This week we’re bringing you down another Street of Fear.  We’re taking the FEAR bus from Long Island (where we checked out Mount Misery Road) all the way down south to Wimberly, Texas to visit Purgatory Road.  And this week has a two-for-one deal on creepy locations! Not only are we checking out the road itself, but the supposedly haunted ridge of hills called Devil’s Backbone, which starts at the road and continues on into the nearby wilderness.

Though there have been numerous reports of hauntings on Purgatory Road, the street’s name is less sinister in origin.  One story holds that, in the pioneer days, a lawyer was lost for many days on the trail that later became the road.  When asked where he’d been, he said he went to Hell and back, thus making the road Purgatory.  Another legend holds that settlers and cattle drivers would often use the trail to get from site to site, so the road became a sort of go-between, or, again, Purgatory.  The nearby hills, however, called The Devil’s Backbone, have another interesting legend surrounding their name.  Folklore holds that the name came from a Spanish Monk named Espinoza (which loosely translates to “Backbone”).  Apparently, the workers that he held governance over thought he was so cruel that, while working on the ridge, they called him Diablo Espinoza, or “Devil’s Backbone.”  As time went on, the name was repeated so many times that it just stuck!

Now to the scary stuff…  The hauntings on The Devil’s Backbone are varied.  In a news article dated October 24, 2007, the Texas State University Star interviewed author and Devil’s Backbone rancher Bert Wall about the area.  Wall stated that he’d felt strange feelings in the Backbone area, and others who’ve gone up the mountain have felt extreme headaches and sickness.  Wall also described seeing the ghost of an old Spanish monk at a time when he was feeling particularly depressed.  Also of note are reports of a mischievous ghost that appears at The Devil’s Backbone Tavern, named after the infamous hills.  Locals claims this ghost is known to knock open doors and rearrange furniture!

Finally, we come to Purgatory Road.  While this road only has one haunting that goes along with it, it’s a helluva story…  According to local legend, a man was in a terrible car accident in the 1930s, and ending up dying in his car in a ditch in the road.  Now people report seeing a man, bloodied and confused, wandering the road sometimes.  This story varies from person to person—some say he was in a military uniform, some say something leapt on their hood.  But the police are said to receive a few calls every year about a bloody man wandering on the road.

Pretty freaky, huh?  Well, for more on Purgatory Road and The Devil’s Backbone, check out our episode of Streets of Fear!