Haunted History

By Diana Merrill Claussen, Originally Published in October Issue of Now Magazine

In Red Oak, there is a little-known property with a history that is not as bright as the rest of our area. In fact, its saga has been infused with bits of evil and many chilling unpleasantries. Located off of Houston School Road, Reindeer Manor’s history begins in the early 1900s, when the property was bought by oil and water well driller James Sharp. In 1914, Sharp lived at his city home in Oak Cliff, while construction on his Red Oak country home began. At the time, the only thing on the property was a little wooden home. That year, the property and home were both destroyed during an early morning storm. “The house was hit by lightning and [it] killed the entire family of Swedish sharecroppers who lived in it,” Reindeer Manor’s public relations director, Richard Kinney, said.

Because Sharp was so terrified after viewing the aftermath of the fire, he insisted on building his estate with concrete and block. “Only the door frames and windowsills are wood,” Richard said. Unfortunately, Sharp would never live to see the completion of his fireproof home. Before the house was completed, “Sharp was shot at his home in Oak Cliff and later died from his injuries,” Richard revealed. “It was his son, James Sharp Jr., who completed construction on the Houston School Road property.”

Around the early 1920s, Sharp Jr. moved his family onto the estate, and they became successful cotton farmers and ranchers. However, the family fell on very hard times during the Great Depression, causing the untimely, murderous deaths of both Sharp Jr. and his wife. “In the 1930s, his wife was found poisoned in the dining room, while Sharp Jr. was found hanging from the cistern,” Richard said. Although legend said Sharp Jr. was found in the cistern, Richard has his own insight. “I think he died in the barn because I saw him [his apparition] when I was a kid.”

After the Sharps died, many tried to fix up the old property, but none succeeded, until the Gillespie family bought it back in the ’60s. In the 1970s, the property owners decided to help raise funds for the community by decorating and opening their property to the public. “The house has now been open to the public as a haunted attraction [during the Halloween season] since 1974,” Richard said. “Many charities have helped to run the haunted house, but the Boy Scouts took it over in 1981.”

Richard has his own history with the Reindeer Manor estate. He was a member of the Cub Scouts and later the Boy Scouts. “I’ve been working at Reindeer Manor since I was 10,” he shared. Richard was reared by a single mother in Duncanville. “We were poor, and I didn’t have much of a father figure,” he said. Not long after he joined the Scouts, Richard attended a campout with Boy Scouts Troop 1. That is when he decided they were the right group for him. He has been a Troop 1 member ever since and is now an Eagle Scout and an Assistant Scout Master.

Since 1981, Richard’s troop has been in charge of maintaining, setting up and running the annual haunted house event which is where Richard has volunteered for over 20 years. “As a kid, I was in love with the haunted house,” he said. “A lot of who I am is because of the house.”

The idea for running the annual haunted attraction was to raise funds for the troop and other charitable organizations, as well as teach the Scouts necessary life skills. “The best benefit of this is to give the kids a lot of construction skills,” property owner Jim Scott said. Jim has been the proprietor of the property since he bought it from the Gillespies in 1992. He is also the troop’s head Scoutmaster. Besides learning carpentry and electrical skills, “They also learn concrete, masonry and plumbing,” Jim said. “Any skill it takes to build anything happens here at the property.”

The planning for the attraction is a year-round task and the Scouts, along with the help of Venture Crew 3 [coed Boy Scouts], start working at the property every weekend during July and do not stop until after the haunting season is over. For every hour they spend tending to the grounds and attractions, each Scout member and his family obtain points that go into his own Scouting fund. This in turn helps to cover equipment and activities. The families have been known to work on the property during the hottest of heat waves.

Their hard work is eventually transformed into one of the spookiest haunts around. As you step onto the property, you must enter through an immense iron gate complete with fire breathing dragons. To access the main house, you have to go to the end of a line, which eerily mazes through a graveyard complete with many ghoulish surprises.

Once you enter the Main House, there are many rooms filled with terrifying encounters. There is the dining room, where the poisoned Mrs. Sharp was found, a creepy library, swinging bookcases, hidden doors, special affects, a vampire room, a morgue and a mad scientist room complete with a working Tesla Coil. “In the mad scientist room, we have a few Frankenstein-like experiments,” Richard said. “We might actually have the largest Tesla Coil in Texas, too.”

The special effects crew has created many hauntingly thrilling scenes. Some of those scenes, however, were not man-made. Each volunteer has their own area where they will not venture alone, claiming to have heard footsteps or to have seen apparitions and moving objects in those locations. “Anyone who has worked out here has seen something weird at one time or another,” Richard said. “I have worked out here for quite a while and have seen some stuff which has really freaked me out. There are a million stories here at Reindeer Manor.”

As you wander the eerie grounds, you can see the haunted pirate ship and gold miner’s tent city. Crossing to the other side of the property requires courage to sneak through a paranormal midway, complete with vendors and sinister, non-Disney-like characters like Uncle Stinky, the manor’s mascot of sorts. After passing Stinky and the Dungeon of Doom, the next stop is the barn, where Sharp Jr. possibly died. The barn is home to the manor’s 13th Street Morgue attraction. There is also the largest, and only, theater in Red Oak, as well as a casket-making room, pauper’s graveyard, funeral chapel, crematory, freezer and embalming room.

If curiosity and the horror of Reindeer Manor is not enough to encourage you to visit this local haunt, maybe just knowing your visit will help the Boy Scouts will be enough to partake in a frighteningly fun outing at Reindeer Manor.

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