Ghosts along the Texas Coast (7 page)

Back to where, in the days of yore

They lived, and breathed, and walked the shore;

And dreamed their dreams, as now we do,

And loved the homes that they once knew . . .

Their stories now I bring to you.

Way down at the very bottom of the Rio Grande Valley at what one might call the “jumping off place,” lies a beautiful city of some 95,000 souls, called Brownsville. The city sits just across the Rio Grande from its sister city, Matamoros, in the Mexican state of Tamaulipas. The two cities are in one of the most interesting and intriguing regions in Texas, dating back to Spanish Colonial days, and covering periods of exploration, wars, revolutions, banditry, and “you name it . . . it was there.”

General Zachary Taylor established Fort Brown in 1846 to maintain the United States' claim to the Rio Grande as the international boundary, the line won some ten years earlier by Texans in their battle for independence from Mexican domination. The old fort housed troops during the Mexican war, defended the border, and later exchanged hands during the Civil War. By a strange quirk of fate, the last engagement of the Civil War, the Battle of Palmito Ranch, was fought near Brownsville in May of 1865. Confederate soldiers under the command of Colonel John S. Ford, not having heard of Lee's surrender a month earlier, completely routed and captured a Federal force in a fierce running two-day encounter. Only after the battle did the victorious Rebels learn of Lee's surrender. The victors then became the formal captives of their former prisoners! That battle was the final one of the Civil War.

Fort Brown's hospital was where the famous Dr. William Crawford Gorgas did much of his yellow fever research. During the Spanish American War, he was appointed chief sanitary officer in Havana and did much to clear that city of yellow fever. Then he was sent to Panama, where in five years he succeeded in greatly reducing the death rate from yellow fever during the time the canal was being built. Later, Gorgas became Surgeon General of the U.S. Army and was promoted to the rank of Major General.

Today the hospital has been converted to an administration building for the University of Texas at Brownsville (formerly called Texas Southmost College) and is called Gorgas Hall. Other campus buildings from the original fort days, which ended in 1920, are the Medical Laboratory, the Military Police Headquarters, the Post Guardhouse, the Morgue, and the Post Headquarters.

The former fort has its ghosts, too.

Yolanda Gonzalez, librarian at the Arnulfo L. Oliveira Memorial Library on the University of Texas campus, was kind enough to share some interesting happenings with me. “There are supposed to be ghosts everywhere,” she says, as she related personal sightings and experiences she has had. She believes the college's ghosts are friendly, and she doesn't fear them. On several occasions, she has seen books in glass-fronted cabinets move slowly, as if someone were searching the shelves for a certain book.

One night while working late putting up a display to go on view the next day, she saw a door to the Hunter Room open, then close. She thought the janitors might have opened the door, and ignored it until she saw both janitors come in together from having dinner. The three then investigated and found the door was still locked. Gonzalez said they told her it was “just the ghosts of the college.”

According to an article which appeared in the October 31, 1993
Brownsville Herald
, one of the most widely told stories concerning the old fort was related by a janitor, who early one morning walked out of the building and heard the “thundering of horse hooves and the stomping of marching soldiers.” When he looked out, he saw an entire regiment of soldiers on parade, saluting the American flag!

Ms. Gonzalez talked at length to the janitor who had viewed the strange dawn ceremony. She said he described in great detail how the soldiers and horses looked, and said a bugler was standing near the flag. He said the sound of the horses' hooves was so loud he got scared and tried to run away.

Later that same morning, the janitor found a button from a uniform, and a buckle. He kept the button but gave Gonzalez the buckle, which she took to the Historic Brownsville Museum. The museum director, Bruce Aiken, authenticated it as being a buckle used in some type of harness like a backpack or horse harness. It could have been used anytime from the 1860s to the 1910s, he said.

