Ascarate Park may just be one of the nicest places in El Paso, Texas to take a date for an afternoon picnic.
In addition to beautiful walking trails and a golf course, the park sports a gorgeous lake on which you can watch kayakers and ducks interact.
But whatever you do, you might want to be careful and avoid the park at night: that’s when the dead things come out.
Updated 2/11/2020 – Myths and legends abound in and around El Paso, but nowhere does one feel the creepy vibe of something not quite right with the world more than in Ascarate Park.
At least, that’s what you’ll hear if you talk to some of the people who’ve been unfortunate enough to go there after nightfall and wander around.
The Dead Girl Of Ascarate Park Wants You To Play With Her
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Eerie noises, areas of extreme cold, and a general feeling of dark depression are said to emanate all through the park grounds, and more than one person has ended up seeing things he or she couldn’t shake off for a very long time afterward.
Take, for instance, the dead girl.
Various versions of her story have her named Emily or Daphne, but the most common moniker by which she goes in the legends is Annabelle.
If you think your life has ups and downs, just wait until you encounter this particular spirit: we guarantee you, she’s had it worse.
They Dragged The Lake For Her Body For Days
Those who have encountered Annabelle in the park at night say that she’s not a pretty sight to look at; her face is torn and mangled from the horrific way in which she was murdered, and her clothing drips wet from the water in which she was tossed – piece by piece – after the gang of men who found her there a century and a half ago had gotten everything out of her that they wanted.
Local sources have it that she wanders up and down the park at night, screaming for help and sobbing.
This would be bad enough, but the fact that she has reportedly attacked passersby from time to time in an apparent case of mis-identification is much, much worse.
One such attack – which purportedly happened three years ago to a college student – left the young man cut and bleeding; those who witnessed the whole thing say that he ran screaming out of the park, and was later picked up by authorities – by which time he was already stark raving mad.
When asked what had happened, all he was able to say over and over again was the word “fingernails”.
And indeed, the marks which ran vertically along his face like the tick-marks of a man counting out his prison sentence bore a strong correlation to the marks of fingernails.
He said later that she was following him down a creepy path like she wanted to tell him something – almost like she was being coy and shy and wanting to ask for help with something, but obviously it wasn’t a very friendly encounter after all.
He said he could barely see through all of the mist, and as it got thicker, she made her move.
The most disturbing thing about the marks – and the detail which everyone who was there that night never fails to recount in his or her version of the horror story – was that they smelled rotten, like a decomposing body at the bottom of a lake.