Haunted Belton: Belton’s Past Haunts the Present

The city of Belton has proven to have some amazing history embedded in the area surrounding the heart of the city. The buildings that inhabit downtown Belton seem to harbor spirits of the ones that have come before us. Belton’s past events are the foundations in which enhance our desire to indulge in the idea that the unexplained can be explained.

As generations are replaced by another generation, folklore begin to shape the historical events of our city’s past, many of these events being unfortunate in nature. These tales give evidence of the possibility of immense paranormal activity occurring right here in Belton.

During this five-post series, Ghost Wagon Tours will take us on an historical journey through time with the help of the spirits that are just not able to let the past stay in the past.

Ghost Wagon Tours is owned and operated by Rick and Connie Bell of Temple, Texas.

“We got interested in ghost touring about seven or eight years ago. We didn’t start this tour in Belton until January of this year. We use specialized ghost radar that has recently been made available. We were wanting to do a haunted tour in Belton but we needed to see if there was anything haunted in Belton first. I started doing research and it just blew my mind with how much stuff was available. There are so many stories here in Belton that family members on the tour began filling in for us. We decided to do a tour to see how much activity we would see and we immediately began seeing multiple anomalies,” said Tour Guide Rick Bell.

The one mile, 90-minute tour is accompanied by a pulled-chained one-of-a-kind paranormal rolling wagon housed with a computer monitor which displays the visiting spirits and a speaker system vocalizing the words being spoken also by the spirits. The tour averages 20 thrill-seeking individuals from all the surrounding cities of Belton.

“I am curious. I do want something to happen yet I don’t know what to expect. I am a believer though,” said Dominique Brown of Waco, Texas.

Three different methods are utilized in connecting with the anomalies to include the Ghost Radar app, Dowsing Rods, and the Ghost Box.

“It’s real. You may not understand it. I didn’t understand it and I still don’t understand it. My background is in law enforcement for 10 years, so I’m a skeptic by nature. Police officers deal in evidence and evidence keeps piling up and at some point you must consider things. So for us (Connie Bell) it has been about all the evidence we have seen. I don’t waste my time trying to convince people that this is real. They just have to be open-minded about it. Fifty percent of people who we have on the tour have already had some type of experiences with spirit anomalies,” said Bell.

Our first stop on the tour we will be discovering the amazing history that is Central Ave. This includes a girl named Mary, electroshock therapy, underground passages, Prohibition, and Belton’s Grand Opera House.