Ghosts of the Rio Grande Valley (Haunted America) - Softcover

Bowles, David; Melendez, Jose

Softcover

ISBN 10: 146711992X ISBN 13: 9781467119924

Verlag: HISTORY PR, 2016

Inhaltsangabe

Tradition meets tragedy in the chilling local lore of the Rio Grande Valley. Hidden in the dense brush and around oxbow lakes wait sinister secrets, unnerving vestiges of the past and wraiths of those claimed by the winding river. The spirit of a murdered student in Brownsville paces the locker room where she met her end. Tortured souls of patients lost in the Harlingen Insane Asylum refuse to be forgotten. Guests at the LaBorde Hotel in Rio Grande City report visions of the Red Lady, who was spurned by the soldier she loved and driven to suicide. Author David Bowles explores these and more of the most harrowing ghost stories from Fort Brown to Fort Ringgold and all the haunted hotels, chapels and ruins in between.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

South Texas native David Bowles is an award-winning author and professor at the University of Texas. Bowles is the author of several other titles, including the Pura Belpré Honor Book, The Smoking Mirror and Border Lore: Folktales and Legends of South Texas. His writing has appeared in Translation Review, Metamorphoses, Asymptote, Rattle, Axolotl, Huizache, Concho River Review, Border Senses, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and more.

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Ghosts of the Rio Grande Valley

By David Bowles, Jose Melendez

The History Press

Copyright © 2016 David Bowles
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-4671-1992-4

Contents

Introduction, 
Cameron County, 
1. Port Isabel Lighthouse, 
2. The Phantoms of Fort Brown, 
3. The Haunting of the Colonial Hotel, 
4. The Wailing Woman of San Benito, 
5. The Harlingen Insane Asylum, 
Willacy County, 
6. San Perlita and the Devil's Lagoon, 
7. The Lonely Ghost of Lyford, 
8. Willacy County Courthouse, 
Hidalgo County, 
9. The Revenants of Llano Grande, 
10. Old Hidalgo County Jail, 
11. The Wraiths of the San Juan Hotel, 
12. McAllen's Casa de Palmas Hotel, 
13. La Lomita Chapel, 
14. Shary Mansion, 
Starr County, 
15. Fort Ringgold, 
16. LaBorde House, 
17. The Woman in White at Roma, 
Bibliography, 
About the Author, 

CHAPTER 1

PORT ISABEL LIGHTHOUSE

The History

A picturesque town sits at the easternmost edge of Cameron County, where Texas State Highways 48 and 100 converge near the Laguna Madre, an extensive though shallow hypersaline lagoon that stretches between the Texas coast and Padre Island. Often treated as a mere gateway to the more tourist-frequented South Padre Island, this community — Port Isabel — is a treasure horde of history and legend.

There are many haunted locations in the city of Port Isabel, residents affirm. The Historic Queen Isabel Inn, opened by railroad magnate Caesar Kleberg in 1906 as the Point Isabel Tarpon and Fishing Club, served as the only local hotel for two decades, becoming the focal point for some of the area's most important events, like President Warren G. Harding's last vacation before his swearing in and the yearly Rio Grande Valley Fishing Rodeo. Though several hurricanes did their best to put the hotel out of commission, it remained standing, and those who visit its stately rooms report hearing the footsteps of the dead echoing down its halls.

Those same storms sent many ships to their doom before the construction of the lighthouse. If you look out across the bay under the right sort of moonlight, the old folks will tell you, you might just see ghost ships plying the gentle waves before being lost in the early morning mist.

In 1926, the Yacht Club Hotel was built to serve the needs of the Rio Grande Valley's elite, men like land baron John Shary. The ritzy spot hosted visitors as legendary as Amelia Earhart and Al Capone; it also witnessed great tragedy, such as when a yacht burned to cinders nearby, killing a well-to-do couple visiting from New England. But like many spots along the U.S.-Mexican border, the hotel absorbed some glimmer of their souls. For to this day, visitors swear they see a young man and woman decked out in the gaudy clothes of the 1920s, chatting and laughing before fading just as one approaches to meet them.

