Ghosthunting San Antonio, Austin, and Texas Hill Country. Michael Varhola

      WHILE THE ALAMO is certainly the most famous site in Texas, it is amazing how many people do not know that it was originally just one of several Spanish missions established along the banks of the San Antonio River. Originally called Mission San Antonio de Valero, it was the first and northernmost of six religious settlements defended by the garrison from the presidio of San Antonio de Bexar. Over the next 13 years, four other significant church communities were established: Mission San José, Mission Espada, Mission San Juan, Mission Najera, and Mission Concepción.

      All of these missions were part of a broader colonial network of frontier outposts established by Roman Catholic religious orders that stretched across the Southwest from the 1600s through the 1800s. Their main purpose was to facilitate conversion of local Indian populations and to reinforce New Spain against incursions by France. A number of the San Antonio missions had originally been established in other places a decade or two earlier, but after they failed—in part because of ambivalence or even hostility from the native peoples to whom they were trying to minister—they were relocated.

      “A Spanish mission was much more than a religious institution,” the Alamo says in its official history. “Its purpose was to take an indigenous population and convert them not only to Catholicism but also to the Spanish way of life. In establishing the missions in Texas, the Spanish hoped to create a self-sufficient population that would continue to exist and grow as loyal Spanish subjects, thereby staving off any involvement of foreign powers like France. Indian converts were taught farming, livestock raising, blacksmithing, carpentry, stone work, and weaving.”

      Missionaries and Indians alike also found protection and the means of defending themselves at the missions. But, while the missions themselves were virtual fortresses, men working in the fields and livestock were vulnerable.

      “Encroachment by warlike Apaches from the west and Comanches from the north meant local Coahuiltecan tribes were under constant threat,” the history continues. “Mission life brought protection from other indigenous people as well as shelter and a more stable food supply. It also gave them access to two important technological developments of the period: firearms and horses.”

      Over all, building, maintaining, and running the settlements and the infrastructure associated with them proved an impressive architectural and logistical feat. One aspect of this was the construction of acequias, water management systems originally introduced into arid regions of Spain by the Romans and Moors and which were carried into the deserts of the New World by the Franciscan missionaries. In order to distribute water to their missions along the San Antonio River, they oversaw construction of a network of gravity-flow ditches, dams, and at least one aqueduct, comprising a 15-mile system used to irrigate some 3,500 acres of land.

      By the end of the 18th century, the Indian populations had greatly diminished on the missions for a combination of reasons, including discontent and mortality caused by European diseases to which the natives had little resistance. This reduced the viability and need for the missions, so, with more settlers moving into the area and looking covetously at the holdings of the religious communities, government authorities forced them to divest most of their assets. In 1793–94, all of the San Antonio missions were secularized and their lands and other property turned over to the families still residing on them or to Spanish locals. Some of the churches continued to remain active after this point, but others were closed and many of the missions fell into disrepair or were largely abandoned.

      Over their centuries of existence, what are now collectively known as the San Antonio missions were the starting points of quests north and west in search of gold and souls, locations of raids and battles, places of births and deaths. They were crucibles of human emotion—those of fervent proselytes spreading the word of God, native peoples being stripped of their own cultures and faiths, greedy and bloodthirsty fortune hunters, and those who fell in battle at their gates or succumbed to disease within their walls. All were also established in an abundant area that had been occupied by ancient peoples since time immemorial and used by them for hunting and gathering. It should thus not be surprising that these missions are widely considered to be haunted and that people have reported every sort of paranormal phenomena at them, including anomalies in photographs and recordings and apparitions of conquistadores, monks, Indians, settlers, and soldiers.

      MISSION SAN ANTONIO DE VALERO (A.K.A. THE ALAMO)

      IN 1718, after Mission San Francisco de Solano in the Rio Grande Valley became unviable because so many of its resident Coahuiltecan Indians had left it, Father Antonio de San Buenaventura y Olivares relocated it to a spot near the headwaters of the San Antonio River. He had passed through the area a decade earlier and been impressed with its suitability for a religious community. He named the new mission in honor of Saint Anthony of Padua and San Antonio de Valero, the Spanish viceroy who had approved his plan.

      Location of the mission changed several times for the first few years until 1724, when the present site was chosen, and the foundation of its stone church was laid 20 years later, in 1744. It eventually included a walled compound containing the church, a convento where the clergymen lived, and a number of adobe buildings.

      While the Alamo is almost synonymous with the battle that bears its name, it was by no means the first time the mission or its residents were exposed to violence or dangers. On June 30, 1745, for example, Apaches attacked the nearby civil town of San Fernando. One hundred mission converts from the Alamo sallied out and, reinforced by European arms and tactics, helped drive them off.

      Mission San Antonio de Valero was the first of the local missions to be secularized and was taken over by Spanish authorities in 1793. They established the first hospital in Texas in it. Its central location and infrastructure also made it ideal for use as a barracks and, by 1803, a company of 100 heavily armed cavalrymen, along with their families,

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