San Antonio's Most Haunted Locations & One Is Debunked
As a former ghost tour guide around downtown, I definitely have my favorite spots to show people and favorite ghost stories to share. Here's a little list of a few of the most haunted & unmissable spots to hit this Halloween season (or anytime if you're spooky, like us).
San Antonio's Most Haunted Locations (& One Debunked)
The Menger Hotel - The Menger Hotel has recorded 32 different spirits residing inside its walls. The hotel is located just steps from the Alamo and sits on the grounds of a former colonial mission and battleground. This was a spot where there would frequently be white orbs floating in photos taken of my tour groups, and mass graves have been found that are completely unrelated to the battle of the Alamo. Spooky enough to make the list.
Emily Morgan Hotel - This beautiful neo-gothic building has been named the 3rd Most Haunted Hotel in the World by USA Today. San Antonio’s first skyscraper. It was also built in 1924 as the city’s first skyscraper. It was the Medical Arts Building, and was a bustling hospital. Now a hotel, it sits less than a block from The Alamo, and also shares the same level of unrest as The Menger. It is said certain floors show more activity, specifically the former 7th floor psychiatric ward, 9th floor operating rooms,14th floor family waiting area, and basement morgue. This medical history can be seen on the building itself with the gargoyles that suffer from different medical maladies.
The Gunter Hotel - The Gunter was built as a hotel since 1837 and has a long list of ghosts that have been reported, ranging from 1920's era call girls, to soldiers who fought at the battle of the Alamo, and some have reported seeing blues man Robert Johnson himself (he recorded at the hotel in room 414). The most notable and grisly incident this hotel is known for is a murder that took place in 1965. A son from a wealthy King William family checked into the hotel alongside a tall lady. Days later a housekeeper went into the room to tidy up and found Walter Emerick standing at the foot of the bed holding a bloody bundle and ran past her. The room was covered in blood, the bathtub had rings from the blood pooling and draining. No body was ever found. The only reason we know it was actually Walter who did this was the hot check he wrote for a meal at Schilo's Deli with the lady who was never seen again.
St Anthony Hotel - It was built in 1909 to be a purely-luxury hotel, and it was the first hotel in the world to offer central air-conditioning. It is also the location of Walter Emerick's demise. When a man checked in asking for the same room number that the murder happened in at the Gunter the staff had an idea this was the same man. They got him into 536 instead of 636, and then called the police. By the time they were able to get to Walter he had shot himself. There is also the ghost of a spurned lover in a red dress, and footsteps are often heard in empty hallways, doors opening on their own, lights flickering, etc.
The Briscoe Museum - Before they turned the historic building on the corner of Commerce and Presa into a fancy art museum, it was the Hertzberg Circus Museum, and it housed the oldest public circus collection in the U.S. This little building held over 42,000 items of circus memorabilia and rare books, and there was plenty of paranormal activity. I heard from a former clerk that the top floor was a favorite place for the spirits to play tricks, like opening all the filing cabinets when they left the room for a moment to return and have to close them all. I bet there's still plenty of ghosts still haunting those halls, but I haven't heard anything first hand about the museum myself. The elephants that were out front of the Circus Museum are now at The Witte.
Milam Park - Over by Santa Rosa hospital (close to where San Antonio's "Sporting District" was located, the racially integrated part of town with legalized gambling and prostitution) you'll find a little rectangular park with a sort of tall hill in the middle of it. That was a graveyard before that part of town started to rapidly grow, so they moved the graveyard (but not the bodies). When I took my ghost tours to this park there were floating white orbs in the photos, just like at the Alamo. When renovating the basement of Santa Rosa hospital the work had to be stopped because they were finding human remains. What a wild way to provide a park to your city's residents!
Tower of Life - This skyscraper (and the area of downtown it is in) was planned for in the boom of the 1920's and completed in 1929. It still stands as one of our most beautiful landmarks in our city, our 4th tallest building, and it remains the tallest eight-sided structure in the United States. The story is that the architect who designed it jumped from the building and killed himself in his grief after losing everything in the crash, because the value of the building fell dramatically when the stock market crashed later the year it was completed. This is not true. There have been very unfortunate stories of other people ending their lives this way, with brutal and messy results on the ground below. For a while there was a Sears located inside the lower levels of the building and it is speculated as to whether Walter Emerick bought a meat grinder from them to dispose of the body of the young lady he mascaraed. Famously and not speculatively, LBJ bought their wedding rings from this Sears location.
The Ghost Tracks - This is probably San Antonio's most famous haunting besides the Alamo itself, but the scariest thing about this story is this lack of reading comprehension that still plagues our society. There was a story in the newspaper about a bus full of children that was hit by a train in the 1930's. This was a news story from Salt Lake City. The tracks in question had a slope that would guide automobiles over the tracks when parked in neutral. The fact that the streets all have people's names lended to the story. People said the streets were re-named after the children who died. This is the accident that pushed us to have the railroad crossing safety measures that we have today. Here's more about this!
Déjà Vu Esoterica - My shop obviously has to make my list of my favorite haunted places in my hometown! The presence of multiple ghosts have been picked up on and discussed by countless visitors to the shop, but one in particular made himself known. His presence was confirmed by psychic medium Whitney Noland, “Given my abilities, I was very drawn to the cast iron railing on the wall. While looking at it I picked up on a young boy’s soul attached to it that looked to be from the late 1800’s. It was also confirmed by others who felt him around as well.” Read more about our haunted shop and the soul attached to our beloved lamb fencing here.
