Some Legends are enduring. The ghostly "Lady" of White Rock Lake is one of
those stories that will probably live forever and elements of the tale are truly ghostly.
     The ASUP is currently doing research into the story of the Lady at White Rock
Lake, with Joy Maner, the Director of Research already uncovering a small book of material
on the history of the apparition. The following is part of what ASUP has learned so far
about the case.  In the future we will be continuing our investigation and a team will be
assigned to try and collect on-scene evidence of this phenomenon.

Long before White Rock Lake existed, the White Rock Valley was known about for countless ages to the Native Americans who lived around the North Texas area.   The white chalk rocks which dominated the valley were cut by creeks over the course of many centuries.  This lovely and peaceful place remained undisturbed until the white man began pouring into this area after the Republic of Texas declared its independence in 1836.

By 1841, John Neely Bryan established a trading post six miles away on the Trinity River.  In 1842, one of the early pioneers, James Beeman observed massive herds of bison in the valley.  Understandably, the Native Americans and the white settlers clashed as the white men and their families gradually dominated the area.

In 1848 a cemetery called Cox had already been started near the new community by the same name.  The vestiges of this old community are now completely underwater.  The cemetery; however, is still located on the west side of the lake.  

There were many ranches and farms in the area by the time Jacob Buhrer established a large dairy farm in 1891.  This land, too, is now mostly underwater near where the present day dam and spillway are located.

At some time during the late 19th century, three other communities had also sprang up:  One was called Fisher (once also known as Calhoun), as well as Reinhardt, and Little Egypt.  All of the remnants of these are completely underwater now, as well.

This all occurred because in 1908 and 1909, the area experienced a very long drought which made the citizens demand a new water source.  Just the year before, Bachman's Creek had been damned up, creating Bachman Lake, but it still could not keep up with the expanding city's need for a dependable, clean water supply.  

On March 7, 1910, Fred A. Jones Company of Dallas was awarded the contract to build the dam and spillway on White Rock Creek.  They had a major setback when seven workmen were injured in a derrick accident at the construction site though.  They persevered though, and finally, the dam was completed on September 1, 1911.

The citizens had grown very impatient while all of this was happening, of course.  In a Dallas Morning News article dated September 1, 1911, the headline read, "Wants More Water Here Now."  In the article, the author, Curtis P. Smith, laments about not having had water coming out of his area's indoor faucets for nearly four months.  The reason was because the city had rerouted the previous easy to obtain water supply to the pipes that supplied the fire department so that they would have adequate water pressure to put out fires in the city.  On October 7, 1911, 143 civic leaders gathered to celebrate the completion of the dam.  It was not until 1913; however, that Dallas' first chlorinated water was dispensed to the public by the White Rock pump station!

Almost immediately, residents also began flocking to the lake to sail, canoe, fish, camp, and hunt in the nearby woods.  This worked out wonderfully until the late 1920's.  As Dallas continued to grow; however, White Rock Lake could no longer serve the water needs of the area.  Lake Dallas (now called Lake Lewisville) was created in 1929 to take over as Dallas' water reservoir.  This enabled White Rock Lake to be turned into a city park on December 13, 1929.

By the 1930's White Rock had become "the People's Playground", as camping facilities and piers for fishing and boating were created.  In 1930 a scenic sand beach was set up on the eastern shore.  Eventually, there was also a swimming beach, and in the hot summers of Texas before air conditioning was common place, people would turn out in the thousands on some days!  On one day alone, it was estimated that over 7,000 people had turned out!  

White Rock Lake historian Steve Butler commented in an article in the Dallas History Message Board from www.dallashistory.org dated June 2, 2005, that some time in the 1930's the students of the newly created Woodrow Wilson High School (which opened in 1928), began frightening each other with tales of the "Lady of White Rock Lake". No one alive today knows exactly how this started.  However, I may have found at least a partial explanation.

