Missions Unknown » ghost story

The True Horror Story of San Antonio’s Gunter Hotel

Paul Vaughn — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 15:43:30 +0000

The historic Gunter Hotel as it looks today

In a city founded over 300 years ago, you are bound to find a few ghost stories and San Antonio more than its fair share. Writer/photographer Jack Dennis at Examiner.com recently detailed one particularly grisly tale of murder that has led to numerous spooky incidents over the years.

Dennis’s father, Walter “Corky” Dennis, was a member of the San Antonio police department in the 1960s. Jack Dennis interviewed his father along with officers Frank “Mr. Homicide” Castillon and Ben Hart to find out the details of the 1965 murder on the sixth floor of the historic Gunter Hotel. The Gunter Hotel (205 E. Houston Street) was built in 1909 in downtown San Antonio and was designed by architect John Mauran. It is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The story is told in seven parts at Examiner.com, but navigating them on the site is a different sort of horror story. There are scant links from one part of the article to the next, but fortunately we have links to everything.

The true horror story of the Gunter Hotel ghost, Part 1 sets the stage with a hotel maid ignoring the Do Not Disturb sign and stumbling into a bloody murder scene. Part 2 and Part 3 detail the police investigation including details of a meat grinder and a bloody bath tub. Part 4 brings the officers to the end of the trail of murderer Walter A. Emerick, while Part 5 takes you through the remainder of the crime scene investigation and funeral.

In Part 6, subtitled The Friendly Spirit, Dennis talks to long-time employees of the hotel about otherworldly activities. Hotel barber Lee Bosmans relates stories of the spirit of porter James Ellison and how it likes to move things around:

After Ellison’s family came to gather his belongs, “I noticed one day that his brush was still here,” Bosmans told the men. “It was right over there on that ledge and it was just an old brush so I just threw it away.”

“The next day when I opened the shop I noticed the BRUSH WAS RIGHT BACK WHERE IT WAS THE NIGHT BEFORE.”

(No one has access to the shop at night).

The true horror story of the Gunter Hotel ghost, Part 7, The Shower starts by noting that this Halloween marks the 16,700 day since the murder in room 636. The piece concludes with a litany of the creepy things that happen at the hotel.

Check after the jump for more on the bloody murder in room 636…

Want to know more? Check out GunterHotelRoom636.com for more details, original documents and theories about the events of February 1965. The video below was prepared by San Antonio Paranormal Investigations.

If you are looking for something unique this Halloween, perhaps it is the night to check in to the sixth floor of San Antonio’s haunted hotel.

Going Down to San Antonio’s Ghost Tracks

Mission Control — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 07:28:53 +0000

One of San Antonio’s persistent legends is that of the Ghost Tracks. The story goes that many years ago a busload of school children stalled out on a lonely stretch of railroad tracks. Naturally, a train came along and cut the bus in two, killing the driver and the children in front immediately. The children at the rear of the bus were dragged along for a slower, more gruesome fate. The streets in the neighborhood nearby were subsequently named in memory of these tragic waifs.

Now, if you head out to this desolate area of San Antonio (at the intersection of Shane and Villamain, south of Mission Espada) and put your car in neutral while it is sitting on the tracks, the ghosts of the dead children will come to push your car to safety. To confirm this, you can apply a coating of powder to your trunk and bumper to reveal the fingerprints of the ghostly crossing guards.

Dustin Coleman and the crew from 210SA went out to explore San Antonio’s Ghost Tracks. Here’s what they found:

What about the veracity of these claims?

Ghost Girl on the Tracks (Courtesy Andy & Debi Chesney via About.com)

Wikipedia notes that the Ghost Tracks are simply a ‘magnetic hill’ and that the tale is an urban legend. Roadside America lets you know that it is spooky feeling but not all that believable. Snopes.com does their standard job of debunking this tale, but About.com says that although you may be able to explain some of the phenomena present there is still plenty of mystery and they have the ghostly photographs to prove it!

If you head out to investigate yourself, be respectful of the neighborhood and be careful on the tracks…they are still in use and you do not want to spend the rest of eternity pushing cars out of the danger you should have avoided.

Scaring the Dickens out of them

Sanford Allen — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:51:00 +0000

Here’s something for the writers among us. Friends of the Dr. Eugene Clark Library in nearby Lockhart, Texas, is holding a Dickens-themed ghost story contest.

Contest entries must include a character from one of Charles Dickens’ works, be set in December around any of the December holidays and be under 4,000 words in length. The contest benefits Texas’ oldest continually-in-use library.

First prize is $500 and a trophy, second is $250 and third is $150. The contest fee is $20, and deadline is Oct. 1. Check out the group’s website for all the complete contest rules.