The ghostly soldiers also bothered another college employee. When John Barham, former Dean of Continuing Education, first arrived in Brownsville, he was given a room in the old commandant's house until he could find a place to live. Barham, now Provost of Suffolk Community College in Long Island, N.Y., said that for three mornings he was awakened by the sounds of marching feet and of prancing horses' hooves. He said he could distinctly hear the hoof beats and the jingling of spurs.

Barham told the college officials he had been awakened by the ROTC cadets marching early every morning. Imagine his great surprise to learn that the college didn't even have an ROTC program! He later learned the old parade ground ran right in front of the former commandant's house where he was staying.

Gorgas Hall, the former fort hospital, has its share of ghostly visitors, also. Numerous people have reported sighting a lady dressed from head to toe in white in the style of nursing uniforms a hundred years ago. She walks into locked offices and sits behind desks. No one has been able to engage her in conversation thus far.

Several janitors have sighted a woman dressed in black mourning attire. She asks for directions to the hospital and inquires about the condition of her son. Several janitors have seen the same woman, and sometimes the incidents have taken place several years apart! Some of the janitors who saw the lady and didn't realize that Gorgas Hall had been a hospital during the old fort days, directed her to the hospital across town. Only later did they realize they had encountered a ghost!

Then there's the puppy story. A little stray puppy has been sighted by many people over the years. He will follow a group of friendly people as they walk from class to class. When they stop and sit down, the puppy literally disappears! Administrators point out that the walkway which spans the length of the campus, connecting all the buildings, is at almost the same location as a similar dirt road that ran the length of old Fort Brown. The similarity was discovered after comparing old pictures of the fort and modern photographs of the college. No doubt, the friendly pup is just trying to find his way home!

Some people seem to think a building or house has to be very, very old to be haunted. Wrong! A very modern building can be haunted, too, because of something that happened there, or because of something that happened in that locale before the building was erected. And then, there are the houses and buildings that have been unknowingly built over graveyards. They can really have problems!

No one knows what caused the Brownsville offices of the Community Development Corporation at 833 W. Price Road to be haunted. A June 13, 1982 edition of the
Brownsville Herald
carried a very interesting story about the building by Greg Fieg, a staff writer.

It seems that the building, a very modern office complex with acoustical ceilings, wall-to-wall carpeting, and all modern conveniences, became so wrought with ghostly happenings that many employees quit, and the people in the Community Development Corporation were planning to move at the end of the summer to another location.

Eerie organ music, vibrating furniture, flashing lights, and strange unexplained noises in their offices were bad enough, but Executive Director Nick Ramon also saw a tall, black-hooded figure that stalked the halls of the building. Ramon said when he saw the strange figure he ran out the door, but more than just being frightening, he felt the figure was extremely tragic and was suffering. “I felt sorry for him,” Ramon was quoted as saying.

Other employees at the offices saw strange shadows, as though a figure had moved from a chair just as they approached. There were other unusual occurrences such as low voices calling from dark, empty rooms, toilet paper rolling inexplicably across the restroom floors, doorknobs jiggling when no one was around, papers that would turn up missing and then reappear, and a radio that would turn itself on and off. Often some of the rooms would become unbearably cold, and staff members would sense some “presence” had entered them.

The staff members finally got so nervous that many of them kept vials of holy water, crucifixes, and various icons in their offices. They even called upon a priest, Father Timothy Ellerbrock, formerly of Christ the King Church, to help. He visited the offices, but his praying and rituals did not seem to help.

Ruben Reyna, who was fund-raising coordinator at the time the story appeared in the
Herald
, said he was playing his guitar in the staff conference room late one night when he heard strange organ music accompanying him. It sounded like an old pipe organ. It would build to a climax like in the old silent movies, then come to an abrupt stop. Yolanda Gonzalez, who worked in the same building for another firm, said she also had heard the organ music. She said it sounded like church music, but it was like the organist was practicing and never quite finished the piece. She said it was certainly a real organ that she heard! Well, there isn't a church within a half-mile of the building complex.

