Introduction:

We at Texas Spirit Seekers are always looking for that special location that has never had any reported paranormal experiences, never been investigated, and is in the process of restoration. This is the best place to test our hypothesis that the location in question is not haunted and that there is a logical explanation for any activity. The Historic Motley County Jail in Matador Texas seemed to fit the bill. Following a number of phone calls and quite a few e-mail’s we gained access to this beautiful old piece of West Texas history. There has been no reported paranormal activity at this location so I felt it would make a good location to do some training, test some of our theories, run a box session and get a great history lesson.

Texas Spirit Seekers is scientific in its approach to dealing with the paranormal and does not except the information gathered from Psychics, Séances or Ouija boards as this evidence can be tampered with by the individual giving the information, they have preconceived ideas about the paranormal before the start an investigation, they believe the place to be haunted before the go in the home.

We at Texas Spirit Seekers use the Null Hypothesis for every investigation we conduct. We state that the property in question has no paranormal activity before the investigation starts and try to debunk any of the reports of the paranormal, collect evidence using instrumentation such as audio recorders, video cameras, DVR systems, EMF meters, thermometers, etc. And review all data collected. We do report personal experiences but it is not accepted as paranormal activity unless it can be backed up by our instrumentation. The final report will have an introduction, history of the property if available, list of investigation team members, all experiences, data of interest, instrumentation used, comments, and a final record/conclusion. We at TSS do not charge for any of our services and will not accept payment or contributions to the group; we do this as a service to the community.

The Motley County Jail

History:

Matador was named for the Matador Ranch, which was established in 1879 at Ballard Springs. A ranch post office named Matador opened in 1886 before the town existed. When the county was organized in 1891 Matador was designated county seat after Matador Ranch manager Henry H. Campbell laid out a town site and encouraged cowboys to set up one-day businesses to meet the General Land Office requirement that a county seat have twenty commercial enterprises. Campbell was the county's first elected judge, and cowboy Joe Beckham was the first sheriff. Below, are photos of Judge Campbell and the death photo of Sheriff Beckham after he was shot by Texas Rangers in the Indian Territory.

Henry H. Campbell (1st Judge) Joe Beckham (Sheriff/Outlaw)

The Motley County Jail was built in 1891 for housing the growing number of outlaws in the area. Work was scarce in the county at that time, and the erection of the new building gave many men a chance to make a little extra money. The brown limestone that was used for the building was hauled in wagons from Salt Creek, five miles west of Matador, Pat Cornett served as contractor.

One of the first crimes in the newly formed county was the murder of a Mr. Beamer by Tom Fulcher, who thereby became the county’s first visitor in the new jail. Mr. Fulcher, whom many ladies in the area remember as a handsome fellow, was promptly sentenced to be hung and then promptly broke out of the jail, much to the amazement of the county’s citizens. He was promptly captured, however, and then sentenced to life imprisonment.

This is just a small glimpse into the history of the City of Matador, Texas and the Historic Motley County Jail. The information given to TSS could fill volumes on the subject but we only have a small report to place this information. Currently there is a group called Friends of the Historic Motley County Jail. This is a non-profit agency organized to seek funds to provide support for the repair and renovation of the historic 1891 jail. Currently the group is headed up by Judge Ed D. Smith, Carol Campbell and Geneva Wilson. If you want to research this historic site, contact one of them, but be prepared to sit in the shade with a glass of ice tea as it will take a wile to go through the vast databank in their heads. Like I said before there is a lot of information to take in.

Photograph of the current condition of the 117 year old jail.

Photograph of Jail cell on the 2nd floor of the building, also one of our investigators at work.

Reported Paranormal Activity:

None

Texas Spirit Seekers Investigators:

Lance Brooks, James Leslie, Charlotte Mason, Chris Travis.

Date: 06/21/2008
Time: 19:00hrs – 05:00hrs
Location: Motley County Jail, 902 Main Street, Matador, Texas 79244

Weather: Partly Cloudy 91°, Feels Like: 90°, Barometer: 29.94 in and steady, Humidity: 26%, Visibility: 10 mi, Dew Point: 52°, Wind: S 20 mph , Sunrise: 6:33 am, Sunset: 8:58 pm.

Instrumentation:

Cameras: Digital: Panasonic DMC-TZ3, FujiFilm IS-1
Video: Sony HDR-SR1
DVR: Hitachi DVR, 3 Sony 54IR and 1 104IR cameras.
Thermometer: EL-USB-2 Data Logger /Lascar Electronics, Inc.
Audio: 3, Olympus VN-4100PC
MF Meters: TriField Meter – Alpha Lab, Extech EMF Meter, Mini KII
Mini Box: Paranormal Systems Inc.
Thermal Camera: ICI Tough Cam EL, Toshiba Mini DV

Personal Experiences:

21:45hrs - No personal experiences.

23:00hrs: The smell of perfume by the stairs on first floor, then the rushing of a cold wind or more than seemed to move in between Lance, Chris, and James, right after the strong smell of perfume. It made James’s right arm turn cold with goose bumps and the hair standing up on my arm.

