themselves to death.

SPEAKER_00 17:06

I believe it because they probably pushed them to work themselves to death.

SPEAKER_01 17:10

So now they're attached to this hotel for eternity because why wouldn't they still be working? Right. So they say they see them and they're usually like laughing and joking in the hall. So these are like a happy-go-lucky son of ghosts. They say that room 19 is probably the most haunted room in the entire hotel. And it is haunted by a spirit of a teenage girl named Judy.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

Big booty Judy. I was just about to say, did she have Big Booty?

SPEAKER_01 17:46

She's another prostitute left over from the hotel's bordello days.

SPEAKER_00 17:52

Ah. So are they marketing this town as a haunted town? Because I would so go there.

SPEAKER_01 17:59

So here's the thing: they have another hotel that is also said to be haunted. However, the people that own it now don't want you to talk to them about that. They don't want that to be the reputation of their hotel, the Excelser, yeah, the other one. So they won't, you can't go in there and ask them about it. However, there are ghost tours in the town. Got it. Okay. Just like New Orleans, they will take you everywhere you want to go. There are um people who do their own little stuff at night inside that hotel because obviously they're not allowed to talk about it.

SPEAKER_02 18:36

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

But they'll do their own little investigation in their rooms and then any videos or anything like that get uploaded to YouTube all the time. The Jefferson Hotel is eating it up. Oh, they're just like power haunted. Their hotel actually has its own YouTube page where you can upload your experiences. See, that's what I'm saying. Market that because so you guys can go hit YouTube and find the Jefferson Hotel in Jefferson, Texas. And people have uploaded, there's some creepy stuff on there. So people have uploaded stuff.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

But yeah. Yeah, you'll have to put that link in um the notes because I'm gonna go look it up today.

SPEAKER_01 19:15

But it's like Big Booty Judy. It says that she was stabbed to death and left to die in the bathtub.

SPEAKER_00 19:22

Oh, shoot.

The Grove And Its Shadowy Figures

SPEAKER_01 19:24

So she's usually seen in the bathroom mirror. That reminds me of 13 ghosts. And she'll write her name and leave messages asking for help in the steam. Ah. The Jefferson Hotel actually has its own Book of the Dead where guests write down any haunted experiences they might have. I don't know so that future guests can read it. Eat that up. That's why I said they actually are eating it up. So you might I mean, you could be in the town and see Diamond Bessie, who died there, was killed by her husband, had the crazy trial go on. Or, well, her fake husband. Yeah. Or you can go visit this hotel that's had a lot of death and apparently has a lot of ghostesses in there. They have, like I said, the other hotel um that they keep trying to say, Oh, we're not. We're right. But the other hotel was, I think, a little more upscale. So maybe that's why. Um, they've had prominent guests over time like Oscar Wilde, Ulysses S. Grant, Steven Spielberg. He spent a few nights there. And um they're actually saying that Spielberg's movie Poltergeist was inspired by the hotel. Yeah. And they say that he woke up to the ghost of a young boy who asked him if he'd like to have breakfast. They said that Spielberg actually checked out early.

SPEAKER_00 21:02

He's like, check please.

SPEAKER_01 21:04

Um, it's said on this other hotel that the there is a headless man who roams the second floor. And he just kind of carries his head around with his hands.

SPEAKER_00 21:19

Oh, okay. So I was gonna say, is he looking for his head, like feeling around?

SPEAKER_01 21:24

Yeah. And then there's apparently a ghost of a woman dressed in all black carrying her baby. So some people hear babies crying when there are no babies. And of course, more murdered prostitutes from the hotel. So um, you know the Diamond Bessie rumor relates to here. Yeah. And it says that, you know, the her body is found in the nearby forest, and her spirit now lives in the hotel where she s stays. And like, you know, looking for all her jewelry and everything else that she lost in the murder. Like, I can't imagine why she would be looking for a diamond necklace. I'd be looking for his ass.

SPEAKER_00 22:15

Right. Where's he at? Where is he?

