The Black Hope Cemetery: The Real Events That Mirror Poltergeist — Ep. 29

In the early 1980s, new homeowners outside Houston started finding coffins buried beneath their freshly built yards.

Lights flickered, water ran on its own, and fear spread through the neighborhood—until they learned the truth.

Their subdivision had been built over a forgotten cemetery known as Black Hope.

The story of what followed—graves unearthed, strange activity, and a family tragedy—sounds eerily similar to the plot of Poltergeist, which hit theaters around the same time.

But this wasn’t a movie set. It was real life.

This is the story of the Black Hope Cemetery: a Texas haunting rooted in history, a fight for recognition, and a reminder that some places never truly rest.

🎙️ State of the Unknown tells true stories of hauntings, legends, and the unexplained from across America—where history and mystery blur.

Chapters

• 0:21 Midnight Disturbance And Footprints
• 1:45 A Suburb With A Buried Past
• 3:37 Early Signs And Escalation
• 5:02 Coffin Unearthed Next Door
• 6:36 Loss And A House That Listens
• 7:11 Graves Confirmed And Community Uproar
• 8:16 The Lawsuit And Legal Defeat
• 9:32 Memorials, Calm, And What Changed
• 10:55 Pop Culture Parallels And Collective Guilt
• 12:55 Memory, Haunting, And Last Reflections
• 15:22 Closing Notes And Listener Support

