The Alamo

Originally Mission San Antonio de Valero, founded in 1724. On March 6, 1836, Santa Anna's forces killed all 200 Texan defenders in 90 minutes — including Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. The ground underneath had already been the city cemetery for over a century.

Mere days after the 1836 battle ended, General Santa Anna ordered the Alamo chapel demolished. The soldiers sent to do it came back terrified. Six figures wielding flaming swords blocked the entrance — "diablos," the soldiers called them. They refused to return. General Andrade tried next and claimed he saw a towering figure atop the Long Barracks holding balls of fire in both hands. The demolition never happened.

Before it became a symbol of Texas independence, Misión San Antonio de Valero served as a cemetery from 1724 to 1793. Roughly 1,000 people were buried beneath the plaza. Then came March 6, 1836. Santa Anna launched his final assault at dawn. In 90 minutes, all 189 defenders were dead — their bodies burned on mass pyres or dumped in the San Antonio River.

By 1894, the chapel had been repurposed as a police station, the long barracks as jail cells. The San Antonio Express News reported what the officers already knew: moaning in the corridors, footsteps with no source, whispered voices at all hours. Prisoners complained constantly. Guards started refusing the night shift. Eventually the jail was relocated altogether.

Rangers and visitors today see shadowy figures along the walls after dark. Novelist Diana Gabaldon, author of Outlander, says she encountered the spirit of defender Robert Evans during a 1990 visit. The most common sighting is a small boy in the gift shop window — thought to be a child evacuated when the siege began, whose father died in the fighting.

Jim Bowie's ghost may no longer be at the Alamo at all. His room in the low barracks was torn down by order of the San Antonio Town Council in 1871. Witnesses at the nearby Menger Hotel watched spectral figures march out of the building as it came down. If you want to find Bowie, try the Menger — built in 1859 directly on the former battlefield.