Ghost Tours, YouTube Evidence, And Final Thoughts

SPEAKER_01 22:19

Um, there are obviously historic homes built there. They have one called the Grove, that's a historic Victorian home that was built in the 1860s. Also considered one of the most haunted places in Texas. And it says that the first residents to report crazy stuff happening in the home was T C Burks, and he moved in in 1882 and moved his family right back out a few months later. He's like, Nope, not for me. He wasn't specific about why, he just kept telling everybody that we can't live here. Yeah. So he's like, I'm not gonna tell you why, because I don't want to be seen as crazy. Right, but we can't live here. And so a family called the Young moved in after the Burks, and they were a young African-American couple. They were actually um born into slavery, but moved to Jefferson once the they were freed. So their son James actually committed suicide on the back porch and he hung himself there. And then his his sister takes over the house because his parents either passed on or left, or yeah, her parent the parents passed away, and then the sister took over the house. And while she feels like she was like initially comfortable there, it just became a very uncomfortable space. And so they now many other residents are saying like the same stuff she did. Yeah, like lights would turn on by themselves. You always felt like somebody was in the house with you, but there was no one there. Um, you could hear footsteps and the sounds of doors opening and closing while you're in bed. And yeah, I mean, who wants to go look for that? Right. And then other people who lived in the house after that report glowing white figures of a woman walking around the house and sitting on the porch. Uh, they say you can watch her walk through walls that they feel like we're like the house has been remodeled so many times, they feel like these are where she's walking through would have been like an old entrance. Yeah, an old doorway boarded up or whatever that has become a wall. And they try to say that they think that it may be the ghost of the original, the very original owner when it was first built. Yeah, and her name was Minerva.

SPEAKER_00 25:13

Minerva. Fox.

SPEAKER_02 25:14

You know, I have a Minerva.

SPEAKER_00 25:16

I have a friend who she has a um a rat as a pet, and she named her Minerva. Oh my goodness. That's very true. She treats her like her child.

SPEAKER_01 25:30

Yeah, so I say if you guys want to find a whole entire town where you can just go and do ghost hunting in the entire town, because it sounds like every place. The woods are haunted, but you know, everywhere. So that would be the place to go.

SPEAKER_00 25:47

Yeah. Sounds like a whole place.

SPEAKER_01 25:49

Go hit up the haunted Jefferson Hotel and see if you can catch furniture moving by itself, growls out of nowhere, flickering lights.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

The growls out of nowhere would be me. I'm trying to sleep here. Keep it down.

Community Shoutouts And How To Reach Us

SPEAKER_01 26:09

I'm like, there, there's literally someone who wrote an entire article about how they will never rent a room there because there have been when they watched all these YouTube videos, there were too many quote, shit your pants moments. Oh my god. So go check out the YouTube page of the of the Jefferson Hotel. Yep, absolutely. And if you guys want to know more about Diamond Bessie, there's like a whole thing on her too, because that was a big deal for them. That was like a big, big trial. So neat. I like it. So there you have with some good history. Jefferson, Texas. Haunted. Haunted. And it's and I mean, so I guess that was their little play on words with Ghost Town because they say that about it because it's less populated, but also it is a it's apparently only less populated by people who are actually in the realm of the living. Right. It is heavily populated with the ghostesses. Yep. It is spirit-riddled.

SPEAKER_00 27:17

So you know who this stuff is not spirit-riddled. Patty sells that out. That's right. She's too cool for ghosts. That's right. She's not too cool for creating our theme music.

SPEAKER_01 27:29

No. She made our theme music really cool because she is in fact cool. Our our daily dose of weird patty stuff. Yeah. She'd probably like y'all get it together.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

She loved it.

SPEAKER_01 27:46

I know it. So message us.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 27:53

If you've ever been to Jefferson, Texas.

SPEAKER_00 27:55

Absolutely. Let us know.

SPEAKER_01 27:56

Maybe you're from there. Maybe you live there now. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Message us. Maybe you drove through there and was like, you know what? This looks like a really cool place to stay. And you stayed there and you're like, hells to the no. Yeah, tell us about it. We want to know.

SPEAKER_01 28:08

Yep. You can send us an email. Hold my sweet teapodcast at gmail.com. Or you can message us on social media Facebook, TikTok, Instagram. All the things you scroll on daily. YouTube's.

SPEAKER_00 28:23

You can even message us on your listening platform. Yeah. You're on Spotify and you know you're like, you know what? I like this. And you can just hit that little button and message us right there. Or give us a like. Click ity click. So easy while you're listening. Yep. You got your phone in your hand anyway.

SPEAKER_01 28:39

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 28:40

We live on those damn things. Yep. Exactly. So one little click, you know, you're you're clicking on, you're you're liking that video with the dancing dog. Like you can you can definitely like our podcast. You are literally a click away from making our day. That's right. Do it. I love that. And as always, hold my sweet tea is a drunken bee production. And you guys remember to stay safe out there. And just because we're dipping doesn't mean you can't keep dipping.

SPEAKER_02 29:14

Bye.