Jim Murphy of Denton TX, childhood friend turned informant.
The name of Sam Bass lives on in Texas folklore as a beloved railroad Robinhood bandit betrayed in his darkest hours by his good boo pard, but such Wild West pulp fiction is betrayed by a haunted history of two Texas youths entangled in the post-Civil War Reconstruction chaos of poverty, desperation, and lawlessness. These ghosts of Denton remind us of a dark past when our outlaws became heroes.
Last Saturday’s Denton County Heritage Festival was a wonderful event on the lovely Denton Square, commemorating our town’s 1861-1877 post-Civil War years with period reenactments, historical sketches, and stories by costumed forefathers (and foremothers). The “Texas Troubles” leading to our role the Civil War and its aftermath were indeed a “pivotal era” for our Denton township, only 3 years old when war broke out in 1860. Our prior articles on the “1860 Prairie Match Mystery” and “Texas Outlaw Sam Bass in Denton” sets the stage for this modest defense of the “frenemy” betrayer of Sam Bass, Denton’s own native son ‘Judas’ Jim Murphy.
Denton’s 2nd courthouse, 1876, rebuilt after a mysterious fire.
Jim was the third of 9 children born to Henderson and Ruth Murphy, who moved to Denton County in 1851 to establish a General Store in 1852 then the Murphy Hotel in 1855, the first in the area, a split-rail two-story cabin near the log courthouse of the prior county seat of New Alton. In what would become quite a spectacle of the day, The Murphys used a team of mules to move their two-story B&B on rolling logs to its new location, over six miles away along rugged dirt paths, while a very pregnant Mrs. Murphy knitted in her rocking chair on the jostling porch. A few days later, their fifth son John was the first Anglo child born in Denton, and the Murphy Transcontinental Hotel was soon a thriving pioneer community center that offered magnificent meals, tidy accommodations, and rye whiskey for neighbors and travelers alike. The wealthy businessman Henderson served three terms as County Treasurer and at least one term as City Alderman as he also acquired vast ranch land and numerous properties around the Denton Square, interests that his teen sons Bob and Jim helped tend.
West side of the Denton Square, 1876
Other Dentonites were less fortunate. The effects of the Civil War was devastating, Denton County having lost many men while other weary veterans returned in 1865 to desolate fields and untended farms amidst impoverishing economic depression and drought. Indian raiders of livestock, horse rustlers, and stagecoach bushwackers were persistent threats as Denton County slowly recovered under Union Reconstruction occupation. When the 19-year-old Indiana orphan Sam Bass arrived in Denton in 1870, working as a hand at the Lacy House Hotel and as freighter for Sherriff ‘Dad’ Egan, the affable lad quickly became friends with the Murphy boys as well as Henry Underwood and Frank Jackson, locals who were close in age. The Texas Cattle Boom would help make the Murphy family one of the richest in Denton County and, as sons Bob and Jim oversaw large open-range ranches while starting families, the charismatic Sam Bass turned to horseracing and gambling with his legendary “Denton Mare” by 1874, then eventually into banditry infamy by 1877 with a $60,000 UP Train heist. Trouble is, once Pinkerton Detectives and Texas Rangers pursued Sam into Denton offering a $1,000 dead-or-alive bounty, the Murphys were soon swept up into the “Bass War” scandal as sleepy Denton became a “terrorized armed camp” of lawmen, bounty hunters, and spies.
Depiction of the Mesquite Train Robbery by S. Seymour Thomas (1880 when he was 12 years old). This picture is reproduced from Sam Bass by Wayne Gard (Source: Article “Account of Sam Bass is Exciting and authentic” by Walter Prescott Webb). Dallas Morning News, July 26, 1936. DRT Library at the Alamo, San Antonio, Texas.
While many chroniclers of Sam Bass unfairly characterize Jim as an active member of the rotating Sam Bass Gang, there’s little doubt that he often gave the group of childhood friends safe harbor, supplies, and lookout warnings that helped the outlaws evade their murderous pursuers in the Cross Timbers thickets. By then, however, Jim Murphy was happily married to Mary ‘Molly’ Paine with two twin daughters and a promising future soon in jeopardy. Besides Sam, cowpoke Frank Jackson, horse rustler Henry Underwood (accused of burning down the first Denton courthouse in 1875), and tinsmith thug Sebe Barns were close if rough-n-tumble acquaintances who some locals saw as ‘Robinhood’ Rebels giving heck to the Reconstruction Union League and their cozy Railroad Tycoon profiteers. Though Sam was a hero to dirt-poor common folk, the moneyed elite were anxious to make an example of such lawlessness. Embarrassed Rangers and government officials ruthlessly retaliated by arresting several Denton associates of Bass, including Jim and Bob along with their innocent father Henderson in May 1878, in a unscrupulous dragnet intended to legally intimidate unwilling local cooperation. Dragged in chains and shame to await trial in Tyler for aiding wanted train robbers, even as on-the-run Sam’s shootouts desperately escalated, Jim famously cut a Devil’s bargain with Capt. June Peak and Ranger Major J.B. Jones to deliver Sam to capture in exchange for the legal exonerations of himself and his father. Despite assurances Sam would be taken alive if possible and his family freed, Jim had little idea that fate had other plans for both of them.