Indeed, Port Isabel has a long and variegated history. Brazos Island, just south of South Padre Island, was first settled in the eighteenth century as a series of wharves along the bay — facilitating the transportation of goods upriver past the sandbars at the mouth of the Rio Grande. The inhabitants, striking out for fresh water, found themselves in the area of present-day Port Isabel. In fact, legend has it that pirate Jean Lafitte established a fifteenfoot well just northwest of there in the early 1800s to better provide for his privateering ventures.

By the 1830s, a small community had sprung up around these water sources. It called itself El Frontón de Santa Isabel, but that name would change multiple times over the next quarter century: Punta de Santa Isabel for most of the Mexican-American War, Point Isabel with the establishment of a post office, Brazos Santiago when the Oblates of Mary Immaculate established the chapel of Our Lady by the Sea and finally — after a horrible cholera epidemic — to Port Isabel.

With the Mexican War over, Fort Polk — which had stood at the heart of Port Isabel, providing medical care and provisions to the army — was abandoned in favor of a stronger garrison at Fort Brown to the south. By 1853, upon a mound where the fort had stood, the Port Isabel Lighthouse had been erected at last as a beacon to guide ships safely to harbor. Commerce boomed as a result, with $10 million worth of cotton passing annually through the port, even during the early years of the Civil War, when the area became a refuge for blockade runners. Such Confederate efforts shifted south to the Mexican town of Bagdad after Union forces seized or destroyed every last ship in the harbor in May 1863.

During the remainder of the war, the lighthouse was occupied intermittently by soldiers from both sides to serve as a lookout, and fresh battles were waged around its broad base. Even a month after General Robert E. Lee's surrender at Appomattox, Union and Confederate troops strove with one another at Palmito Ranch, not far from the lighthouse, in the very last battle of the war. Hundreds of men had died during the long years of the conflict, joining the many others who had succumbed less than two decades earlier during the Mexican-American War. Locals whispered rumors of bodies lying in unmarked graves nearby. By the time the Rio Grande Valley Railway had connected Port Isabel to Brownsville, people were ready to turn away from the technology of the past and the deaths associated with fort, lagoon and sea.

Despite some structural improvements in the waning years of the nineteenth century, the town let the gleam of the lighthouse flicker out forever in 1905. Its crown darkened, its stone walls growing moldy with age, the tower waited unused for forty-five somber years. Then the one-acre plot on which it stands was donated to the state in 1950 as a historic site by Mr. and Mrs. Lon C. Hill Jr. and the Port Isabel Realty Company. After two years of extensive renovation, the lighthouse opened to the public. Tourists and locals alike delight in the giant of white stone, working their way up the seventy-five steps of the winding stair to peer out over the bay from the highest vantage point in the area.

The Lore

For the better part of a century, locals and visitors have claimed to see the ghosts of soldiers or victims of cholera wandering around the area at dusk. Some speculate that the inadequacy of their burials in times of conflict and despair may have kept these souls from their eternal rest.

Perhaps more fascinating are the multiple sightings of an incorporeal being known as the Lighthouse Angel. The stories of this ethereal guide go back to the nineteenth century, when ships would occasionally approach the harbor in the midst of powerful storms. The swirling winds, experts say, created vortices on either side of the tower, which were lit up by its powerful lamp. The light was also refracted by rain above the cupola to create the illusion of a halo. The overall effect, sailors insisted, was that a massive angel stood on shore, casting a miraculous glow into the tempests.

Despite the surety of modern science about the source of this optical effect, there is reason to believe that the Lighthouse Angel is more than just the interplay of light and rain and wind. To this day, stories persist about the warnings the angel sometimes whispers to tourists as they ascend the spiraling stair, cautionary words that have even saved lives.

Among those attracted to the Port Isabel Lighthouse are couples wanting to exchange vows at the top. Many insist on tying the knot this...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: HISTORY PR
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2016
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 146711992X
• ISBN 13: 9781467119924
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 160
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Nicht verfügbar