The Texas Department of Transportation has added a Halloween-themed “Phantom” layer to its Statewide Planning Map, giving Texans a way to browse haunted hotels, cryptid sightings, urban legends and other spooky sites alongside transportation projects, TxDOT said in an Oct. 13 news story.
The agency described the Statewide Planning Map as Texans’ go-to online source for keeping up with transportation projects around the state. The new layer arrives in time for Halloween and coincides with the map’s twentieth anniversary, which TxDOT is marking by adding a special layer every month, the agency said.
According to the story, the layer features haunted hotels, mysterious cryptid sightings, urban legends, eerie cemeteries and UFO sightings. Examples cited by TxDOT include a ghost town in Big Lake, a haunted hotel in Mineral Wells, the legendary Hairy Man in Round Rock and an alleged UFO landing site on South Padre Island. The list also includes a cemetery in Aurora where a UFO is said to have crashed in April 1897, a spot on Old Greenhouse Road in Katy where mists are said to form in the shape of a woman who died in a car crash, and the haunted Worley Hospital in Pampa, where an episode of the TV show “Ghost Hunters” was filmed. Each entry includes the location, what visitors might expect and a short blurb on the site’s history, TxDOT said.
Elaine Wendt, a GIS analyst in TxDOT Data Management’s Roadway Inventory Branch, created the map. “I chose the month of October this year and wanted to explore historic regional folklore and haunted sites throughout our state,” Wendt said. “It was a fun and fascinating research project!” she added. “Many of the entries on this map are well known stories, while others were brand new to me.”
Danny Smith, Catherine Hodde-Pierce and Alejandra Zermeño of TxDOT’s Transportation Planning and Programming Division also assisted after working on a similar project, the agency said. They drew inspiration from an October basemap that Leslie Ralston and Tom Neville created in 2025. TxDOT also surveyed its employees for spooky stories and urban legends, and Wendt researched online articles, blogs, radio shows and books to find more.
TxDOT published the layer Oct. 5, and it will remain on the map, along with a spooky splash screen, for all of October, according to the story. After Halloween the layer will stay available as an option. More stories from the employee survey will be added as they are reported, and while the public cannot yet submit stories, TxDOT said it hopes to expand opportunities for public involvement for the 2027 version of the map.