My name is Ron Johnson and I turned 53 years old on my last birthday. My favorite hobby is fishing. My son David and I have been entering bass tournaments for the past twelve years. We got pretty good at catching bass, in fact, I even considered going pro last year.
Between my son and I, we have invested more than $60K on a bass boat, complete with all of the latest electronic equipment. We both live in Dallas Texas and usually enter more than 30 tournaments a year in and around North Texas and Southern Oklahoma.
Squaw Creek Reservoir
In the spring of 2008, my boy and I entered a bass tournament on a small lake in Summerville county Texas. The lake used to be called Squaw Creek Reservoir, but now it’s called Comanche Creek Reservoir. This is a 3,275-acre lake located between Glen Rose, Texas, and Granbury, Texas. The primary purpose of this lake is used for cooling the Comanche Peak Nuclear Generating Station.
In Texas, a lake that is less than 20,000 acres is considered small. This is a very interesting lake because it has a nuclear power plant on it. After the 911 attacks in 2001, the lake was closed to all recreational activities.
It was reopened in 2007, which means that for 6 years no one could fish there. So the fishing community consensus was, this lake probably has some very large bass since it was closed for so long.
I was excited to be able to enter this particular bass fishing tournament.
We started fishing the lake a month before the tournament.
My son and I wanted to learn as much as we could about this lake, so we started fishing it a few weeks before the tournament. We would take our bass boat and camper and spend several days at a time at the lake.
Because Squaw Creek Park is located on a nuclear plant, there is no camping allowed, however, there are plenty of places nearby that allow camping. It’s very strict there, in fact, they don’t even want you to take pictures, or video of the nuclear plant, for obvious reasons.
We paid to camp at a private ranch close to the lake
There are only a few people who know about this place, so I am not going to go into many details, except to say, we paid a local rancher who allows a few people to camp on his land.
We parked our camper and built a small fire, just because we like campfires. Camping is like a mini vacation away from city life. After building a nice warm fire, a stranger wandered by. He said he was just out walking around, and that his campsite was just over the hill.
I asked him, are you here by yourself, and he just smiled and said “sometimes.” This was one freaky-looking dude. He looked homeless and very unkept. He had long dark streaky hair, and his face looked like he had been working in a coal mine. Actually, he was pretty hard to look at.
A very strange person joins us for dinner.
I really couldn’t tell if this guy was camping, or just a homeless person wandering around on the ranch. He reminded me of some of the crazy homeless schizophrenics I use to see in New York City. People standing on the corner, talking to themselves.
I invited him to stay for dinner, even though I was hoping he would just move on. He said, “sure, I never pass up a hot meal.”
I told my son, “keep an eye on this guy, I don’t trust him.” My son asked, “did you see his eyes?” I said yes, they are very squinty looking” My son said “No – take a closer look.” I didn’t really want to get near this guy, but as I was handing him a cup of coffee, I got a good look at his face and was shocked to see that his eyes were just white eyeballs, with no pupils. It startled me so bad I dropped the coffee as I was handing it to him.
Is this guy blind or something? How can he see without any pupils? My son said in a very low voice, “this guy has got to go, he’s freaking me out.” I said, “yes, the sooner the better. Let’s get dinner cooked and served as fast as we can, and get this guy out of here.”
As we were eating, we made very small talk, we learned that his name was Jessy Colman and that he has lived here in these woods for most of his life.
Then without any warning, he would start laughing under his breath. Sort of a sneaky snicker, like someone, was telling him a joke or something. Then he would say things like, “No Not Yet.” He seemed to be talking to himself. Then he would say “I Said NO, Not Yet” in a louder voice, like he was arguing with someone.
My son and I just looked at each other. I could almost read his mind, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
This guy just wouldn't leave
One hour turned into two, then three and this freaky guy was still hanging around our campsite. He started saying things like, “you two look tired, why don’t you catch a nap, I’ll keep an eye out for wild animals and strange people.” I thought to myself, “I doubt if they will be much stranger than you.”
I told my son, “there is no way in hell I am going to sleep with this guy hanging around.” My son said, “I’m with you dad, what can we say to get this guy to leave?”
He just wasn’t getting the hint, so I finally said, “my son and I have to get up early so, why don’t you go back to your campsite now?” The stranger said “What. you don’t trust me?” Then he started laughing and talking to himself again. “I just need them to go to sleep.” “No, now is not the time, maybe later!” Again he sounded like he was having an argument with himself.
