Showing posts with label apparitions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label apparitions. Show all posts

Friday, September 4, 2020

The Goliad Ghosts

The Presidio in Goliad
After the fall of the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas in 1836, the victorious Mexican forces continued to march east toward the Presidio in Goliad where Colonel James Fannin commanded 400 Texas men. The Texans were ordered to move to Victoria, a more defendable position on the other side of the Guadalupe River. During the move though they ran into the main body of the Mexican troops while crossing an open prairie. 

After fending off four separate attacks on the first day, the Texans spent that night digging trenches. In the morning, however, they found they were now totally surrounded by the enemy. Almost out of ammunition, Fannin asked for a parley to prevent his troops from being massacred. General Urrea, commander of the Mexican forces, promised the Texans would be treated as prisoners of war and given clemency. 

Upon surrender, the Texans were marched back to the Presidio at Goliad and placed under the watchful eyes of Nicolas de la Portilla and his detachment of men while Urrea and his remaining troops continued their march south. However, Santa Anna, the president of Mexico, was determined to fight a war of extermination and ordered Portilla to execute the prisoners. Having conflicting orders from General Urrea and General Santa Anna, Portilla chose to follow Santa Anna's orders.

Inside the walls of the Presidio where the
wounded were killed
On March 27, the prisoners were divided into quarters. While the sick and wounded remained in the chapel, the other three groups were escorted on different roads out of town. The three groups were told they were on missions to gather wood, drive cattle or sail to safety in New Orleans. When they were ordered to halt a half-mile from the fort, however, the Texans realized their fates. The Mexican guards opened fire as some of the men began running for their lives. Those not killed by gunshots were slaughtered with bayonets.

Back at the presidio, the Mexicans stood the wounded against the chapel wall and executed them. The wounded who couldn't stand were shot in their beds. Fannin, who had been shot in the thigh during the original engagement, was the last to be killed. His three dying wishes were to be shot in the chest, given a Christian burial, and have his watch sent to his family. Instead, Portilla shot Fannin in the face, burned his body with the others, and kept the timepiece as a war prize. In all, nearly 350 men were killed at Goliad.

Today, almost 185 years later, the old presidio and its adjacent Chapel of our Lady of Loreto still stand. Given the horrific events that happened within and around the site, is it any wonder the walls sometimes echo with the mournful sounds of spirits returning from that troubled and turbulent time? 

Visitors often report feeling "cold spots" and uneasy feelings as they walk around the grounds where Fannin and his men were executed. In 1992, a man named Jim reported strange goings-on. As a former deputy sheriff and a security guard for a number of years, Jim was not a man easily frightened or prone to make up wild stories. Hired for a few nights to watch over some equipment at the presidio that was to be used for the Cattle Baron's Ball, he expected quiet routine nights. On his first night though, just before midnight, the silence was broken by the "eerie, shrill cries of nearly a dozen terrified infants." He swore the sounds indicated "pain and suffering." Although understandably frightened, he tried to find where the sounds were coming from. After several long minutes, he finally determined they were coming from one of the dozen or so unmarked graves that are located near the Chapel of Our Lady of Loreto.

As he shined his flashlight on the spot, the cries abruptly stopped but were immediately replaced by the singing of a women's choir. It sounded like it was coming from the back wall of the old fort, but the beam of his flashlight revealed nothing there. After two or three minutes, the singing stopped and silence returned for the rest of the night. When Jim reported his experience, he was teased by his co-workers, but he is convinced what he saw and heard was real and besides, he is not the only person to report strange things in and around the presidio.

The chapel
Numerous people have reported seeing a strange, 4-foot-tall friar who suddenly appears by the double doors leading into the chapel. His robes are black, tied around his waist with a rope and his face is concealed with a hood. He then walks barefooted to each corner of the church and seems to bless it before walking to the center of the quadrangle and begins to pray in Latin. 

A woman in a white dress has been reported kneeling and crying by the graves of the children. When seen, she then turns and looks directly at the person before gliding over to a wall and vanishing. A beautiful soprano voice is often heard emanating from one particular room, but upon investigation, there is nobody in the small space. Visitors who stay late often come back from the fort and comment to the staff about the historical reenactors even though there are no reenactors on the property that day. 

