The Alamo

The most famous landmark in Texas, originally built as Mission San Antonio de Valero in 1724 by Franciscan monks. On March 6, 1836, Mexican forces under General Santa Anna overwhelmed the 200 Texan defenders in a 90-minute battle that killed everyone inside, including legendary frontiersmen Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. Before the battle, the site served as the city cemetery, holding at least a thousand bodies beneath its soil.

The Alamo began as Misión San Antonio de Valero, founded in 1718. Before the legendary 1836 battle, the plaza served as a cemetery from 1724 to 1793, with approximately 1,000 souls buried beneath what is now hallowed ground. On March 6, 1836, General Santa Anna launched his final assault, and in just 90 minutes, all 189 defenders fell—their bodies burned on mass pyres or dumped in the San Antonio River.

The hauntings began almost immediately. Mere days after the battle, when Santa Anna ordered the chapel demolished, Mexican soldiers sent to carry out the command reportedly encountered six ghostly figures wielding flaming swords—"diablos," they called them—guarding the ruins. The terrified soldiers fled and refused to return. General Andrade himself attempted to complete the mission but claimed to witness a towering spectral figure atop the Long Barracks holding balls of fire in both hands. The Alamo was spared.

By 1894, when the chapel served as a police station and the long barracks as jail cells, the San Antonio Express News documented regular paranormal activity: ghostly moans, phantom footsteps in corridors, whispered voices, and the sound of a sentry marching across the roof. Prisoners complained bitterly, but when guards began refusing night shifts, authorities relocated the jail entirely.

Modern visitors and rangers report seeing shadowy figures wandering the grounds at night—believed to be the restless spirits of the fallen defenders. Many feel an eerie presence near the old walls or inside the chapel. Novelist Diana Gabaldon, author of Outlander, claims she encountered the spirit of defender Robert Evans during a 1990 visit. The most frequently reported apparition is a small boy looking out from the gift shop window, thought to be a child evacuated at the siege's start whose father died in battle.

The spirit of Jim Bowie himself may no longer reside at the Alamo. His room in the low barracks was demolished by order of the San Antonio Town Council in 1871. When the structure came down, witnesses at the nearby Menger Hotel watched as spectral figures marched from their former rooms. Those seeking Bowie's ghost are advised to look at the Menger instead—built in 1859 directly on the former Alamo battlefield.