Hi, Fred, Hope your grandad and Marilyn enjoyed the Country Opry this week. I remember many rumors & stories of the McDowell or McDow hole. It was on Green's Creek below Dublin. One Fitzzgerald writer who grew up on the Fitzgerald Nursery & Old Dublin road wrote about it in the Stephenville Empire- Tribune. So have others, . It seems a mother and baby disapeared from their home while the father was gone. They were not found for many years. Stories said you could go to the McDowell hole on a moonlit night and at a given time she would wail and a ghostly shadow would float from the high bank to the low one across the water hole, looking and crying for her child. When we were in High school on a still morning you could hear the Steam train whistle at Dublin at Grandad's Selden home - from Dublin, 25 miles away. We sometimes heard it at Johnsville. The whistle does not explain how two men before 1900 went to see and hear. They did. One died of fright - a heart attack with his eyes open and mouth open in fright. His partner ran several miles when he saw whatever. Several had examined the site and there were no trolley wires or cables to be found like we used to hang across creeks for diving or the thrill of the ride. In fairly recent years, someone was fishing in the Hole and noticed a bone protuding from erosion of the high bank. There had been a hand dug well above a spring to supply the cabin. /this was common, or clean and enclose a spring, as surface water was sometimes poluted by wild and /or domestic animals, even back then. He went for help. The recent erosion and cave in of the bank had opened the side of the well. There were a flat rock or two in the well. Under the rock was the skeleton of a woman and a baby. They were buried somewhere in Erath County and the sounds and aparitions have not been seen or heard since. I never went there at night. WE had our own excitement. I never saw this done but was told exactly how it was done. Someone older than I would make a dumbull which was illegal, or tie a tight wire or rawhide string to the corner of a house to make wierd noises at night. A Dumbull was a bucket or can with a hole in the lid or a rawhide cover was sometimes used to chivaree newlyweds. . some sticks or fiddle bows pulled across the tight wire or hole in the bucket made all sorts of noise. With practice one could imitate a Panther. Someone got peeved or carried a joke too far by scareing the Johnsville Postmaster, then making Panther tracks on the Duffau Creek. He had pepole talking about the noise they and he had heard, and saw the tracks and was making plans to move before someone told him it was a joke.He thought it was after him. Take care, Charles Wyly Oh, by the way a Black Panther was killed in Clifton in the last 20 years and Alligator are in the Bosque at Baylor Camp, towards Valley Mills. I know the argument that Black Panthers are not texas Natives. Neither were Irishmen- they are here anyway. Since I was in High School one started near the Hatchett Cemetery in early spring and stockmen and hunters and Rooster farmers reported his movement slowly downstream 2 to 5 miles a week and they lost him at Clifton each year. He screamed one night at a neighbor's house and the gentle milk cows laid the 8 foot log fence flat. They did not stop to question his ancestry. Everyone in the house woke up instantly scared. Game wardens have warned in the past they have seen very large cat paws around Lake Grapevine. Some of those folk in Southlake area have private 2 engine planes and are known to have had large cats in captivity and in their homes. Some think they turn them out to run at night, like a dog, and they come home before sunup. A Mother Pnther was sighted in Bear Creek- Keller- North Richland Hills, north of Fort Worth for the first 2 weeks of school. She and a cub were finally captured. Wonder why one of the older schools in Fort Worth was called the Panther City High School?? Take care and sleep tight and don't let the Bedbugs Bite, Charles Wyly