It seems there are many restless spirits here. Who are the crying babies? Are they the little lost souls of pioneer infants killed by Indians in a raid or was there an epidemic that took their too-short lives. The woman in white - is her own child buried in one of the unmarked graves? Why does the short friar keep returning? Is his soul in turmoil over so many brave men who were brutally executed? Whose souls are eternally singing beautiful hymns in a choir, unable to leave this chapel? Caught in a timeless web, so many lost souls searching, sorrowing, singing, praying, unable to let go of the life they briefly lived in a little town named Goliad.

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Haunted Gettysburg

The Civil War battle that was fought at the small town of Gettysburg in July 1863 was the greatest conflict of the war. The fighting raged not only in the woods, fields, and hills around the town but up and down the streets and in the homes of the people who lived there. 

After three days of intense fighting with cannon, guns, and men often engaged in vicious, brutal, desperate hand-to-hand mortal combat, there were almost 7,100 dead, 34,000 wounded, and 11,000 missing (captured or dead with body not found). When both armies pulled back, they left behind streets and fields littered with the bodies of the dead slowly decaying in the heat of the Pennsylvania summer. The people of Gettysburg were left with thousands of wounded to attend to and homes and businesses were turned into field hospitals. One local woman recalled, "Wounded men of both armies were brought into our homes and laid side-by-side in the halls and rooms. Carpets were so saturated with blood as to be of no further use. Walls were hideously bloodstained as were books which were used as pillows for the suffering men. In the streets and fields, the rotting corpses, swollen to twice their original size, actually burst asunder. Outside a home, several human, or inhuman, corpses sat up against a fence, with arms extended into the air and faces hideous with something very like a fixed leer." There are still many places throughout the town of Gettysburg where spirits from the battle are said to linger: homes, shops, hotels, and restaurants are said to be infested with ghosts and the unexplained. 

People have on numerous occasions told of smelling peppermint in the air while walking around the area known as Cemetery Hill. Most have no idea that on the first day of the battle, the Confederates routed a large group of Northern soldiers who retreated through the town to a piece of higher ground where they made a desperate stand. The place where many of them died by the end of that day was Cemetery Hill. As the battles raged on for two more days, the bodies were left to rot in the hot July sun. After the battle was over, Gettysburg citizens had to retrieve and bury the decayed, rotting corpses. They were only able to withstand the awful stench by covering their noses with handkerchiefs containing pieces of peppermint. 

The small college now known as Gettysburg College is a quiet place today, but in 1863, the college campus found itself in the middle of the fighting. Consisting only of 3 buildings then, it was used as a field hospital for the wounded and dying. The buildings still bear the scars of fired bullets from those terrible three days. Constructed in 1837, Pennsylvania Hall, a large stately building with tall white columns was originally a dormitory. Today it houses the campus administration offices. The Confederates captured the building after a skirmish and used the tall cupola as a lookout as well as a field hospital. Men were stationed as lookouts and even General Lee himself climbed the stairs to the top in order to keep an eye on the progress of the battles. Students and staff alike have reported seeing the figures of soldiers pacing back and forth long after the building has been closed and deserted for the night. 

The terrible conditions of the field hospital are what have left the strongest impression on the old building. Many times people have reported hearing what sounds like men screaming. Most staff members refuse to work in the building after sundown. Two professors, both known to be honest, forthright, and avowed disbelievers of the supernatural, did work in the building late one night up on the 4th floor. When they entered the elevator to go down to the 1st-floor exit, the elevator for some reason passed by the first floor to the basement. The doors opened on a terrible scene. The basement storage room had vanished and in its place was the blood-spattered operating room during the battle. Wounded men were writhing in pain as doctors and orderlies in blood-soaked clothing operated on them with no anesthetic, dealing with bullet wounds by the preferred treatment of the time, amputation. Off to the side of the room was an area where men who could not be saved were laid, waiting to die. Next to the dying lay hundreds of amputated legs and arms. The professors said there was no sound, but in their heads, they could hear the horrible wails, groans, and screaming. They frantically punched the buttons of the elevator to shut the doors on the horrible scene, but they wouldn't close. Then, one of the doctors looked up after severing a leg and, while holding his saw in one hand and the amputated leg by the foot in the other, looked directly at the professors. He gestured for them to come assist in the operations that were taking place. The professors, frozen in fear, couldn't move. The doctor dropped the leg and his saw and began walking toward them. Mercifully, the elevator doors closed just before he reached them. The professors, although thoroughly shaken by their experience, continued to work in the building after that, but neither of them ever took the elevator again, preferring to exit the building by way of the stairs.