I located an article from the Dallas Morning News historical archives, dated May 26, 1927, entitled, "Teacher and Boy Drown; at White Rock and in Pool".  I found it quite by accident, and nobody has mentioned this event in the Dallas Morning News while reporting on the ghost in any of the articles on that subject that I have yet discovered.  Not only that, but until this event, I have not been able to find any women who had previously drowned in the lake.  There had already been a few fishermen who had drowned, as well as a boy in the spillway, but no females yet that I can locate.

The newspaper reporter shared the account of her death with a male victim who drowned the same evening in the "municipal bathing pool at Fair Park", making the title of the article somewhat misleading if anyone was looking for it.   However, luckily the body of the article goes into quite a bit of detail about the unfortunate death of the teacher named Hallie Gaston and also included a photograph of the unfortunate young woman.

"Miss Hallie Gaston, 19, of 238 Melba Street, a school teacher, drowned about 9 p.m. when a motor boat, with five persons aboard, sank at White Rock in twenty feet of water.  The body was recovered at 12:20 o'clock this (Friday) morning."

"Those in the boat with Miss Hallie Gaston, who were rescued, were Miss Fama Gaston, sister of the victim; Mr. and Mrs. G. E. Worthington, 4802 1/2 Gaston Avenue, and Schuyler R. Worthington, 701 North Beacon Avenue [now torn down and replaced with an apartment building on the block].  They were rescued by J. E. Sherrard, 2521 Cleveland Avenue; W. T. Bolling, 1036 North Bishop Avenue, and E. H. Cannon, Jr., 2034 Carpenter Avenue, who went to their aid in boats."

"The Misses Gaston are cousins of Mrs. G. E. Worthington.  They were guests of Mr. and Mrs. G. E. Worthington at dinner in the evening and after adding Schuyler B. Worthington to their party went to White Rock Lake for a short boat ride."

"The point which their boat sank is on the east side of the lake, near what is known as Big Thicket and near John Alexander's boat wharf and about 300 yards from the shore."

"Mr. Worthington said he could not tell what caused the boat to sink."

"'The water just came in over the back end of it and it went under," Mr. Worthington said.  'When I came to the top of the water I grabbed the two women and towed them to the prow of the boat.'"

"The women could not swim and Mr. Worthington said he was exhausted when he reached the boat.  The rescue party went to their help after hearing his cries for help.  The brothers said they never saw Miss Gaston after the boat went under."

According to a website called www.watermelon-kid.com, a woman named Anne Clark wrote what is possibly the earliest PUBLISHED account of the ghost story.  "The Ghost of White Rock," a brief account, was included in the Texas Folklore Society's 1943 magazine, "Backwoods to Border."  The account is as follows:

"One hot July night a young city couple, having driven out and parked on the shore of White Rock Lake, switched on the headlights of the car and saw a white figure approaching.  As the figure came straight to the driver's window, they saw it was a young girl dressed in a sheer white dress that was dripping wet.  She spoke in a somewhat faltering voice."

"'I'm sorry to intrude, and I would not under any other circumstances, but I must find a way home immediately.  I was in a boat that overturned.  The others are safe.  But I must get home.'"

"She climbed into the rumble seat, saying that she did not wish to get the young lady wet, and gave them an address in Oak Cliff, on the opposite side of Dallas.  The young couple felt an uneasiness concerning their strange passenger, and as they neared the destination the girl, to avoid hunting the address, turned to the rumble seat to ask directions.  The rumble seat was empty, but still wet."

"After a brief, futile search for the girl in white, the couple went to the address she had given and were met at the door by a man whose face showed lines of worry.  When he had heard the couple's story, the man replied in a troubled voice, 'This is a very strange thing.  You are the third couple who has come to me with this story.  Three weeks ago, while sailing on White Rock Lake, my daughter was drowned."

While this story is certainly fanciful and no one can tell exactly WHEN this story or event actually originated (except perhaps for the "rumble seat"), there are a few facts of the May 26, 1927, accident that are similar.  

