Back in our hay day – in the 1980’s era, some of the scariest talk around school was on the murders that took place on Old Holloman Road.  All of you long time Mesquite, Texas folks will remember this story.  It was close to Christmas time, cold and dreary, when a young mother and her son were found dead there.  The mystery surrounding all of the why’s and how’s were never truly answered.  They lived in North Dallas apparently, and weren’t even abducted near the old road.  How they ended up there was always a debate, but we teens knew …. It was the “evil” thriving on that old road, surely leading and drawing the abductor to take them there where they met their untimely demise.

But even before that terrible tragedy, the road still had a reputation for scaring the wits out of anybody who dared travel down it.  My husband remembers riding his bike with friends who would dare him to take the dreaded shortcut down the road.  It was quicker to take the old road, If you had enough nerve to go through there, but always with the fear it would be the last shortcut you’d ever take.  He said he never pedaled so hard in his life, to get out of there and on to the main road (back to Lawson road, where he lived as a kid ~ and also where we moved back home to just recently.)

Rumor has it, things would fly through the air toward you as you passed down the road, and a weird feeling somebody was following you or watching you.  There was an old house there too.  The talk was that the folks that lived there were devil worshipers. Creepy stuff.  Farmers would report missing cows and chickens, and frequently cows blood was reportedly seen painted on nearby roads into weird symbols, further imprinting on our brains the perilous danger one would experience should they dare to travel that way.  We would sit around at night, during our slumber parties and talk about all of us taking a trip out there, to visit the old road, few of us actually did though.

Long before the new neighborhoods were built like Creek Crossing and Falcon’s Lair, and way before the new high school was built (Horn High School on Cartwright), Mesquite still had the old nostalgic country back roads where most all of our memories started from.  A kid could go out to play and hit the woods early on a Saturday morning, fishing in local ponds, shooting bee bee guns, and meeting up with your friends, to come home late at night tired and hungry, never worrying about stranger danger or getting kidnapped ~ except for the fear of the not yet captured abductor (which by the way he was, eventually, in 2003 I believe, and sentenced to life in prison for his crimes).

Everybody living around here and growing up during that time knew, you’d best be past that old road before night fall, and you’d best make sure your bike could carry you across quickly down Lawson or Cartwright road back to the safety of your home, lest any evil fog might draw you in and you’d never be seen or heard from again.  At least that’s what we remember anyway.

So when ya’ll are sitting at the dinner table of an evening, close to Halloween time, remember to tell this story, and all the others.  Tell the kids and the grandkids of Old Hollomon Road, and the scary adventures we all had back in those days.  You’ll have every eye and ear captive of the tale, and begging you to drive out that way for a look.  Road blocks are there now, they had put in during the late 80’s or so, blocking access, but you can still see where the road was, now all taken over with green growth.  Hopefully, that old road has healed now, of all it’s old memories, and submitted itself to nature for her to take over now.  But the old folks remember, and will never forget, the old frightening stories, and the tragedy on Old Haunted Hollomon Road.