12 Texas Ghost Towns That Come Alive Every Halloween With Creepy Legends
Texas holds more than cattle ranches and wide-open skies. Scattered across the state, forgotten settlements sit quietly under the sun, waiting for October to roll around.
When Halloween season arrives, these ghost towns shake off their dust and draw visitors hungry for spine-tingling tales and eerie history.
Old mining camps, storm-battered ports, and vanished frontier hubs transform into living museums of the supernatural, where legends feel less like stories and more like neighbors.
If you are a fan of those spooky vibes and horror stories, these chilling places are a must.
1. Terlingua, Brewster County
When the desert cools, the old Chisos Mining ruins and the historic cemetery glow with candles for Día de los Muertos, a dusk-to-dawn vigil on November 2 that feels tailor-made for Halloween season.
The town’s mining past, abandoned structures, and revived traditions give it a living-ghost aura that’s rare and haunting.
Photographers and ghost-story lovers wander the crumbling adobe walls and peer into empty windows that once framed hard lives.
Terlingua’s blend of Mexican heritage and frontier grit creates an atmosphere you can almost taste in the cool night air.
2. Shafter, Presidio County
Silver once poured from these hills; now, adobe walls, a lonely church, and scattered headframes sit in quiet valleys that locals swear hold footsteps after dark.
The Shafter Historic Mining District is nationally recognized, which is why history buffs and ghost hunters alike drift through every fall.
Moonlight on weathered adobe turns the place into a natural stage for spooky tales. Visitors report strange sounds echoing off canyon walls, and the stillness here feels heavier than anywhere else in West Texas.
3. Indianola, Calhoun County
Storms in 1875 and 1886 smashed this booming port, and tales linger of voices on the wind where the town once stood on Matagorda Bay.
Each Halloween season, visitors read the markers and imagine a thriving city swallowed by water and fire.
The bay stretches wide and empty now, but locals claim you can still hear bells from sunken ships on foggy mornings.
Standing on that quiet shore, it’s easy to picture wharves bustling with cargo and passengers who never made it home.
4. St. Mary’s of Aransas, Refugio County
Wharves and warehouses are long gone, but bay breezes still carry the town’s rise and ruin. Around Halloween, history walks and coastal sunsets make the former port’s empty shoreline feel like a stage set for a ghost story.
Birdsong and rustling marsh grass fill the silence where ships once unloaded goods from around the world.
Visitors who explore the area at dusk report an unsettling sense of being watched, as if the town refuses to let go of its glory days.
5. Fort Phantom Hill, near Abilene
Stone chimneys stand like sentries and campfire tales of soldiers and settlers refuse to fade. The site shares its own ghost stories, and October visitors swear the prairie gets louder after sunset.
Wind whistles through the ruins in ways that sound almost human, and shadows stretch long across the grass.
Local lore mentions phantom lights dancing between the chimneys, and even skeptics admit the place has a weight to it that’s hard to shake once you leave.
6. Old Tascosa, Oldham County
Boot Hill Cemetery and the vanished main street tell of gunfights and cattle-trail swagger. In the fall, the Panhandle wind rakes the grass, and the legends of rowdy nights feel close enough to touch.
Tascosa once roared with saloons and outlaws, but now only weathered headstones mark where the action happened.
Visitors walking the old street grid at twilight report hearing hoofbeats and laughter carried on the breeze, as if the cowboys never really left town.
7. Glenrio, Deaf Smith County
Route 66 slid away to the interstate and left a time capsule of a border-straddling highway town. Photographers and road-trippers prowl the abandoned motel and diner each October, chasing the thrill of an American ghost city.
Peeling paint and rusted signs make Glenrio feel frozen in the 1950s. Locals whisper about travelers who checked into the motel and were never seen again, and the empty windows seem to watch you as you explore the silent strip of pavement.
8. Belle Plain, Callahan County
A college town turned memory, its cemetery and scattered ruins whisper of a boom that blinked out when the railroads passed it by. Autumn light on Phantom Hill country gives the place an extra chill.
Belle Plain once held a courthouse, a college, and big dreams, but all that remains are crumbling foundations and weathered headstones.
Visitors in October report cold spots near the old school site and the faint sound of bells ringing from a tower that no longer exists.
9. Ben Ficklin, Tom Green County
A catastrophic 1882 flood wiped out the county seat, and the hilltop cemetery is where the story now speaks loudest. Around Halloween, locals remember the day the Concho rose and a town disappeared.
Granite markers on the hill overlook the river that took everything in a single terrible night. Some say you can still hear rushing water and cries for help when the wind picks up, even though the riverbed runs quiet most of the year now.
10. Medicine Mound, Hardeman County
Four solitary hills frame a near-vanished town where Comanche lore and frontier memories tangle. In October’s long shadows, the museum and mounds feel older than the maps.
Medicine Mound’s hills were sacred to the Comanche, and the town that grew nearby never quite shook that spiritual weight.
People who visit report strange lights floating near the mounds after dark and a sense of being pulled toward the peaks, as if something ancient still calls out from the earth.
11. Sherwood, Irion County
An empty courthouse anchors this quiet former county seat, and locals trade headless-horseman tales tied to old ranch roads. Dry grass, cool nights, and a big moon do the rest.
Sherwood lost its county-seat status and never recovered, leaving behind a courthouse that looks out over nothing.
Ranchers avoid certain roads after dark, claiming a rider without a head gallops past them, and the courthouse windows sometimes glow with light when no one is inside.
12. Salt Flat, Hudspeth County
Gypsum dunes, a shuttered café, and a horizon of white pan tell of brief booms and long silences. The broader salt-war history and stark landscape make Halloween visits feel cinematic.
Salt Flat’s name comes from the gleaming flats that stretch to the horizon, and the town’s violent past still echoes in the wind.
Travelers stopping at the old café site report hearing gunshots and shouts, remnants of the bloody Salt War that tore the area apart over a century ago.