{This article originally appeared in The Island Guide, published July 16, 2012}

Dash Beardsley’s Ghost Tours of Galveston Island

History and Heroics of a Haunted Island

by Kimber Fountain

              Dash Beardsley came to Galveston in 1998 because he was looking for a woman, but not just any woman… He wanted to meet Miss Bettie Brown herself, heiress, artist, and socialite of Galveston Island. Miss Bettie lived in Ashton Villa (2328 Broadway), she died in Ashton Villa, and according to many, has stayed at Ashton Villa. He spent three nights there, hoping for some contact with this rebellious, spunky, and fearless woman. But she stood him up.

So, Dash began to wander the streets of Galveston, broken-hearted and forlorn, and asked shop owners and employees the intriguing question, “Do you have a ghost story for me?” The thought of creating a ghost tour had not yet even entered his mind, he was merely curious. Well it didn’t take him too long until he had around fifteen or twenty ghost stories, and this intrigued him even more than the elusive lady with whom he had begun his quest.

Upon several attempts to research Galveston and her ghost stories, Dash found very little. And thus out of intrigue and curiosity, a tour was born. After he found little to no documentation whatsoever of Galveston’s hauntings, he did as any wise man would do and he cracked open the history books. He wanted to know why Galveston was so haunted, and even more mysterious, why no one was talking about them.

This is why every patron of Dash Beardsley’s Ghost Tours of Galveston concludes the tour with an astonished awe resulting from a candid, back-door view into Galveston’s history and mystery. His Original Ghost Tour reveals Galveston Island at its finest: heroic police officers, courageous schoolmarms, and fearless soldiers of the Civil War. All people who lived for Galveston in its heyday, who died with Galveston amid its tragedies, and who have stuck around, waiting to see if maybe, just maybe, we will be the generation that will make the Island grand again.