Ghosthunting San Antonio, Austin, and Texas Hill Country. Michael Varhola

      INTRODUCTION

      TO SAY THAT I LIVE IN THE MIDST of a haunted landscape would hardly be an exaggeration. About a half mile east of my home, in the little wooded valley below the ridge it sits on, lies a tiny, haunted, 19th-century German graveyard, its half-dozen headstones clustered around an ancient oak and enclosed in a rickety fence. A half mile west of my home, the deep, overgrown ravine known as Devil’s Hollow—a dry creek bed within which ancient peoples once lived—descends from the spine of low, rocky mountains to the north. Four miles north of my home, the haunted highway that locals call the Devil’s Backbone runs along the top of the aforementioned chain. And, on a miniature charter-school campus located on that road, between a haunted one-room schoolhouse and a somewhat desolate historic cemetery, I have taught children history.

      Innumerable haunted and otherwise strange or spiritually charged sites of every sort radiate out from there in every direction, as if from the center of a supernatural vortex. Forty miles south, in the heart of San Antonio, you will find some of the most haunted locales in all of Texas, including the Alamo and the hotels that sit on the site of the battle that was fought around it, the Crockett and the Menger. Within blocks of these two are other hotels, colonial Spanish buildings, and the oldest continuously used cathedral in North America, all haunted by the ghosts of people who dwelled, visited, or worked in them in life. A little farther away lie the Ghost Tracks, where spectral children are known to move people’s stopped cars. If you head 25 miles east, you will come to the town of New Braunfels, which houses the historic village of Gruene and the beautiful and creepy Faust Hotel. Fifty miles north, in the state capital of Austin, government buildings remain occupied by the spirits of officials, their mistresses, and others who met strange or violent ends there, and numerous haunted parks, restaurants, and other sites can be found. And for a hundred miles north and west, up into the rugged, rolling highlands known as Hill Country, uncounted haunted crossroads, caves, wilderness areas, and towns dot the landscape.

      Urban legends abound in the area about things like zombie outbreaks and supposed encounters with devils at dance halls, as well as accounts of cryptozoological creatures like the Donkey Lady and chupacabra, UFOs and alien encounters, and other paranormal but nonghostly phenomena. We have decided that these things stray too far from the core subject of this book, however, and that they do not quite fit in with places reputed to be haunted by ghosts. Maybe one day they will warrant a book of their own!

      Texas is certainly one of the most haunted of all the states, as befits its vast size; long, violent history; and brief status as an independent nation. And, settled by Spanish explorers more than three centuries ago, San Antonio in particular has a rich haunted history that includes conquistadores, the local Apache and Comanche Indian tribes, old monasteries, lost gold mines, battlefields, and elegant hotels. Perhaps because of its bloodstained heritage, people have also always felt the presence of evil and the supernatural in Texas, evidence of which remains in the names of desolate, isolated, or forbidding places throughout the state—names like the Devil’s River, Devil’s Sinkhole, and Purgatory Road. Perhaps the iniquity that has occurred in Texas has inspired people to see the devil in its landscape, or perhaps he really is present and has inspired much of the evil that has been perpetrated here and the spiritual residua that remains.

      My own interest in the paranormal goes back as long as I can remember, in large part from having spent the first half of my life visiting spiritually charged or haunted places like the Tower of London in England, the Parthenon in Athens, the Paris Catacombs, old Nazi tunnels in Germany, and scores of castles throughout Europe. My attraction to the strange history of the American Southwest goes back just as far and is rooted in experiences that include family trips into the California desert, a year living on an Indian reservation in Roswell, New Mexico, and pilgrimages to ancient Spanish churches in Colorado.

      Since childhood I have also loved the classic song “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” a cowboy-style ballad that dates to 1948 and has been recorded by more than 50 performers. Unmatched in poignantly evoking the haunted tradition of Texas and the Southwest, it tells the tale of a cowboy who encounters a herd of spectral cattle being chased eternally across the sky by the damned spirits of cowboys. Hearing it never fails to raise the hair on the back of my neck:

      An old cowboy went ridin’ out one dark and windy day

      Upon a ridge he rested as he went along his way

      When all at once a mighty herd of red-eyed cows he saw

      Plowin’ through the ragged skies, and up a cloudy draw

      Their brands were still on fire and their hooves were made of steel

      Their horns were black and shiny and their hot breath he could feel

      A bolt of fear went through him as they thundered through the sky

      For he saw the riders comin’ hard, and he heard their mournful cries

      Yippie i ohhh ohh ohh

      Yippie i aye ye ye

      Ghost riders in the sky

      Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred

      Their shirts all soaked with sweat

      He’s ridin’ hard to catch that herd

      But he ain’t caught ‘em yet

      Cause they got to ride forever in that range up in the sky

      On horses snortin’ fire, as they ride on hear their cries

      As the riders loped on by him he heard one call his name

      If you wanna save your soul from hell a-ridin’ on our range

      Then cowboy change your ways today or with us you will ride

      Tryin’ to catch the devil’s herd, across these endless skies

      Yippie i ohhh oh oh

      Yippie i aye ye ye

      Ghost riders in the sky