More Denton Haunts and History!

The 2023 holiday season will feature MORE opportunities to hear about Denton Haunts and History, just click over to our DENTON HAUNTS page on Facebook to follow us when tour dates get posted.

Denton’s second courthouse nearing completion, 1876… The first courthouse was purportedly burned down by cronies of infamous Texas outlaw Sam Bass in December 1875 to destroy court records.

Sunday Funday afternoons in November-December bring a lawn chair and grab a beverage to come hear about the history and mystery of local haunts and Wild West frontier founders in days gone by! Private walking tours are also available to book, whether that be our Ghost Walk or our Denton History tour. And not to worry… neither rain nor cold nor inclement Texas weather can stop the show, since we have a traveling PowerPoint slide show projector with amazing historic photos like the ones here that can make an indoor presentation become a time-traveling experience!

Major hostilities of World War I were formally ended at the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when the Armistice with Germany went into effect. The United States previously observed this as Armistice Day as do other countries still, traditionally displaying red poppies as symbols of peace, but the U.S. holiday was renamed Veterans Day in 1954.

This time-lapse photo captures Fireworks at the Denton County Courthouse celebrating the end of World War I… one of my favorite historic photos of our grand ole icon preserved by UNT Libraries and our Denton County Office of History & Culture!

Take your own Self-Guided tour of DENTON HAUNTS this Halloween!!

October is here, and with cooler temperatures comes excitement for the Halloween season! Sure, it may look a bit different this year with COVID running amok, but it’s also an opportunity to take a Haunted Roadtrip exploring these 10 spooky spots that we shared with Discover Denton!!

A Visual Guide to the HISTORIC QUAKERTOWN Mural

In celebration of Black History Month, I’m going to share some of the inside history behind a very special art instillation that you’ve maybe spotted in the entry foyer of the Denton Civic Center during one of your visits. It is surely a uniquely wonderful artifact that conveys a lot of amazing Denton history, based upon actual photos with powerful stories behind them.

This brick mural of “Historic Quakertown” by local artist Paula Blincoe Collins was the very first commissioned artwork by Denton’s Public Art Committee, dedicated in 2008. The two-piece mural is forged from Texas red clay brick, created in the forge of Denton’s own Acme Brick Company. The mural depicts several notable people and places of Quakertown as a tribute to the resilience of Denton’s African-American community, inspired by actual people and places from Denton history.

Halloween 2019 in Denton

Our favorite season for spirits and ghosts is back, and we are looking forward to all the Halloween fun to be found in Denton TX!! The always wonderful Denton County Museums “Park After Dark” is family-friendly ghost storytelling, and the DRC has the run-down on a lot of the Halloween 2019 events around town that includes TWU’s “Boo at the U” and the ever-popular Denton Day of The Dead Festival & Coffin Races!

The 2nd Denton County Courthouse

Tuesday October 29 the Denton Women Cyclists and Bike Denton are hosting a HAUNTED BIKE TOUR led by yours truly, telling true ghost stories around town! Join us for an easy no-drop ride!

More frightfully fun Halloween 2017

The spooky season is here, and you can catch a DENTON HAUNTS ghost tour on a couple of special dates, and don’t miss the Denton County Office of History & Culture’s PARK AFTER DARK tours of the murder mystery surrounding the Phantom Farmer of the Bayless-Selby House!

If that ain’t enough, you can visit these 5 most haunted places in Denton from WDDI, and most of last year’s local Haunted Attractions are at it again this year. There are also plenty of scary movies and Denton’s Day of the Dead to check out! Have a spooky but safe Halloween, friends!

Halloween 2017

 

Photo by David Deason https://www.facebook.com/david.deason23

Another Halloween season is upon us, and we have a few special scares happening for charity. First is the very special one-night-only DENTON COURTHOUSE GHOST TOUR for Denton Evening Rotary that takes you to the top of the historic landmark on Friday the 13th!

There is also a special Sunday evening ghost walk on October 15th for a student filmmaker, and we will also be helping Denton Women’s Night Bike with a Haunted Bicycle Tour of a few haunted spots around town on Tuesday October 17.

This guide to HAUNTED ATTRACTIONS IN DENTON TX from last year is still helpful, we should be updating that info soon for a post. But do not miss the PARK AFTER DARK tours from Denton County Office of History & Culture on October 20 and 21… it is amazing!

Denton’s 1897 Aeroship Invasion

Proving that history can indeed be a heckuva lot stranger than science fiction, today’s installment revisits a wacky wave of “Mystery Airship” reports that flooded Texas newspapers in 1897. Long before the infamous Roswell UFO crash sparked the public imagination and endless alien conspiracy theories in 1947, folks in Denton were spying odd “Aerial Travelers” during an outbreak of sightings between 1896 and 1897 that sounded like something straight out of a Jules Verne novel.

“WHOA! Jumpin’ Jehosephat, bro, if I had an iPhone I’d totally Twitter this!”

The earliest autumn sightings were in California, but hundreds of reports quickly spread east into the Midwest and Texas by the following spring. You may have heard about the most famous sighting that occurred in Aurora, TX on April 17, 1897, which has been the subject of several books and numerous TV investigations, because it spectacularly crashed and locals purportedly buried it’s pilot thought to be “a native of the planet Mars” in their cemetery. The Aurora Spaceman’s graveyard even has a State Historical marker! The literally hundreds of other eyewitness encounters with various Mystery Air-Ships across Texas both before and after, however, are even more insanely entertaining and fantastically bizarre. 

Denton Haunts you can visit this Halloween

Halloween season is upon us and the cool weather couldn’t have got here soon enough! Of course it also means we can look forward to some of Denton’s favorite fall events, like Denton’s Day of the Dead Festival and Coffin Races along with a slew of great GDAC programs and the CHOSM Park After Dark. We’ll have a line-up of other local Halloween events next week, but first let’s have a gander at a few of Denton’s top haunted places that you can easily explore… if you dare.

Quest For The Golden Jesus Chili Cookoff

Denton’s Springtime weather may be kooky and unpredictable, but one thing you can always count on are the offbeat sights and wacky underground events that keep our weekend social calendars full of choices that’d fluster even wise ole Solomon. One of these backyard traditions is the legendary QUEST FOR THE GOLDEN JESUS Chili Cookoff, which ain’t too underground anymore but for years was held at various “undisclosed locations” back in the day. Here’s an unedited look at the history of this Holy Spirited Hootenanny that we shared with We Denton Do It.

The QFTGJ trophy proudly displayed by last year’s 2015 winners, Team Andy & Nic. Photo by Melissa Carr.

The Ghostly Dude of BRAVE COMBO’s Studio

Halloween season in Denton means a plethora of spooky events blow into town along with the wet brisk weather, which is totally ideal conditions for sharing ghost stories with friends around a fire! Well gather around, ye Denton faithful, so I can share with you the strange spooky tale of the Hipster Haint known only as “The Dude” who still wanders the offices of Denton’s Grammy-winning musicians and legendary local Nuclear Punk Polka deities, BRAVE COMBO.