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

It's after midnight when Jean Williams wakes up to the sound of running water. At first, she thinks it's the bathroom sink. Her husband must have left the tap on again. But when she gets up and walks down the hall, she realizes it's louder. It's every faucet in the house. The kitchen, the bathrooms, even the outside spigot by the garden hose. All of them. Full blast. She shuts them off one by one, water splashing over her hands. And that's when she notices the footprints. Wet, bare footprints across the tile. Small, like a child's. They lead straight through the kitchen, across the living room carpet, and stop at the front door. She unlocks it, steps outside, and there's no one there. Just the sound of frogs and the buzz of the Texas night air. And that's when the lights in the house turn back on. Every single one. That was the night she started keeping a Bible on her nightstand and the phone number for a priest on the fridge. Because by then, the Williamses had already been told what they were living on top of. The neighborhood was called Newport, a quiet little subdivision just outside Houston, Texas. Brand new homes, small yards, chain link fences, the hum of sprinklers in the summer. Nothing about it looked unusual. But the land beneath those houses had a history nobody talked about. Long before the developers came through in the 1970s, the ground here was part of an old burial site, the Black Hope Cemetery, a segregated graveyard where freed slaves and their descendants were buried in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Over time, the markers disappeared. The property changed hands. And by the time anyone thought to check, it was already paved over. When people moved in, they had no idea what was below their lawns until they started digging. Tonight's story takes us to Crosby, Texas, a quiet neighborhood built on fresh ground, new homes, new lives. And underneath it all, something no one was meant to disturb. This is the story of the Black Hope Cemetery and what happens when the past doesn't stay buried. This is State of the Unknown. When Ben and Gene Williams moved into their new home in Crosby, Texas, it felt like the start of something steady. Quiet streets, kids riding bikes, box fans humming against the summer heat. They'd saved for this house. It was supposed to be the reward after years of renting. The first few weeks were normal, just settling in, figuring out which light switch did what. Then Jean started noticing little things that didn't make sense. The kitchen clock stopped every night at 3.12 AM. Light bulbs burned out the same day they were changed. Water pressure dropped, then roared back up without anyone touching the handle. They blamed new construction quirks. But soon the noises started moving. Footsteps in the hallway when both of them were in bed. A faint dragging sound along the wall, like someone tracing a hand over the paint. Once Jean heard her name whispered from the laundry room. When she turned, no one was there. Ben laughed it off. Old pipes, Texas humidity, maybe raccoons in the attic. Then, in early 1982, their neighbor Katie James went out to plant a tree. Her shovel hit wood. She thought it was a root until the dirt caved a little and the metal edge rang hollow. She cleared the soil away and saw the curved lid of a coffin. Inside lay the outline of a body wrapped in fabric so old it fell apart in the breeze. The sheriff came, took photos, and called the county. Workers marked the spot with stakes and promised to relocate the remains. They said it was probably a forgotten family plot, nothing to worry about. For a week the neighborhood stayed quiet, until Jean woke one morning to find two neat mounds of freshly turned soil right where the coffin had been. No footprints, no tools, just the smell of wet earth. From then on, the house never felt right. Doors opened on their own. The television flipped ecstatic. At night, Jean saw blue-white lights gliding across the yard, slow and deliberate, like lanterns moving between invisible markers. She started keeping a Bible on the nightstand and the phone number of a priest on the fridge. By midsummer, she'd stopped sleeping through the night. One afternoon she went outside to smooth the dirt near one of the graves. Just to tidy it, she said. She bent down with the shovel, straightened, took a breath, and fell. Neighbors found her moments later. The coroner called it a heart attack. Jean Williams was forty-five. Ben buried her in a proper cemetery a few miles away. When he came home, the house was silent. He said it wasn't grief quiet, it was the kind that listens. After Gene's death, fear spread through Newport. Some families packed up and left. Others began digging, hoping to find proof that what they'd heard was true. They didn't have to dig far. More coffins surfaced, planks collapsing, nails rusted, fragments of fabric still clinging to bones. County officials eventually admitted the truth. The subdivision sat atop the Black Hope Cemetery, a burial ground for freed slaves and their descendants from the 1800s and early 1900s. At least 60 graves were recorded. No one knew how many remained. Old timers around Crosby said they'd try to warn the builders. They remembered funerals out here decades earlier, hymns under the trees, small wooden crosses. But by the time the development broke ground, the markers were gone and the paperwork was lost in courthouse archives. In 1983, Ben Williams and 11 neighbors filed suit against the developer and the county. They argued that their home stood on top of unremoved graves and that no one had told them the land was once sacred ground. Court dates stretched into years. Families took time off of work, sat in folding chairs waiting for hearings that were postponed again and again. The developers had lawyers and paperwork. The homeowners had photographs, memories, and the coffins themselves. Every delay made it feel like the past was being buried all over again. Ben sat through every hearing. He said he wasn't looking for money, he wanted recognition that the people buried there mattered. But when the ruling came down, the court sided with the developers. No damages, no injunction. The graves stayed. The houses stayed. The legal loss hit harder than the haunting, because now the families had proof of what was beneath them and nowhere else to go. After the court decision, some of the families tried to make peace on their own. A few held small memorials in their yards, candles, flowers, short prayers for the people buried below. Local ministers came out to bless the ground, reading whatever names they could find from old records. For a while, things seemed calmer. The sound stopped, the lights stayed steady. Some said it was coincidence. Others said the land had finally been acknowledged. Not everyone stayed. Some families moved out for good. Others said they couldn't afford to. By the late 1980s, unsolved mysteries aired their story. In 1991, the book The Black Hope Horror laid everything out. The graves, Jean's death, the court battle, and the lingering activity neighbors still whispered about, faucets turning on, lights blinking in unison, the sense that something beneath the soil still wanted attention. Today, Newport looks ordinary. Mailboxes in neat rows, children chasing each other between yards. But the people who live there through those years say it never really felt ordinary again. But maybe it's really about recognition. Skeptics have their explanations. Rapid-build wiring can make lights flicker. Poor grounding can trigger radios. And Crosby's clay soil swells and shifts enough to rattle pipes and make floors creak. And once a coffin comes out of the ground, every sound after feels deliberate. That's suggestion, not lying. Just how fear edits what we notice. Still, none of that explains the way that people describe the same things or why it quieted only after memorials were held and names were spoken again. Believers say that was the land settling because it had finally been acknowledged. Maybe they're right. Maybe both things are true. And it's hard not to notice how familiar this all sounds. In 1982, the same year Gene Williams died, a movie called Poltergeist hit theaters. A story about a new subdivision built on an old cemetery, where the builders moved the headstones but not the bodies. Different setting, same idea. Some locals have wondered ever since if the film borrowed from stories like Black Hope, or if it just tapped into a collective guilt that was already out there. A quiet fear that maybe we've built too much over what was never ours to claim. Across the country, black and indigenous cemeteries have been paved over, forgotten, or relocated on paper. Each one is a piece of history buried twice, once in the ground and once in memory. Maybe what the families in Newport felt wasn't ghosts at all. Maybe it was the weight of all that forgotten history pressing up from underneath. A reminder that progress built on silence will always creak when the winds change. Places hold memory. Sometimes we call it haunting. Sometimes it's conscience. Either way, it's the past asking not to be ignored. Drive through Newport today, and you'd never guess the story. Lawns trimmed, porch lights glowing, kids tossing footballs in the street. But now and then, on still evenings, the air changes. The cicadas go quiet. The breeze stops. It lasts maybe ten seconds, just long enough to make you notice. And maybe that's the truest part of the legend. Not ghosts, not curses, just the land. Remembering what's beneath it. This has been State of the Unknown. A new neighborhood built for the living. Fresh lawns, bright porches, and a history that never really left. Beneath those foundations, a burial ground, names scattered by time, stories quiet until someone dug too deep. For more than 40 years, Black Hope has remained. Not as fiction, but as proof that the past doesn't vanish when we pave over it. Maybe the most human kind of haunting isn't a sound in the dark, it's memory finally heard. If you've been enjoying State of the Unknown, thank you for listening and helping this little show grow. The best way to support it is simple. Leave a quick rating or review. On Spotify, it's just a tap. On Apple Podcasts, a few words makes a huge difference. I read every single one. Until next time, stay curious. Stay unsettled. And if you pass a quiet stretch of ground, tread lightly. Some memories still move in the dark. Tonight's story is a shorter one, kind of a mini episode. But next week we'll be back with a full length story. That's the new rhythm.