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Dawn at the Alamo
By James L. Choron
FATE :: October 2004

I’m originally from Texas, and even though it’s been several years since I was last home, I am still a devoted and dedicated Texan. Texas is a very old place by American standards, having once been a Spanish colony—part of New Spain—and, therefore, settled long before the rest of the United States. Aside from St. Augustine, Florida, the cities of San Antonio and Nacogdoches, Texas, are the oldest permanent cities in the United States.

The city of San Antonio, in particular, has a number of buildings known to have spirit entities present and to be the subjects of active hauntings. One of them, the most famous of the lot, is the Alamo.

Everyone who visits the Alamo, especially native Texans, has some kind of experience. Most of the time it is simply a sense of awe, or an overpowering sense of the immensity of what took place on the spot. In my own case, being a natural sensitive, it took a slightly different tone. In the summer of 1990, I took my children, Erich, Megan, and Heather, to see the Alamo and other sites in San Antonio. I had waited until I thought they were old enough to understand the significance of the place.

At first, the Alamo looks a bit small in comparison to the modern skyscrapers that surround it. That’s because only two of the original structures remain, and they are of Spanish Colonial construction, low and compact, dwarfed by their present surroundings. Not so a century and a half ago, when the sprawling old mission dominated the area to the north of what was then the city of San Antonio. Much of what was once inside the walls of the Alamo is now under pavement, or inside the walls of buildings that have sprung up around it (many of which are said to be haunted by spirits from the famous battle) as San Antonio spread to take in the area in which the Alamo is located. In 1836, the Alamo was not actually in San Antonio at all, but rather in open country on the outskirts of the then sleepy little town, over a mile from the center of the city, across the river and past “La Villita,” the nameless “little village” that bordered San Antonio.

In any case, I had a full schedule lined up, so we arrived at the Alamo early in the morning. The kids enjoyed the tour, especially Erich and  Megan, who seemed to be totally spellbound by everything around her. She was completely silent for the entire hour that we were in the Alamo, which is completely out of character for “Miss Marching Through Georgia,” who had never, to date, held still for over five minutes in her entire life.

As we were leaving the Alamo, Megan looked behind her and waved, then softly and very somberly said, “Goodbye, Jamie.” She pronounced it “Hymie” as it would be in Spanish, which is something that she had no way of knowing at the time. I looked around to see who she was waving to, thinking that she had met some new little friend on the tour; to my surprise, no one was in sight. When I asked her who she was talking to, she said “Jamie. There he is, right there.” She pointed to a spot directly in front of the Alamo’s doors. No one was there. I told her that I didn’t see anyone, that he must have gone back inside.  “No, there he is,” she said, and pointed. I still didn’t see anyone. She then described him to me: a Mexican boy, about 15 or 16 years old, wearing cotton pants, a white cotton shirt, sandals, and a tall black hat. She said that he had stood beside her the whole time we were in the Alamo and told her about the battle.

“He said that he was there. He said that he’s been here an awfully long time, and can’t go home. He was sad, but he was glad that he found me to talk to.” Now, my daughter does not have an imagination. If she says she saw something, she saw it. I had no doubt that she had seen the Mexican boy, just as I had no doubt, from the way she said he was dressed, that he had been a soldier in Santa Anna’s army, and that he had died on that long ago Sunday morning in 1836. I couldn’t help but wonder how many other little children he had befriended over the years, and if it helped him pass the long days that must hang over him terribly. Is he somehow tied to the spot where he died so young? Is he trying to get home to some long-forgotten village in Mexico? ....

Read the rest of this article in the October 2004 issue of FATE

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