Coldwater Creek, Old Navy, Nordstrom Rack, Office Max, Pottery Barn, Whole Foods Market, Michael’s, and Tous among others. Dining options are provided by California Pizza Kitchen, Chili’s, J. Alexander’s, Joe’s Crab Shack, Orange Cup, PF Chang’s, Piatti, and Starbuck’s. What catches people’s eyes from miles away and can be seen most clearly from nearby Highway 281, however, are the five huge cement factory smokestacks.
These immense structures are 36 feet wide at their bases and 30 feet wide at their tops and soar more than 200 feet above the shopping area. They were previously retrofitted with steel bands every 20 feet from top to bottom, but these components had either rusted and fallen off or become loosened, providing little if any structural reinforcement. In 1998, the owner of the property responded to this by bringing in structural restoration and preservation specialist Delta Structural Technology Inc. to restore and preserve three of the smokestacks. That company utilized an exclusive retrofit technique that involved complete encapsulation of the smokestacks using high-performance structural composites saturated in an epoxy matrix. This process took about two months and was recognized with multiple awards from the historical preservation community and concrete construction industry.
One of the most haunted parts of the shopping area is reputed to be the Regal Alamo Quarry Stadium 16-movie theater, the largest establishment in the retail complex and one that actually incorporates old plant machinery into its decor. According to local legends, bodies were entombed in its foundations when it was being built and, while details on this atrocity are somewhat vague, some people claim that the spirits of these unfortunates now haunt the site. Reported paranormal activity there includes feeling inexplicable cold spots throughout the second floor of the theater, lights in the auditorium slowly dimming and then coming fully on and then repeating the process, and sightings of a phantasmal child in the projection room.
For more than five years I drove past Alamo Quarry Plaza, intrigued by the striking smokestacks, but I had not had the opportunity to visit it until July 3, 2014, on my way back from investigating a nearby site. It was a blazingly hot day and I staggered around taking pictures, not so much conducting an investigation as just trying to get a sense for the place. When I finally accomplished all that I reasonably could, I moved on to the theater and obtained entry to it in the easiest and most unobtrusive way possible: I bought a ticket to a movie. Initially I planned on seeing Transformers: Age of Extinction, but, remembering how execrable its predecessor had been, was more than open to other options and would have preferred something more thematically appropriate. Tammy, 22 Jump Street, and Think Like a Man 2 just weren’t going to happen. Maleficent was getting a little closer but was not quite there. And then I spotted Deliver Us from Evil.
I was pleased to discover that my film was showing not just on the reputedly haunted second level but also at the very far end of a long, dark corridor. In retrospect, however, this creepy occult thriller based on ostensibly real events, as good as it is, may not have been the best choice and did not help with the less-than-optimum conditions under which I was operating.
I made a point of arriving about half an hour before the film started so that I would have a little time to make some observations, but I had decided not to bring my camera in with me, cinemas often being sensitive about such things. There were only a few people in the theater when I got there, however, and I probably would not have had any trouble doing a decent photo shoot of the area without attracting undue attention from the management. As it was, I did not see anything with my naked eye before the film began—and, of course, once it did begin, it was easy to see all sorts of things in the darkness after glancing away from the screen, especially one filled with scenes of demonic possession and other horrors.
It did, undeniably, feel unnaturally cold in the theater. I had, however, spent several hours that day walking around in the overwhelming Texas heat and gotten borderline dehydrated and a bit lightheaded. So, both the frigid temperature and my otherworldly feeling were all pretty much to be expected.
There was practically no chance at all of capturing any kind of paranormal audio phenomena like EVPs, because the whole theater was pretty much awash with anomalies. This included noise bleed from films showing in other parts of the building and horrible static during the pre-film attractions that was, according the manager, caused by problems with the signal being used to stream it. And, ironically enough, a plot point of the film was phantom noises that one character could hear but that no one else could!
Every investigation, of course, no matter how structured or casual, does not result in evidence of haunting or other paranormal phenomena. Sometimes it is enough just to enjoy the history of a place. Alamo Quarry Market affords ample opportunity for that as well as a chance to satisfy the shoppers in your group and get a decent meal at any number of places—and, of course, to see a good film if one happens to be showing when you are there.
CHAPTER 4
Comanche Lookout Park
NORTHEAST SAN ANTONIO
ALTHOUGH ONE OF SAN ANTONIO’S smaller municipal parks, 96-acre Comanche Lookout Park emits a sense of being a microcosm and frequently seems more isolated than it really is, despite being surrounded by major roads, shopping plazas, and housing developments. Those who visit it during normal business hours are likely to get an accentuated feel of this and, other than a few headphone-wearing people who jog by wraithlike and without acknowledgement, are likely to have the place pretty much to themselves. That, of course, can be the best way to explore and appreciate this profoundly historical site, to investigate the legends associated with it, and to possibly come into contact with some of the many ghosts who have long been believed to haunt it. And, as strange and haunting as it might feel on its face to the casual visitor or ghosthunter, an investigation of its history will reveal some genuinely strange things about it.
At 1,340 feet above sea level, what is also sometimes known as Comanche Hill is the highest point in northeastern Bexar County, at one time offering unobstructed views of the surrounding countryside. Only sporadic peeks are now available through gaps in the dense forest of native ash juniper, chinaberry, graneno, honey mesquite, huisache Lindheimer hackberry, live oak, and Texas and Mexican buckeye covering the slopes of the hill. At the time that what is now San Antonio was settled by Spanish colonists, however, the south Texas plains to the south and east and the hills of the Edwards Plateau rising up to the north and west were predominantly grasslands over which buffalo roamed. This ecosystem was maintained by immense fires that would periodically break out along the Gulf Coast and work their way northward over a period of months, killing any saplings that had sprouted up since the last conflagration swept through. Modern fire protection, roads, and infrastructure have greatly reduced the impact of these wildfires and allowed for the succession of forests in areas, including Texas Hill Country, that were formerly seas of grass.
Like many places in Texas where people lived at the time of initial European contact, what became known as the Comanche Lookout was at least sporadically inhabited since prehistoric times by Paleo-Indians from no later than about 9500 B.C. onward.
In the 1700s and 1800s, Apache and then Comanche Indians hunted along nearby waterways that included seasonal Cibolo Creek, and used the hill both as a meeting place and a lookout from which they could scan the landscape for game. When Spanish colonists began traveling from Nacogdoches in east Texas for purposes of settling along the banks of the San Antonio River, the Comanches were able to spot them as well from the crest of the hill. This allowed the Indians to muster war bands in the hours before travelers arrived and to ambush them as they passed by the base of the hill along what was then known as the Camino Real—the “Royal Road”—and what is now known as Nacogdoches Road, a route that followed traditional Indian trails. The hill thus became a prominent landmark that told travelers not just that they were nearing their destination but also that they might soon be exposed to mortal danger as they completed the
