Ghost Story

Well, it being Halloween--one of my favorite holidays--I thought I'd post something suitable. [g]

Now, you'd think that I'd meet a lot of ghosts, what with my habit of walking battlefields, handling historical artifacts, touring ancient castles and houses, etc., but noooooo.

In fact, I've only met two ghosts in my life (I did have one that haunted my house for awhile, but she wasn't conscious of me, so no interaction there)--and the only strange thing about both occurrences is how utterly normal they both seemed. About fifteen years ago, though, a friend asked me to write up the first encounter for a newsletter published by the "Psychic Writers Network" (no, I haven't the slightest idea), so I did. Later, a website called www.allaboutghosts.com asked for permission to use it as well. So some of you may have seen this piece before. But for all of you--

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!


THE GHOST IN THE ALAMO
Copyright 1994 Diana Gabaldon


In May of 1990, I was at a writer's conference in San Antonio, staying at the Menger Hotel, a rather charming old place built in the late 1800's. It's also located across the street from the Alamo, which now stands in a little botanical park, full of trees and shrubs, each with a little metal label bearing its name.
A friend had driven up from Houston to see me, and he suggested that we go walk through the Alamo, he being a botanist and therefore interested in the plants. He also thought I might find the building interesting. He said he'd been there several times as a child, and had found it "evocative." So we strolled through the garden, looking at plants, and then went inside.
The present memorial is the single main church building, which is essentially no more than a gutted masonry shell. There's nothing at all in the church proper a stone floor and stone walls, bearing the marks of hundreds of thousands of bullets; the stone looks chewed. There are a couple of smaller semi open rooms at the front of the church where the baptismal font and a small chapel used to be originally separated from the main room by stone pillars and partial walls.
Around the edges of the main room are a few museum display cases, holding such artifacts of the defenders as the Daughters of Texas have managed to scrape together rather a pitiful collection, including spoons, buttons, and (scraping the bottom of the barrel, if you ask me) a diploma certifying that one of the defenders had graduated from law school (this, like a number of other artifacts, wasn't present in the Alamo, but was obtained later from the family of the man to whom it belonged).
The walls are lined with perfectly _horrible_ oil paintings, showing various of the defenders in assorted "heroic" poses. I suspect them all of having been executed by the Daughters of Texas in a special arts and crafts class held for the purpose, though I admit that I might be maligning the D of T by this supposition. At any rate, as museums go, this one doesn't.
It is quiet owing to the presence of the woman waving the "Silence,Please! THIS IS A SHRINE!" sign in the middle of the room but is not otherwise either spooky or reverent in atmosphere. It's just a big, empty room. My friend and I cruised slowly around the room, making _sotto voce_ remarks about the paintings and looking at the artifacts.
And then I walked into a ghost. He was near the front of the main room, about ten feet in from the wall, near the smaller room on the left (as you enter the church). I was very surprised by the encounter, since I hadn't expected to meet a ghost, and if I had, he wasn't what I would have expected.
I saw nothing, experienced no chill or feeling of oppression or malaise. The air felt slightly warmer where I stood, but not so much as to be really noticeable. The only really distinct feeling was one of...communication. Very distinct communication. I _knew_ he was there--and he certainly knew _I_ was. It was the feeling you get when you meet the eyes of a stranger and know at once this is someone you'd like.
I wasn't frightened in the least; just intensely surprised. I had a strong urge to continue standing there, "talking" (as it were; there were no words exchanged then) to this man. Because it _was_ a man; I could "feel" him distinctly, and had a strong sense of his personality. I rather naturally assumed that I was imagining this, and turned to find my friend, to re establish a sense of reality. He was about six feet away, and I started to walk toward him. Within a couple of feet, I lost contact with the ghost; couldn't feel him anymore. It was like leaving someone at a bus stop; a sense of broken communication.
Without speaking to my friend, I turned and went back to the spot where I had encountered the ghost. There he was. Again, he was quite conscious of me, too, though he didn't say anything in words. It was a feeling of "Oh, there you are!" on both parts.
I tried the experiment two or three more times stepping away and coming back with similar results each time. If I moved away, I couldn't feel him; if I moved back, I could. By this time, my friend was becoming understandably curious. He came over and whispered, "Is this what a writer does?", meaning to be funny. Since he evidently didn't sense the ghost he was standing approximately where I had been I didn't say anything about it, but merely smiled and went on outside with him, where we continued our botanical investigations.
The whole occurrence struck me as so very odd while at the same time feeling utterly "normal" that I went back to the Alamo alone, this time on each of the next two days. Same thing; he was there, in the same spot, and he knew me. Each time, I would just stand there, engaged in what I can only call mental communication. As soon as I left the spot it was an area maybe two to three feet square I couldn't sense him anymore.
I did wonder who he was, of course. There are brass plates at intervals around the walls of the church, listing the vital statistics of all the Alamo defenders, and I'd strolled along looking at these, trying to see if any of them "rang a bell," so to speak. None did.
Now, I did mention the occurrence to a few of the writers at the conference, all of whom were very interested. I don't think any of them went to the Alamo themselves if they did, they didn't tell me but more than one of them suggested that perhaps the ghost wanted me to tell his story, I being a writer and all. I said dubiously that I didn't _think_ that's what he wanted, but the next and last time I went to the Alamo, I did ask him, in so many words.
I stood there and thought consciously, in words "What do you want? I can't really do anything for you. All I can give you is the knowledge that I know you're there; I care that you lived and I care that you died here."
And he _said_ not out loud, but I heard the words distinctly inside my head; it was the only time he spoke he said "That's enough."
At once, I had a feeling of completion. It _was_ enough; that's all he wanted. I turned and went away. This time, I took a slightly different path out of the church, because there was a group of tourists in my way. Instead of leaving in a straight line to the door, I passed around the pillar dividing the main church from one of the smaller rooms. There was a small brass plate in the angle of the wall there, not visible from the main room.
The plate said that the smaller room had been used as a powder magazine during the defense of the fort. During the last hours of the siege, when it became apparent that the fort would fall, one of the defenders had made an effort to blow up the magazine, in order to destroy the fort and take as many of the attackers as possible with it. However, the man had been shot and killed just outside the smaller room, before he could succeed in his mission more or less on the spot where I met the ghost.
So I don't know for sure; he didn't tell me his name, and I got no clear idea of his appearance just a general impression that he was fairly tall; he spoke "down" to me, somehow. But for what it's worth, the man who was killed trying to blow up the powder magazine was named Robert Evans; one of the survivors of the Alamo described him as being "black haired, blue eyed, nearly six feet tall, and always merry." That last bit sounds like the man I met, all right, but there's no telling. I got this description, by the way, from a book titled ALAMO DEFENDERS, which I bought in the museum bookshop as I was leaving. I had never heard of Robert Evans or the powder magazine before.
And that's the whole story.

Diana