A widow lady by the name of Mary Thompson lived on a farm on the north side of Chambersburg Pike. During the battle, her home was used as headquarters by General Robert E. Lee. The house was also used as a field hospital for the wounded. The dead were moved into a barn across a dirt path from the house until they could be given a proper burial. As the battle raged, so many bodies were moved into the barn that they were "stacked up like cordwood," newer bodies piled on top of the previous ones in a grisly pyramid of the dead. Unfortunately, not every body piled there was dead. One of those men, so grievously wounded he was thought to be dead, was thrown onto the pile and soon became trapped beneath dozens of his comrades. At some point, he awakened to find himself alive but being almost suffocated beneath the weight of the grizzly remains. When the battle was over and northern troops began removing the bodies one by one three days later, one of them tugged on the leg of a body to disentangle it from the others. He was astonished when he finally tugged it free and the man's eyes popped open, his arms and legs began to twitch and terrible screams came from his lips. He had been alive, trapped beneath all those rotting bodies for four days, slowly going mad. A doctor was summoned, but nothing could be done. The man screamed and cried out incoherently for almost a week. He never regained his senses and died crying. 

In the late 1800s, the widow Thompson died and the barn burned down. New owners built their home over the barn site. Shortly after moving in, the family began reporting odd sounds coming from their basement which were not the usual creaks and groans of a new house settling. One night, a loud explosion, "like a furnace exploding," came from the basement. Then the whole house began shaking as if it was in an earthquake. "The appliances, dishes, glasses, and cutlery were shaking violently and falling off the shelves. Furniture in the hallway was moving from one side to the other." Loud noises continued to come from the basement so the family members went to open the door leading down. Before opening it though, the door began to bow outward as if there was a great force on the other side. It sounded as if someone with a sledgehammer was pounding it. This was enough for the family to flee in terror. 

The family refused to ever return to the house that had frightened them so badly. They did seek spiritual help from an old priest though and he went to bless the house. After his visit, he told the family that he had some experience with sending spirits on their way and he felt the need to perform a ceremony that would do this. He said he felt the house was haunted, not by an evil entity, but rather one they should pity. The spirit trapped in the house was a terrified young Confederate soldier who was desperately trying to free himself from the horrible place he was in before he died. A short time later, the priest performed the ceremony and marked the cellar door with a white cross with a circle around it. The family still refused to return to the house though and later sold it. The new family reported they never heard any suspicious sounds. The house is now owned by the Lutheran Seminary in Gettysburg and it remains quiet.

Another particularly sad story is associated with the old Jacob Hummelbaugh house. Located on Taney Town Road, it was just behind the Federal battle line. It was set up as the 2nd Corp field hospital. A Confederate general by the name of Barksdale was mortally wounded while leading his men in a charge against the northern troops. After repulsing the charge, Yankee troops collected the wounded and he was taken, still alive, to the Hummelbaugh house for medical treatment. According to written documentation, Doctors determined nothing could be done to save him so he was moved to the front yard and left to die. He repeatedly called for water so a young orderly fed water to him with a spoon until he passed. 