What finally transpired is the well-known subject of disgraceful infamy for ‘Judas’ Jim Murphy in “The Cowboy Ballad of Sam Bass” and countless books. Jim joined Sam’s gang under considerable suspicion from Sebe Barnes, set on killing the suspected informer had not Jim’s bud Frank Jackson bravely faced him down at gunpoint. Deciding to head into Mexico with money from banks robbed along the way, the remaining Sam, Sebe, Frank, and Jim ambled into Round Rock TX to case the bank. Jim’s hasty wire had assembled Texas Rangers to apprehend the robbers but Deputy Alijah Grimes inadvertently sparked a premature gunfight trying to confiscate their sixguns as they were buying tobacco and supplies at the General Store. Hell suddenly broke loose in the streets with a hurricane of hot lead.
The final firefight of the Sam Bass Gang at Round Rock TX, 19 July 1878
When the gunsmoke settled, Deputy Grimes and Sebe were dead as Frank fled with a mortally-injured Sam while Jim could only look on. Sam Bass died days later on his 27th birthday without giving up any secrets on his pals, so Jim returned to his family in Denton a free man. Jim managed Denton’s Parlour Saloon and attempted to rejoin polite society, but he was now an outcast. The elite rejected him as a Bass cohort, while the admirers of Sam resented his betrayal and would-be gunslingers targeted Jim as a means to fame or revenge. After spending many a fearful night in the jailhouse for his own protection, Jim Murphy gruesomely died of atropine poisoning in early June 1879 while receiving treatment from Doc McMath for an eye ailment. Family believed it an accident, but some whispered it was murder and still others thought suicide, even after Jim was secretly buried in a still-unknown grave. Regardless, the shameful end to a sordid saga led the Murphys to retire northward of the town they’d done so much to establish.
The original tombstone of Sam Bass, chipped away by time and memorabilia seekers: “Would That He Were Good as He was Brave.”
I met Murphy’s descendents at Saturday’s Heritage Festival, who were generously kind but also quite protective of how their kin were caricatured in worshipful Sam Bass mythmaking. I’ve long thought that the stories of these two childhood “frenemies” were a fascinating snapshot for coming-of-age in those anarchic Post-War times that made, broke, and changed the fortunes of so many Dentonites. I think we should finally extend some sympathy and pity for ‘Judas’ Jim Murphy, since both he and Sam seem less like figures of a simplistic Western pulp melodrama than they are epic characters within a sweeping Greek Tragedy. In this tragic tale of two very different Texans from back in the day, their youthful choices in chaotic times made it nigh impossible to change or escape their capriciously intermingled fates.
It strikes me that Sheriff ‘Dad’ Egan had done his level best to bring Sam in alive for a trial, and the mischievously merry Sam had until the very end gone out of his way to avoid killing, usually choosing to run or instead shooting and scattering horses to spook off pursuers. Sam once insisted he had “never robbed a man in the world, but as for railroads, they owed him living and he intended to get it out of them.” Many a farmer and rancher being gauged by the greedy railroad monopolies surely shared that sentiment. As for Jim’s part, he was valiantly risking his own life secretly undercover, facing shootists and murderous bounty hunters alike in a forced gambit to keep his brother and father out of prison. There are numerous sources indicating Jim agreed only on the promise that Sam wouldn’t be killed, a promise that couldn’t be kept. Once back in Denton as a pariah, Jim wrote letters trying to bargain amnesty for his friend Frank Jackson (who’d saved his life several times) to no avail. Frank Jackson disappeared, leaving only rumor and speculation to his fate. In a post-war society of only haves or have-nots and their enforcers, where fortunes rapidly changed, the Robin Hood myth surrounding Sam perhaps says far more about the political and economic climate of Reconstruction Texas than it does about the notoriously generous bandit himself. Sam was generally well-liked if not admired by the common folk, of that there is little doubt, but the ostracized Jim Murphy also reveals a “polite society” of monied Cattle Kingdom gentry that was even more unforgiving than the dirt-poor commoners who resented Jim’s betrayal of their folk hero.