This guy was clearly off his rocker. He was so unstable, that my son and I started packing up the campsite and getting ready to leave. There is no way in hell we are going to sleep here with this guy wandering around.
We put out the campfire and hooked up the camper and said goodbye to Jessy Colman, hopefully, we will never see this freak again.
We went into town and rented a room at a motel.
The motel manager questioned us about our camper
As we were checking in, the motel manager looked out the front window and started a conversation. “Now why do you need a room? No offense, but this seems a little suspicious to me.” I asked, “what do you mean?” The manager said, “I see you have a camper trailer, so why do you need a motel room?”
My son told him about our campsite visitor and how he was freaking us out, so we decided to just pack up and leave. Where were you camping? “My son said at a ranch just down the street about 6 miles.”
“Oh, you must mean the Falling Leaf ranch,” I said, Yes, I think that was the name of it. The motel manager told us that he knew the owner of that ranch, Luthur Colman. In fact, he and Luthur were in the third grade together. His father died when he was just 15, so he quit school and started managing the ranch.”
He got married to Julie and they had a son named Jessy. My son said “Jessy Coleman?” The motel manager just smiled and said, “yep, guess you’ve heard about him since he was in the news for so long.
It seems that Jessy ended up killing his mother and burying her somewhere on the ranch. They never found her body. Jessy went to trial and was not convicted because they couldn’t find the body.
Everyone in town knew Jessy was guilty but got away with murder, or so he thought. A month later Julie’s older brother came down from Oklahoma and confronted Jessy about his mom.
He took Jessy all over the ranch and threatened Jessy that if he didn’t tell the truth, and show him where the body was, he was going to torture Jessy to death.
Jessy finally admitted the truth
Julie’s big brother almost beat Jessy to death. He put him in a wheelbarrow and rolled him all over the ranch until Jessy pointed out where his mom was buried.
Then Julie’s brother stuck a hot poker into Jessy’s eyes and buried him alive. None of this was ever proven, in fact, no one was ever arrested.
Actually, I think that Jessy’s father, Luthur was glad to see him go, since he had killed his wife, and was extremely hard to handle. Jessy was well known to the local town’s people as a crazy schizophrenic, who was always getting into trouble.
In fact, this all happened about 20 years ago today, what a coincidence! So how did you hear about Jessy anyway?
My son looked at me, just to confirm, “the guy we ran into at the ranch said his name was Jessy Coleman.”
The motel manager said, “not a chance in hell, Jessy has been dead and buried for 20 years now.” Someone sick individual is playing a sad joke on you.”
You have a picture of Jessy?
I said, “you got a picture of Jessy?” The motel manager said, “I sure do.” He went into the back of his office and opened up a file and pulled out an old newspaper about the murder and the trial.
He pointed to a picture of Jessy, and my blood turned into ice water, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I could feel my heart racing a hundred miler per hour. I showed the newspaper to my son who said “NO WAY!” “That’s him, that was the guy who showed up at our campsite.”
At this point the motel manager just stared at us and said, sorry, we are all full for tonight. I can’t rent you a room.” I could tell that this person didn’t believe us.
Looking back on it, I wouldn’t have believed it either.
Well, maybe Jessy didn’t actually die, maybe he’s still alive and roaming around on the ranch. No, that’s not right, because the picture of Jessy looks exactly like the guy we saw at the ranch, he should have looked 20 years older.
A voice could be heard at a distance, "what's going on out there?"
A lady came into the office from the back door. She asked what is going on here, what’s all the commotion about? The motel manager said, “this is my wife.” Then he told his wife about our story.
She said, “See, I’m not crazy after all. I have friends who claim that have seen Jessy around town during the past 20 years. I don’t think he’s really dead. I mentioned the picture and the fact that he still looks exactly the same. “He hasn’t aged at all.”
“Well there is only one explanation that makes any sense, he’s a ghost” Well, I don’t believe in ghosts, but I can’t explain this either. So maybe you’re right.
She turned to her husband and said Aurthur, rent these poor people a room and let them get some sleep, I believe their story.
The next morning we packed up and went back to Dallas, we ended up skipping the fishing tournament and decided to never go back to that area again.
Maybe it was the radiation from the nuclear plant, or maybe it was satan himself, but whatever it is, one thing is for sure, it belongs on the Creepy Show Podcast.