Several weeks later, General Barksdale's wife came to retrieve her husband's body to return him home in Mississippi for burial. Along with the wife and her male helpers on the trip was the general's favorite hunting dog. Once the shallow grave of General Barksdale had been identified, the dog smelled around for a few seconds then laid down and began a mournful howl. Even after his master's body had been dug up and removed, the dog continued to lay next to the grave and refused to leave it. Finally, with the body readied for travel, the wife felt she had no choice but to leave the dog behind. Over the next days, the faithful dog became a familiar fixture. He would occasionally let out a pitiful, heartbreaking howl that could be heard all around the area, but in spite of offers of food and water, he refused to eat or drink or leave the gravesite. He eventually died of hunger and thirst, stretched out over his master's now empty burial place. Over the years since, every July 2nd, the anniversary of Barksdale's death, it is reported that an unearthly howl echos during the night as the faithful dog still grieves from a place beyond this world.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Haunted Texas Mission

In far south Texas 5 miles outside the city of Mission and a short distance from the Rio Grande River and the Mexican border is La Lomita Mission. The mission, formerly maintained by the Oblates of Mary Immaculate Order of priests and nuns, was established to give a place of holy worship and comfort for the area residents, to "propagate the faith among barbarians" and to carry on humanitarian work. The Oblates, a French Order, built the chapel and a brick residence in 1899 and manned it with 3 priests and a few nuns. The structures were built on a large tract of land which had been deeded to the group by a Frenchman who had recently passed away. Although the site was what today we consider near the city, in those days the distance and unpaved roads proved to far for people to easily travel. Just 3 years later, the mission was moved to a new complex within the city limits.

La Lomita Mission chapel was restored in
1976 as a designated historic building of
South Texas.
According to a story handed down through several generations, there actually was a different reason the mission was moved; a much more sinister reason. This story explains that within a year after the priests and nuns moved in, isolation and human nature got the best of the holy residents. Only the nuns and priests will ever know exactly what went on during those long, dark, not so lonely nights, but remember, this was long before effective birth control. The sudden absence of individual nuns would be explained away by the priests who said they were on a religious retreat. The nun would suddenly reappear several months later, but if asked, would always refuse to talk about her absence. One of the missing nuns who was "on a retreat" was spotted by a Mexican family who came across the river in the back of the chapel. She was working in a small garden and when she saw the family, she ran away to hide in the building. Her belly was obviously large with child. Worshipers who made their way to the chapel began reporting hearing cries of babies in this place where no babies should be.

The prohibited activities couldn't be concealed forever. These people of the cloth, afraid they would be excommunicated if the children were discovered, committed the most hideous, unholy act imaginable. They began burying the children's bodies in the field behind the church.

One day a powerful hurricane hit the area bringing wide-spread flooding and much devastation. The little chapel was heavily damaged. After the waters receded, people living on the area ranches came to help repair the structure. Two families coming across the river made a horrible discovery - the bones of a baby sticking up from a washed out shallow grave. Their cries of horror brought others to the field behind the chapel and soon, more little bones were being found in little graves. The priests and nuns made a quick retreat to their living quarters and locked the door to the structure.

That very afternoon, when word spread to the ranches and through the town, the people were so horrified that they stormed the mission grounds. While the mob was breaking down the doors, one of the priests escaped out of a back window, but the other two padres were captured and beaten to death. The nuns were stripped of their religious habits and forced to cover themselves with rough muslin and potato sacks. They were placed in the back of a flat-bed wagon and taken away. No one seems to know, or at least no one will tell, what happened to the nuns after that, but neither they nor the priest who escaped were ever heard of or seen again.

The mission stood empty for a long time afterwards. Some say the bones of the priests remained laying beside the chapel as a reminder of its horrific past until the animals had eaten and carried them away. Rumors of babies cries and screams of the condemned in the night began to be reported. Soon, nobody dared venture near the site.