Some stories say that Sam and Jim, united in death as they were in life, still yet haunt the downtown Denton Square and backwoods hideouts where treasure hunters have long sought rumored hidden troves of Sam Bass’ stolen gold. The badman and his betrayer are forever immortalized together, passing from history into legend.
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!!
The historic 1896 Courthouse on the Square ain’t just one of the most beautiful in all of Texas, it is also said to have more’n a few ghosts lingering around. The basement used to contain holding cells and there’s plenty who have experienced strange noises as well as the feeling that they are not alone. Outside, looking up into the highest windows, others claim to have seen a shadowy figure moving around, or a weathered-looking cowboy peering down from the upper floors. True enough, there’ve been several deaths and killings in the grand ole Courthouse. Regardless, the museum inside is always worth a wander-around whenever they open again but you can always visit John B. Denton’s grave [maybe?] on the lawn!
2. The Campus Theater
Spirits in the theater are considered good luck according to stage superstition – but don’t utter the Scottish play – so it should come as no surprise that our own Campus Theater embraces their beloved benefactor. This popular venue is most definitely one of Denton’s most haunted and most showrunners have some story about the antics of the Campus Theater’s Mischievous Manager, Mr. Harrison.
3. Paschall Bar/ Andy’s Basement
The oldest building on the Denton Square is the 1877 Paschall Building, which survived several fires in the 1880s and 1890s and has apparently attracted a few ghosts in its 143 years! Watch the windows to see if faces are peering down, and be careful on the stairs where some have experienced an unexpected nudge from some invisible source!
4. Brave Combo’s Studio
Few may realize that the studio space of Denton’s own Grammy-winning musicians and local Nuclear Punk Polka deities BRAVE COMBO has its own hipster haint! Known only as “The Dude,” the flannel-clad figure resembles a scruffy 1970s-era roadie that sometimes leaves handprints on the glass or glimpsed in the hidden parking spaces in the back of the building. If you go investigating across the street from the old Post Office, you may also spy a beautiful Denton mural close by the Instagram infamous Purple Door!
5. The Emily Fowler Library
Elsewhere I’ve told about some of Denton’s ghostly guardians, one of the most famous is the haunting spirit who also happens to be the namesake of Denton’s Emily Fowler Library. There have been numerous paranormal investigations that led to encounters with this lingering librarian, and several witnesses who knew her well enough to recognize Emily still skulking around the stacks long after she’d been dead and buried! You can wander around the public library to do some ghost-hunting for yourself, and maybe you can spy Emily through the windows! The library just completed a new outdoor story nook you can sit there and watch.
6. University of North Texas campus
Universities are often sites of hauntings, and the University of North Texas in Denton is no exception. UNT’s Bruce Hall is purported to be haunted by at least three different spirits: a ghost named “Wanda” who frequents the fourth floor and attic, the vanishing “elevator repairman,” and the basement‘s boisterous poltergeist “Boiler Room Bill.” The Student Union is also rumored to be home to a ghost who turns lights or office equipment on and off, locks doors, and disturbs papers on desks. Maple Hall has its own spirit called “Bawling Brenda” roaming an outside alleyway, while the Health Center has reports of a forlorn shirtless guy on occasion and the Crumley Hall Screamer continues to spook students around Halloween.
7. Texas Woman’s University
The first building constructed on the TWU campus was Old Main, where a headless “Winged Victory” statue welcomes visitors in its portico. The haunted building is also purported to have meandering spirits of former faculty who still wander the halls and offices! Students and staff have also reported mystery melodies within the music building, vanishing ghosts in Hubbard Hall, a forelorn phantom stalking Stoddard Hall, the spirit of Dr. John in Guinn Hall, and the weeping Hooded Bride who roams the grounds by the Little Chapel in the Woods. The ghost of the disappeared co-ed Virginia Carpenter was said to have haunted Brakenridge Hall, which was demolished and replaced by the Student Union, where she is still sometimes glimpsed in snappy 1940s attire.
8. OLD ALTON “GOATMANS BRIDGE”
The oldest ghost legend in Denton is the creepy tale of the Old Alton Bridge Goatman. You may have heard that the television program Ghost Adventures kicked up a ruckus awhile back by filming a re-enactment at the historic bridge using actors in KKK robes? Well the old stories are even crazier than that. You can watch this haunting YouTube video for more stories of scares and encounters that have been spooking county locals for generations.
