A very spooky Wild West!

Clemente Apolinar, the last public hanging in Texas, and a haunted motel

This is the old Bexar County Jail, located in the heart of San Antonio, Texas - less than a mile from the Alamo. Kinda creepy looking, huh? Wellllll, you don’t know the half of it!

First though, some housekeeping.

If you haven’t already checked out the latest - and final - installment of the series on Captain Jack and the Modoc War it is now available and ready for your earholes.

Also, we’ll be starting a new series soon on Frank Canton and the Johnson County War very shortly. I’m already hard at work on it but it might be a few weeks until it’s ready. I’m toying around with changing up my release schedule but I’m hoping it makes for a better listening experience for you.

Now on to the spooky shit.

Remember that old jail photo I just showed you? Well, that place was erected (hehe) in 1879 - first as just a two-story jailhouse. However, as the population of San Antonio increased so did the crime, and as such more cells were needed.

Due to zoning laws, the facility could not expand outward, only upward. As such a 3rd, 4th, and finally a 5th floor was added, complete with an indoor gallows!

Yes, they actually hanged people INSIDE this jailhouse!

Which, I suppose, wasn’t that unheard of. In nearby Gonzales, Texas there was an indoor scaffold in one of their old jails as well.

But what makes the Bexar jail so special (special?) is that the gallows itself was on the 3rd floor and the condemned inmates would plunge through a trapdoor down to the 2nd floor, in full view of the other prisoners and any spectators that wanted to watch.

Remember, this was back when executions were public and it turns out the LAST public execution ever in the state of Texas occurred right there at the old Bexar County Jail. A convicted murderer by the name of Clemente Apolinar.

And it went horribly wrong. The noose was either too tight or not applied correctly, because Clemente’s larynx was severed, sending blood spurting onto the horrified onlookers as the hanging man was nearly decapitated.

And the most interesting part of this whole story? You can not only visit this old jail today but you can also spend the night - if you dare.

Yep, it’s now a Holiday Inn Express. I shit you not. Notice the bars over the windows? That’s from the old jailhouse days. If you know where to look, you can also find prisoner graffiti still left on some of the interior walls.

Rumor has it that Clemente is still around. I could not verify this but supposedly where the scaffold once stood is now room 304. Directly underneath - in 204 - guests have reported seeing the silhouette of a hanging man. One guest had a laptop literally wrenched from his hand from an invisible source and thrown across the room while another awoke in the dead of the night to the feeling of something clamping down on his arm. The next morning when he awoke he had a five-finger-shaped bruise.

Even hotel employees complain of always feeling as if they’re being watched, odd smells and unexplained room temperature fluctuations, lights turning on and off unprompted, and even the motion-detecting security monitors being activated when nobody’s around. Nobody we can see, at least.

So what do you think? Me personally, I don’t believe in ghosts. I’m relatively certain there’s a perfectly good scientific explanation for all of this. But would I spend the night at this motel? Fuck no.

I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious.

Have a Happy Halloween!