Abandoned ruins of the Catholic training center
for novice priests. Residents here were plagued
by cries and strange lights coming from the
nearby chapel.
Eventually, a large 3-story brick building was erected to house a Catholic training center for novice priests a few hundred yards away from the chapel. Tales of strange lights and unexplained noises emanating from the area of the old chapel plagued the center throughout its existence. It was soon abandoned. In 1974, another building was constructed on the property for use as an insane asylum. From the time it was opened, the inmates and staff members repeatedly reported ghostly apparitions and anguished cries coming from the old chapel building. On numerous occasions, uninformed visitors and passerby's reported seeing the translucent figure of a nun either standing in the window of the chapel or floating in mid-air in front of the chapel. Perhaps she was one of the disgraced nuns, the only one whose faith and honor remained true; an innocent daughter of Christ caught up in the mob's outrage that day. The people who have seen her report her head is bowed as if in prayer. Most of the time she is seen by the moonlight of night, but she has also been seen occasionally in broad daylight. If approached, the figure slowly transforms into a shapeless, misty cloud before vanishing altogether.

Finally, the evil vibes of the place became too much to bear and the buildings were permanently closed. The town of Mission has turned a portion of the grounds into a park, but it's a park no one goes to after dark.
 

Sunday, November 30, 2014

The Dead Don't Rest In The Tower of London

In the year 1066, William The Conqueror had the Tower of London built to keep away the hostile Londoners who wanted him dead. It served its purpose well, protecting the upper ranks of the privileged from harm until 1381 when Simon of Sudbury, the Archbishop of Canterbury, was dragged out of the Tower and murdered on the castle grounds by peasants. This was the first of hundreds, perhaps even thousands of deaths within the walls of the infamous Tower of London. With so much pain, anguish, torture and with so many gruesome deaths, it's no wonder this is one of the most haunted places in the world.



Inside these walls, hundreds, perhaps thousands of
guilty and innocent people have died.
On May 2, 1536, Queen Anne Boleyn was arrested on orders of her husband King Henry VIII and accused of adultery and incest. She was probably innocent, but her failure to produce a boy child as successor for the king and her strong, outspoken opinions on policy matters made her expendable. On May 19th, she was beheaded on the grounds of the Tower. She is buried in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula within the castle, but her spirit is not at rest.  Shortly after Anne's death came the first reported sighting when an unconscious chambermaid was found on a path near the execution spot. Upon being revitalized, she began babbling almost incoherently about seeing the Queen floating on the path ahead of her. The chambermaid was later sent home for the day, but she didn't return to work the next day and was never heard from again. Since then, there have been innumerable sightings of Anne Boleyn, sometimes walking the grounds, sometimes floating a few inches above the paths in the tower complex, but always near the spot of her execution. Even more unnerving, she is often reported to be seen on her walks holding in her arms her own decapitated head. On two separate occasions, witnesses reported the eyes in her head moving back and forth as if she was looking for something and when those eyes saw them, they stared with a fierceness that could only come from a being supremely upset about a terrible injustice. Perhaps the queen actually was innocent of such scandalous charges as those lodged against her and has yet to forgive her husband and those complicit in her death. Whatever the reason, one of the witnesses was reportedly found dead the very next morning with a look of utter fright on their face. A second witness claimed "the eyes saw me!" Over and over she kept repeating "the eyes saw me!" She died three days later from what was thought to be an exploded heart brought on by fright. Since then, it has been said if you happen to see a female apparition in the tower walking with her detached head held in her arms, quickly turn your own head and run away. Whatever you do, do not stand around giving the head's eyes time to lock upon you for it is surely a sign of your own imminent death.


The Queen's House within the Tower of London
where Arbelia's restless spirit roams
In 1610, Arbelia Stuart, aged 35, married 22-year-old William Seymour, the nephew of Lady Jane Grey. Unfortunately for them, they did not have the permission of King James 1 and due to court politics, the marriage was considered a threat to King James. The king arrested William and sent him to the tower. Arbelia was put under house arrest in the town of Lambeth. Arbelia plotted to free William so they could escape together and flee to France. Secret messages were sent back and forth despite the great danger by friends and servants who were loyal to the couple. At the appointed time in the dark of night, Arbelia slipped away from her guard and made it to the rendezvous point, but William's escape had been delayed. When he did not arrive on schedule, Arbelia, fearing for her life, boarded the escape boat and sailed away. William made good his escape from the tower, but arriving after Arbelia had already sailed away, he managed to board another boat and made his way safely to freedom in France. Arbelia was not so lucky. Her boat was intercepted by English authorities and she was returned and sentenced to be imprisoned in the Tower of London. She wrote numerous letters to the king begging forgiveness and to be pardoned, but he would not relent. She also wrote letters to William in France, but having discovered Arbelia did not have the money or
power she had led him to believe when they were secretly courting and now having a good time with French ladies closer to his own age, he never answered any of her entreaties. As the weeks and months turned to years, Arbelia became despondent. She took to her bed in The Queen's House in the tower complex and refused to leave it. Some reports indicate she eventually starved herself to death; other reports say the king grew so frustrated with her he ordered her murder. Either way, Arbelia was pronounced dead on September 25, 1615. After William heard of her death, he wrote to the king requesting a pardon and vowing eternal allegiance to him. The pardon was granted, William returned to England and was married to a beautiful young lady within 6 months. Is it any wonder poor Arbelia's spirit is still seen wandering the halls of The Queen's House sobbing and wailing?


