• BY GABE SEMENZA - GSEMENZA@VICAD.COM
• Originally published October 26, 2009 at 5:18 p.m., updated October 27, 2009 at 8:49 a.m.

BY GABE SEMENZA

You might or might not believe in ghosts. Once you come face to face with one, however, it's hard to deny the supernatural.

That's according to Gary Dunnam, the executive director of Victoria Preservation Inc. He claims to have spotted a ghost in his two-story historic Victoria home. He knows of more than 20 other haunted locations citywide, he said.

Unexplained events allegedly occur in homes, businesses and other locale across this region. With Halloween approaching, we look at six so-called haunted grounds:

1)Yorktown Memorial Hospital. The 30,000-square-foot building served as a traditional and then mental health hospital until the state shut it down in the 1980s. The morgue in the basement, the chapel and infant delivery rooms are home today to shadow people, strange screams and eerie banging, some say. "This is the scariest place I've been in," said Angelka Rogers, a San Antonio paranormal investigator. "Things are getting progressively active and violent, especially in the basement area. The voices we hear are aggressive. Things are thrown at people." Once operated by nuns, the abandoned hospital is on Main Street by the Yorktown Motel.

FOR MORE: Visit YorktownHospital.com.

2)Presidio La Bahia in Goliad. Home to the "Goliad Massacre," this fort was built in the 1700s. Mexican Gen. Santa Anna's men surrounded the fort and its 300 troops. Although the Texan troops surrendered, Santa Anna ordered them executed on Palm Sunday in March 1836. Notable paranormal activity includes moaning sounds in the courtyard, a ghostly woman who prays at the chapel, and a friar who roams the yard. A paranormal investigator during the 1990s heard what he described as a dozen screams from terrified infants.

FOR MORE: PresidioLaBahia.org.

3) DeWitt County Jail. The jail, built in the 1960s, looms on ground where the original jail stood two centuries ago. One night in recent years, a jailer walked to the kitchen for a late night snack. As she prepared food, a man with a black-and-white striped uniform appeared to her side. Scared that a prisoner had escaped, she turned to flee. Puzzled, the jailer quickly turned around, but the inmate vanished. "Several jailers have seen things," said Crystal Irvin, the jail captain. "It's just really weird. The ghosts are always in the same uniform. Everyone thinks it's the spirits of people who have died here - all the deaths, the hangings and overdoses." Others swear they hear noises and view doors closing. Deputy Patrick Charlton saw the black-and-white-striped apparition. "I saw him out of my peripheral vision," Charlton said. "The temperature dropped and the hair on the back of my neck stood. I felt like I was being watched."

4)The 1892 Victoria County Courthouse. Home to memories of gruesome murder trials, the building is said to creak at night with ghostly activity. Construction workers claimed to see moving flashes of light on the second floor in the southeast corner of the building. "Some of those working alone in the building at night are hard-pressed to explain the footsteps on the tile floor outside the office where they are working," Dunnam said. "Given the number of criminals sentenced to death in the old courtroom, and the spirits of those who they have killed, is it any wonder there is unrest here?"

5)Evergreen Cemetery - Victoria. Tombstones mark the resting places of dozens of notable Victorians. This cemetery is said to breathe with abnormal life after dark. Some say they've seen hovering orbs and light-producing mist. "I am told that you don't want to be in Evergreen Cemetery after dark, especially when there is a full moon," Dunnam said. "The area of deepest concern is near the old oak tree on the south side of the drive down the center of the cemetery. There is a lot of underbrush in the area - a perfect place for an encounter."

6)Cinema 4 - Victoria. Now an eatery on Zac Lentz Parkway behind Victoria Mall, the former theater is said to have been home to a ghost who watched workers and hassled moviegoers. The original building, demolished within the last decade, was once 25 feet tall. A former employee said a woman named Dorothy fell out of an upstairs door to her death. Rumor has it that if you said "Dorothy," a film would break within a few minutes. The ghost could be heard walking the upstairs catwalk. Another former employee said, "You could hear her. She would also open and close doors. You'd hear shuffling up until right behind you, but when you'd turn she'd be gone. That place was either haunted or I had a really good imagination."

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