Houston’s Haunted History Without the Scares

Ghosts of Houston’s Market Square Park
by Sandra Lord and Debe Brawning

Charleston: The History Press, 2020.
128 pp $21.99 paperback.

Reviewed by
Patrick Torres

Readers hoping for a spooky directory of the phantasms that haunt Market Square Park will be disappointed. Ghosts of Houston’s Market Square Park is less of a haunted house and more of a haunted bus tour. Readers are not privy to any of the fear but are told that there have been frights at the places in question. In this case the location is Market Square Park, and readers are taken through the history of its development from before Texas independence to roughly the present day.

   Sandra Lord and Debe Brawning clearly put extensive research into the history of Market Square Park, the businesses and buildings in the area included. The book treks through the land’s ownership history with small detours exploring connections to notable people with ties to the area. Neil Armstrong gets an aside where it is mentioned that Les Quatre Saison, “was one of the moon astronaut Neil Armstrong’s favorite places.” A book with ghosts in the title can’t omit the spectral presence of an area so rich in lore and history. There’s even an entire glossary of supernatural terms and phrases that are defined for those not versed on the lingo of ghost enthusiasts. But this book should not be mistaken for a paranormal guide to Houston’s haunted Market Square Park, though its structure does make that hard to ascertain. Sections that focus on locations and land ownership are concluded by brief mentions of the vaguely creepy. For instance, creaking floors in La Carafe café are explained as “only trapped energy playing back haunted history.” Little time is spent fleshing out the suicides that may be the source of the trapped energy, and instead we get lengthy descriptions of the antiques within the café including a “brass hand-cranked, 1914 National cash register that takes only cash.” Ghosts of Houston’s Market Square Park is more appropriate for a history buff or a real estate enthusiast who would not be distracted by cursory mentions of apparitions.

   But for all the thoroughly researched real estate history that gets featured in the book, and there is plenty, I can’t help but feel cheated. There is not one scare that justifies the featuring of the creepy looking skull logo featured on the cover. There is lip service paid to the titular ghosts. There are small ghostly anecdotes like the one about a bar employee at La Carafe who “spotted a face in an upstairs window.” But what is far and away the scariest part of the book is the story of the haunting at Treebeards Café. It is easily the most conventionally spooky. There are phantom footsteps and ghostly visages moving up and down the stairs. A ghost hunting team is brought in with EMF monitors to communicate with the spirit, and just when the readers are feeling the closest thing to a scare they’ve had in the book, they get the line that derails any macabre intrigue the reader had about the souls of the dead roaming the earth; “Like the other ghosts in and around Market Square Park, they are nothing to be afraid of.” As is the case with the book, especially if your hopes were up for a ghost story, there unfortunately is nothing to be afraid of here. Though if you’re looking for a thorough history of Market Square Park and the land it was built on, though it isn’t scary, it will hold your attention.

Patrick Torres is an MFA student at Texas State University. He's been published in the Windward Review and New Texas: A Journal of Literature and Culture.