The first is that the girl asked to be taken to Oak Cliff.  After doing some checking, I found that the girl's address of 238 Melba Street is and was in North Oak Cliff.  In the 1911 Dallas city directory, the owner at the time, a C. W. Coley owned the entire 200 block of Melba Street.  It appears that this house is now gone, and the land has been subdivided.  All the houses there now were built in 1945 and later so whatever was there at one time was probably considered to be a fairly impressive home.   (This also seems to be the time-period when the stories seem to change to her asking to go to Gaston Avenue, but I digress.)

Secondly, she seemed to be rather cultured to the witnesses.  Miss Gaston was a teacher and attended the East Texas State Teacher's College at Commerce (which is now part of Texas A&M University).   One did not have to go to school as long to teach back then so that explains why she was 19 years old and had already been teaching for at least one school year.  The article said she had moved back to Dallas from teaching school near Palacios, Matagorda County.  

Lastly, it appears that she tended to dress nicely (whether in a white dress or not).  You can still see the little string of pearls on her neck in the photograph that was with the original article.  I checked the 1920 census, and her father owned his own Abstract Company in Cooper, Texas, before at least she had moved to Dallas, so they probably had some money and connections.   "Back in the day" Oak Cliff was considered to be one of the finest areas of Dallas as well.  I have tried, but I cannot ascertain if she was related in any way to Captain William Henry Gaston for whom Gaston Avenue was named.  (He donated the land for Fair Park as well.)

If this alleged event supposedly occurred in July, can anyone let it slide that the sighting would have actually occurred 4 to 6 weeks prior instead of three and that she died after riding in a motor boat and not a sail boat?

Her cousin and her husband lived in the house on Gaston Avenue that was built in 1904.  It had become run down over the decades, but the present owners spent a lot of time renovating it.  I am not sure if the cousins lived inside the home or in another building located at the back of the premises because of the address listed as 4802 "and 1/2"  in the newspaper article.  However, the main house is still there today and has over 10,000 feet of living space listed by the Dallas County Appraisal District.  It surely must have been considered to be a very stately home in 1927, fit for a refined young woman and her relatives to dine in that evening.

As I said before, later unconfirmed accounts began to say that the girl-ghost asks the driver to take her to an address on Gaston Avenue.  Can we forgive these unnamed eye-witnesses for misleading everyone when her cousin's family and/or in-laws actually lived there instead of her parents?  I'll leave all of that up to the field
investigation team to ponder.

The entire history of the lake seems rather deadly all-in-all.  There were a few other notable deaths of young women over the years:  

A Dallas Morning News article dated August 25, 1931, indicated that a young woman named Miss Marian Louise Craig, age 17, drowned.  However, she was from Whitewright, Texas.

One woman committed suicide, Mrs. Earl H. Davis, age 38, according to an article dated July 6, 1935.  She lived on Melrose Court.

Another article dated November 29, 1935, reported that a car fell 75 feet and killed a girl named Minnie Checotah Leath, 27, of Lear Street.  

One a girl drowned in the lake on July 16, 1942, named Margaret Helen Fanders, age 26.  She lived on Marquita which is in Highland Park area.

On November 24, 1942, 35 year old Rose Stone of Mansfield, Texas, committed suicide there.

A 60  year old woman named Mrs. Willie L. Wood, of Elsworth Street, was murdered in the lake in 1953 by someone tying a 10-pound rock around her neck.

As one can tell though by reading these accounts, no other information has quite the "ring of truth" to it as far as the LEGEND goes as the death of Hallie Gaston.

In Frank X Tolbert's book (also of Tolbert's Chili Parlor fame), Neiman-Marcus, Texas: The Story of the Proud Dallas Store, which was written in the 1950's, he recounts the story of Mr. and Mrs. Guy Malloy who told everyone they knew that they had picked up the ghost around 1943.  The story goes into great detail about her having blond hair and having worn a Neiman Marcus dress (of course)!  

It has been confirmed from more than one source that Mr. and Mrs. Malloy both worked for Neiman-Marcus on Main Street, for many years the supervisors of the window dressers at the store.

Dr. Rose-Mary Rumbley, confirmed this story in her more recent book, Dallas, Too, published in 1998; however, corrects a large part of the account.