23:45hrs: Started with Chris and James with the thermal. They started seeing a warm spot forming on the wall then growing but don’t know if it was something for real or just not something to due with not understanding the equipment. They then proceeded to sweep the jail cell area to which Chris and James seemed to sense something in that room and when we looked into the cell on the right with a blue light they both saw what looked like someone leaning over out of the bunk and look at them like it was stretching out its arm or hand then was gone. At which point they where standing outside the walk area where it seemed that a cold spot would form under James’s right arm and if he moved his arm it seemed to reform again under it and only stopped when he moved away from the right side of that area. They then proceeded to sweep the area again with the thermal from outside the area in the room with the hanging door and called for Lance to come up to look at the thermal because it seemed something was wrong with it. After he gave them some instructions they proceeded to go down the stairs to which Lance stopped half way down and turned sideways doing something with the thermal to which Chris turned on his flash light and about two steps below Lance apparition of a woman looking up at us was there for a brief second then was gone. James moved over to the right of the stair that he was on because of the shock of what he had just seen, about that time he felt a pat on the backside of his lower leg. He moved up a step out of reflex then felt it again so he moved up another step then it happened one more time and never felt it again. Lance was curious as to why they where reacting the way they did, but then Lance starting smelling perfume and had a cold spot right by him. He said it seemed to be moving down the stairs to which they started following it and kept feeling it on and off through out the hall way and kitchen. The perfume smell went all the way into the living quarters then disappeared. James was in the rear of the group by this time and heard a very loud growl behind him like someone was there fixing to grab him so he grabbed Lances’ shirt on one side to try to turn him around to face behind us but was in the spur of the moment that James did not communicate what he was doing.

0130hrs: Chris, Charlotte, and James started their sweep upstairs , we heard what seemed like someone trying to come up the stairs. Chris kept asking for what ever seemed to display the smell of perfume to let us smell it. It seemed through out the investigation the smell and the cold rush of what ever it was would start on the stairs and go down toward the hall way so we proceeded down again to follow this anomaly to which James heard Chris say that he just saw the door under stairs just move open and then closed again. I was in the rear of the group but I did smell a quick trace of the perfume again. We walked into the kitchen area and would try to catch that smell again. At which point our attention was drawn back into the hallway to where we saw the curtain moving like a window was open and then just a small black mass moved very quickly from behind the curtain in front of the toilet just rise up and block out the white on the toilet and then disappear. Chris would ask to smell it again and sometimes would say I smell it. Charlotte and James would not smell it so when he said that again James stood right in front of him like putting his cheek on his chest and it would be there. It would start moving away from him so James tried to follow it but it would disappear. This smell was like an old perfume called rose water or something to that affect.

Evidence of Interest:

Photographs:

No photographs of interest on this investigation.

EVP’s (Electronic Voice Phenomena):

There were a number of EVP’s picked up throughout the night.

1. Door Slamming
2. Voice, unable to recognize.
3. Out There
4. Break this down, its simple
5. Door locking
6. Sound

Video Clips:

1. James and Chris backing away when they think they see a woman on the stairs.
2. Sounds in the Jail cell.
3. Perfume smell

Comments:

This was an extremely challenging investigation to say the least. There has never been any reported paranormal activity (that we know of) in the Old Motley County Jail. That may be due to the fact that no one has been using it since the early 1980’s. There were a good number of inmates and families housed in this old building and with no reports of activity we can actually start the investigation with the statement, The Old Motley County Jail has no paranormal activity and is not haunted. When I say that this place was a challenge, I am referring to placement of equipment, with no reported activity we were shooting in the dark as where to locate cameras, recorders, data loggers, etc., we made our best guess and set up 4 cameras, 3 recorders, and two loggers. We also had a handheld HDD Sony that we carried around with each group. We were able to capture a number of EVP’s and a couple of video clips, but was unable, due to camera placement, to capture shadows seen by some of the investigators. As always, if we didn’t capture it on our instruments we only count them as personal experiences and do not recognize it as quantifiable data. We did however have a number of personal experiences, everyone in the group had at least one some had more. The cool breezes, smell of perfume in the air, goose bumps, cold spots, sounds, everything associated with paranormal activity where none was suppose to be. Needless to say it was quite an exciting night for an empty old building.

Conclusion:

After a thorough investigation of The Motley County Jail and review of all collected evidence it is the opinion of Texas Spirit Seekers that there is some paranormal activity at this location. We reviewed 36 hours of DVR footage, 3hours of HDD footage, 200 photographs and 24 hours of audio tape plus review of 18 hours of environmental data that was logged and charted in excel. Can we call it Haunted? We feel that there is not enough evidence to call the structure haunted but there is a substantial amount of paranormal activity in the building that warrants further investigation. We were able to capture a number of EVP’s on audio and were able to verify them by comparing voice recording audio with DVR audio and HDD audio. Most of the team members had personal experiences of some type, from smells of perfume in the air, cold spots, shadows and other unexplainable activity. We look forward to subsequent investigations of the Motley County Jail , we will have a chance to place equipment in areas that we did not cover in the first investigation and be better able to form an opinion of the paranormal experiences that we all had.

Lance Brooks (Co-Founder and Lead Investigator)