9. I.O.O.F. AND OAKWOOD CEMETERY
Denton Lodge No. 82 of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows (I.O.O.F.) was chartered in 1859 by a number of the area’s most prominent settlers, and Denton merchant James Smoot donated them land for the purposes of a graveyard. The first recorded burial in 1860 was Ann Isabella Carroll, infant daughter of Judge Joseph and Cecilia Carroll, which may explain why a crying baby is sometimes heard emanating from the I.O.O.F. Cemetery at night. Just across the railroad tracks in Southeast Denton is Oakwood Cemetery, which by 1857 was the community cemetery where you can search for the infamous bloody Brown Brothers, murderers hanged then buried here. Many African-American settlers are also interred here, where shadows are often spotted moving silently amongst the tombstones!
10. THE BAYLESS-SELBY HOUSE
The beautifully restored Bayless-Selby House is another local museum that tells the history of Victorian-era Denton, nestled in the Denton Historic Park alongside the African-American Quakertown House Museum. But as we scooped y’all a few years back, it also has a spooky Phantom Farmer connected to some murderous intrigue that occurred in the house almost 100 years ago!! You can take a tour of the house grounds on Saturdays during the Denton Community Market, but you’ll have to ask for the good-n-scary ghost stories that WDDI previewed… they don’t dole out the good stuff to just anybody so be sure to tell ‘em we sent you!
October this year in Denton TX is getting extra spooky, kooky, and totally amazing with 31 days of more local haunts for you to explore!
The City of Denton TX just announced an ambitious fall campaign to turn our local communities into Halloween Town USA with their #HalloweenDenton Plan! The marketing zeitgeist is to create 31 Days of Halloween activities across the city with local businesses and partnerships to create destination travel for summer adventures ! Are ghost tours in the mix? You bet they are, our local spirits and specters are ready to spill their haunted tales!
Fridays and Saturdays during the month of October, DENTON HAUNTS will be leading walking ghost tours of the downtown Denton Square with stories of frontier founders like Capt. John B. Denton, infamous scandals, fiery catastrophe, female pioneer trailblazers, Black & Hispanic entrepreneurs, then also shootouts from lawmen and outlaws like Bonnie & Clyde or Machine Gun Kelley! Even locals are guaranteed to hear something new that makes you look at our Denton streets differently.
Follow DENTON HAUNTS on Facebook for the latest updates and public tour schedules! Private group tours are also available but with limited availability, so book your event now before 2024 Halloween tour opportunities vanish … like a ghost!
DENTON HAUNTS has some very BIG plans for Denton Halloween in 2025, and that includes expanding our scope of operations here in Denton TX.
“Doc” is now amping-up operations by forming Lil’ D-tours, an educational tourism business specializing in Haunts, History, and Business Consulting for individuals, groups, and organizations around DFW. In addition to our haunted and historical local tours, Lil’ D-tours is now also offering a more expansive, eclectic, and customizable storytelling tourism catalog here in Denton TX for conventions and conferences, schools and civic groups, family reunions, wedding parties, new residents or new students and families arriving to attend UNT or TWU.
Businesses and organizations can explore opportunities to breathe some excitement and adventure into their own new employee onboarding programs, Real Estate buyers looking to get acquainted with our funky fun arts and culture scene, Teambuilding options for exploring the cultural and culinary wonders around town, or maybe fun group options for scavenger hunts, E-bike excursions to explore local art and architecture, or just enjoy after-work gnoshes out-and-about “the Little D” with a Pub&Grub sampler tour. The possibilities and combinations for the vibe of your tribe are endless!!!
Looking for an expert guide and seasoned concierge to all the local fun, food, adventure, and hidden treasures that make the Little D “north of ordinary”? If so, then “Doc” is indeed your huckleberry! Here then is a sampler of the eclectic and customizable storytelling tourism catalog available with booking LIL’ D-TOURS:
If you’re not up for an outdoor amble-about walking or traveling in-person tour, then we also have several of these available as virtual tours with guided indoor PowerPoint slideshows that feature rarely-seen vintage historic photographs of Denton’s people and places across time! Coming soon will be additional options for Self-Guided Smartphone Virtual Tours available to purchase.
To inquire about scheduling, rates, and availability just shoot a line to DentonHaunts@gmail.com to work out some adventurous options. We offer special rates to educators and can collaborate on meeting educational standards and goals that enhance your curriculum!
More exciting updates will be shared once the 2025 Denton Halloween “BOO Krewe” begin scheduling shenanigans!! Stay tuned, HauntsFans!!
