Hauntings in America: Fast Freddy’s in Fort Worth, Texas

Utley J. Puckett, better known to the pool world as hustler U.J. Puckett, was born in 1911 and died 81 years later in 1992. In life he knew fame and fortune as a professional nine ball and one pocket champion alongside fellow sharks Minnesota Fats and Willie Mosconi. He was famous for his large brimmed white Stetson hat and his larger than life persona. But in death he’s known as a ghost who haunts his former pool room.

Fast Freddy’s is a pool room in Fort Worth, Texas, where Puckett frequented during the later part of his long life. It was in Fast Freddy’s where Puckett played pool, drank, picked up women, and hustled poor schmucks out of their money on the pool table. Fast Freddy’s pool hall was so much like home to Puckett, some now argue he never left, not even after his death sixteen years ago. According to R.A. Dyer at The Billiards Digest , Puckett’s “haunting” of Fast Freddy’s has brought both the man and the poolroom a spooky notoriety.

In life, U.J. Puckett was known for his love of pool, fishing, and pretty women. After he died, patrons of Fast Freddy’s began noticing strange happenings. Cue sticks would fall off their wall racks. Waitresses swore they felt the cold touch of large fingers on the back of their necks. Banging sounds would come from inside the empty beer cooler. The wooden floors creak at night when the bartenders are closing up. Some have even seen the specter of an old white haired man brushing down the pool tables. And security cameras have picked up Puckett’s image, but unfortunately poolroom managers have recorded over the ghostly tapes.

The strange haunting almost always occur after Puckett’s favorite chair is disturbed, which sits nearby his favorite pool table, #19. The chair has seen better days. Its ripped up leather upholstery will most likely never be repaired, lest Puckett’s ghost might take his revenge by dropping pool cues on your head, as happened to one woman. A clairvoyant brought in to contact the departed Puckett claimed she felt his presence near the chair, and advised the room’s patrons and employees alike to let the chair be. Don’t even sit in it, she said. And nobody does.

Whether or not the strange occurrences at Fast Freddy’s in Forth Worth are Puckett’s doing, one thing is certain. The memory of U.J. Puckett is alive and well and it’s living in Fort Worth, Texas.