She said, "My good friend Barbara Rookstool vows that her Daddy, Guy H. Malloy, was the one who created the Lady of the Lake legend."  She goes on to say that after 2 a.m. on a Saturday morning, Mr. Malloy was driving home from the store to his home in East Dallas.  He spotted the "Lady of the Lake rise from White Rock."  From that time on, he continued to tell his story.  It just continued to grow and grow is all, becoming more and more embellished as the years passed according to his daughter.  In fact as the story changed, eventually, his wife Josephine was in the car with him as well and they both tried to take her to a Gaston Avenue address per her request!

Their grandson, Farris Rookstool III (who is a former FBI employee and now runs the Book Depository Museum), said, "What started out as a personal, private story has become one that people have adopted for their own.  That to me, is the beauty of the story, that it still lives."

In one of Frank X. Tolbert's "Tolbert's Texas" columns in the 1960's, (he used to write for the Dallas Morning News for several years during the 50's and early 60's) he recounts the story sent to him in a letter from a man named Dave Berry, 8200 San Fernando Way, at the corner of White Rock Drive.  Mr. Berry said:

"In September, 1962, I purchased and moved into my present home at San Fernando and White Rock Drive.  It is a large 2-story of colonial architecture.  I'd hesitated slightly about buying into this neighborhood because of the 'Legend of the Ghostly Lady' who goes around sopping wet, dripping water and scaring tarnation out of
folks near White Rock Lake.  But I bought the house anyway. 

"The first night in our new house the door bell rang.  I went to the door.  There was no one there.  I was very tired and closed the door.  The door bell rang again. 'bing-bong'.  I quickly opened the door and again there was no one there.  I waited near the door for a few minutes and nothing happened.  I went back to my moving-in chores, and again the bell rang.  This time my daughter went to the door and stepped out onto the porch."

"There were puddles of water and if someone had stood there dripping, which trailed up the steps and ended in a big puddle right in front of the door."

Mr. Tolbert goes on to say that the daughter screamed and slammed the door because she'd heard tales of the ghost already.  Mr. Berry ran outside, looked all over the yard, and even in the bushes.  The street was deserted.

"Several times during the night the door bell rang.  No one was there.  And I disconnected the bell the next day, and haven't connected it again since," Mr. Berry wrote. 

In another of Mr. Tolbert's columns, dated April 4, 1964, he recounts that Mrs. Lily V. Leonard of 8903 Groveland, Dallas, wrote in to say that her son and his wife, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Leonard picked the ghost up also.  She said, "They'll swear on a stack of Bibles that this happened."

Upon being asked just WHEN one can actually count on seeing the ghost, he commented that in the many letters he received over the years, it seemed to be mostly in the Spring.  Also, the time seemed to be mostly around midnight or later.   He also commented on wishing that the ghost would simply leave a note when she next planned to appear.

Of course, if the story is true, Mr. Berry had some personal evidence of her in September, not in the springtime.  

Also, the following account supposedly occurred in December:

Roxanne Booth wrote an email to www.watermelon-kid.com in September, 2004, "I do not remember my exact age, probably between 10 and 12.  We were at a church Christmas party.  My father took a wrong turn. It was very cold and there were ice patches on the roads.  It was late, and already dark.  I remember Dad going under an old and very small bridge, that took an immediate U turn and it was a dead end to the boat ramp.  

There was also an old building down close to the water.  There was a lot of graffiti on the building and the bridge.  As my father was turning around I glanced toward the water and I saw a woman apparently standing atop the water with outstretched arms.  She appeared to be in a beautiful long gown, almost wedding like.  I told my parents, 'Look, look, there is a woman standing in the water, she needs help!' but they apparently did not see what I saw.  They looked but could not see her. . . ."

There were a couple more newspaper articles in the 1970's and 80's, but there do not seem to be any actual witnesses' names in the newspaper since then that I can find so far.  They are just rehashes of previous information.

The fact of the matter is that MANY men and boys have died in or around the lake over the decades, as well as these women.  If any paranormal anomalies are being recorded there, it could be one of several spirits that might show up, not just the woman in white!