Another mysterious manifestation is simply known as "The Lady in White." Still unidentified, she is said to have stood in a window of the White Tower, the oldest and most foreboding structure, waving to children playing on the other side of the moat which used to surround the tower complex. She supposedly always wore an abundance of cheap perfume. For several hundred years, a ghostly apparition of a woman dressed in a flowing white dress has been reported sadly looking out of the same window and walking up and down the steps within the White Tower. The apparition is always accompanied by the strong sweet scent of a cheap perfume that is so cloying it gags everyone who encounters it.

When Edward the IV died in April, 1483, his 12-year-old son was supposed to succeed him as Edward the V. However, before the coronation could take place, both he and his younger brother Richard were declared illegitimate by the Parliament and their uncle, the Duke of Gloucester, took the throne as King Richard III. King Richard had both boys sent to the Tower of London where they were often seen running around the grounds playing and chasing each other through the halls of the buildings. Three months later, they mysteriously disappeared and were never seen again. It was later determined that Richard had ordered them killed and buried within the tower complex. In 1647, 191-years later, two small skeletons were discovered buried together beneath a staircase in the White Tower. It was assumed they were the bodies of the young princes. Visitors and guards report seeing their spirits, sometimes holding hands while whimpering and
cowering against the stone walls of various rooms within the White Tower, sometimes running, playing and laughing on the grounds throughout the complex. More often, only the happy sound of two young boys playing are heard or the unsettling sound of two children crying in fear. You will be compelled to run to the sound of the crying, wanting with all of your heart to help them, to comfort them, but when you get to where the sound is coming from, two little boys holding on to each other in a corner of the cold stone room will look at you as they and their cries slowly fade away.

In 1541, at the age of 72, Margaret Pole, the Countess of Salisbury, became the undeserving target for Henry VIII's vengeance. Margaret's son, Cardinal Pole, wrote a series of letters soundly denouncing the king's claim as head of the Church of England. The king couldn't get to Cardinal Pole as he was safely ensconced in France, so he did the next best thing, he had his mother arrested and sent to the Tower of London for execution. At the time of her scheduled execution by beheading, the feisty old lady was led onto the sturdy wooden platform and told by the Royal Executioner to kneel. She refused to do so, saying "So should traitors do and I am none." The executioner said very well and swung his huge ax at her neck, but Margaret ducked and began running around the platform. The horrified spectators stood watching as the ax-man continued to chase the aged lady around the platform, down the stairs and across the grounds, swinging his ax and cutting her to pieces even as she continued to run away screaming in terror and pain. Finally able to strike a blow which brought Margaret crashing to the ground, the executioner proceeded to hack her to death in a most bloody and gruesome manner. This horrible incident has been repeated by their spirits on numerous occasions which have been seen by a large number of witnesses, each time on May 27th, the anniversary of the death by hacking. It seems poor Margaret's screaming phantom is being chased for all eternity by her ghostly executioner.


These are just a few of the many ghosts, spirits and apparitions encountered within the walls of the Tower complex. Over 900 years old, drab gray in color with a sense of sadness and foreboding all around, the site of uncounted deaths in the most horrible of manners, the Tower of London has well earned its reputation as the most haunted place in England.