Oonie's Ghost LbNA #50161

In 1843, Oonie’s father, Milt Andrews, built a splendid plantation-style mansion near Karnack, known locally as The Brick House. Sometime in the l880s, Andrews' 19-year-old daughter, Eunice, whom the family called “Oonie” (an Irish shortening of the name Eunice), sat alone in an upstairs bedroom when bolt of lightning from a storm struck the chimney, raced down a fireplace, and hit her. Oonie was burned to death. Over the years, stories arose that Oonie’s ghost never left the house. Eerie noises, odd happenings, and ghostly apparitions soon became common. When the Andrews family sold the house to Thomas Jefferson Taylor, Lady Bird Johnson's father (her given name was Claudia Taylor), in 1902, the ghost went along with the sale. When Lady Bird was five years old, her mother, Minnie, fell down a flight of stairs and died of complications from the fall. In a profile of Lady Bird Johnson, Time magazine described Lady Bird's mother as "a tall, eccentric woman from an old and aristocratic Alabama family, liked to wear long white dresses and heavy veils. Did Oonie’s ghost have something to do with the “accident”? Maybe she didn’t get along with Minnie. Sounds mighty suspicious to me. While Lady Bird said she never saw or heard the ghost, she admitted feeling a sense of apprehension and unease in the house as a child. She may have felt the same way in The "White" House as she did in The Brick House. It makes you wonder.

Directions: This letterbox is located in the Andrews Cemetery on Highway 43, three miles south of Karnack, Texas. From Marshall, take Hwy. 43 about 9 miles northeast. The cemetery will be on the west side of the road.

To the Box: Park in the parking lot next to the cemetery. Explore the cemetery if you like. At the back, beyond the fence, is an old part of the cemetery, but there is no gate, so the area is isolated. This may be where Oonie’s body lies, but we’ll never be sure, will we? Walk around to the front and face the arched gate with the name of the cemetery in the arch. Just to the right of the right brick column, on the ground next to the fence post, covered with a small piece of concrete and stuff, is the box. Up the road toward Karnack, a few hundred yards, is the white house known as The Brick House, the T. J. Taylor estate. This was the childhood home of Lady Bird Johnson and Oonie Andrews.