One night Reyna said he was frightened by “thumping noises” when he was alone, and as he fumbled for his keys to lock up and leave the building, he felt as if he were pushed, bodily, out of the office by some unseen hands.

The executive director, Ramon, has seen a flashing light, a furious “tempest” raging inside the office water cooler, and other strange things that defy explanation, in addition to the black-hooded figure. One woman employee is convinced that “something” chased her down a hallway. Augustin Sauceda, a housing counselor, said a voice once called out his name from within an empty office. He thought at first it was Nick Ramon. The voice called “Augustin . . . Augustin.” When he looked inside and saw no one in the office, he then recalled that Ramon was out of town!

Too many things happened to too many people in that building. They were more than glad to change their office address!

This story came to me through the generosity of Yolanda Gonzalez, librarian at the Arnulfo L. Oliveira Memorial Library on the campus of the University of Texas at Brownsville. It appears in
Studies in Brownsville History
, edited by Milo Kearney. The story was told by Felipe Lozano in his Brownsville barbershop to his customers in 1963 and was recorded by Peter Gawenda.

Way back, when Brownsville was still a small town, there used to be an empty area next to the old graveyard. People used to call it
el pasto de las almas
, meaning the pasture of souls. . . .

It all started in 1849, when during an epidemic of cholera more than one hundred people died within a few weeks. As Brownsville did not have a priest yet, and as the padre from Matamoros was busy across the border, many bodies had to be buried in mass graves or unmarked graves without the blessings of the church. And as the graveyard was too small anyway, the bodies were hurriedly buried right outside.

In later years, the 1860s and 1870s, when [Juan] Cortina [the Mexican Revolutionary guerrilla fighter] raided the town and countryside, or when bodies of unknown desperados were left behind after shootouts, they also were buried beside those outside the graveyard.

But around 1880, the night before All-Souls-Day, several people observed a very strange phenomenon. As it is a custom to care for the graves of loved ones before All-Souls-Day, people were still planting flowers or arranging decorations on individual graves. A thin fog had started to settle around the graveyard and dusk was slowly replaced by darkness when suddenly a light popped out of the ground, right there where the
desconocidos
(unknown people) were buried. The light
looked like the flame of a candle and it seemed to float back and forth very slowly. And after a few seconds it was gone.

Only two or three people had seen it, but the word got around quickly. And when suddenly another light appeared, then a second, a third and even a fourth one, and when the lights seemed to float towards the graveyard, everyone ran as fast as they could. Although people were afraid, some dared to pass the graveyard during the following nights. In some of the town's cantinas the very brave or maybe the very drunk made bets that they would go visit the
pasto de las almas
at midnight. And those that really did, would return pale and sober.

Very quickly the word spread that the flames were the souls of those who could not find rest because they had been denied the last rites or were buried outside of the blessed earth. For several years afterwards the gruesome appearances would occur, especially around All-Souls-Day, until finally a priest blessed that piece of land and a mass was read. Later, when the graveyard was expanded, this lot was included.

Nowadays only on very rare occasions can one see one of these flames pop out of the ground, then slowly wander over several graves, then stop, or slowly float back, and then disappear. If you should ever see one, please say a prayer, so that the wandering soul might find rest.

This is another story told by Felipe Lozano in his barbershop in Brownsville in 1963 and written down by Peter Gawenda for inclusion in the book,
Studies in Brownsville History
, edited by Milo Kearney:

Before the turn of the century several incidents occurred on ranchitos around Brownsville in which children and young mothers were helped by an old woman. Two of these stories are as follows:

The Garzas lived in one of the ranchitos right outside of Brownsville. Every morning they would head out into their fields and work all day long. Their only child, the four-year-old Consuelo, would be with them and she would usually play at the edge of the field or under the mesquite trees. She would chase butterflies. Very often one could see her interrupt her activities to look for her parents, and only after she saw them would she continue her play.