by Noelle Gardner/ KENS 5
kens5.com
Posted on October 19, 2010 at 11:36 PM
Updated
Thursday, Oct 21 at 8:58 AM
San Antonio's ghost hunter creeps through the night as he visits the city's most famous haunted locations. Fans come from all over the world to experience the ghostly adventure.
“People come from all around just to do my tour. It amazes me the people that come here,“ says the man known as JR.
He has been a local favorite ghost hunter for years. He says he started seeing apparitions when he was young.
“I saw my first apparition when I was a kid and it went from there. I saw another apparition when I was a teenager," he said. "After that I was not going to let people tell me I was crazy and this kind of stuff didn’t happen.”
JR tells us the most popular sites in San Antonio where he says you can spot ghosts:
“There are lots of haunted hotels. The most popular known for haunting are the Menger Hotel, Saint Anthony, Emily Morgan, Crockett Hotel and Gunter Hotel."
JR says most of the city is filled with "spirit energy." The city's most historic site, the Alamo, is known for being haunted, too, he says.
“The whole area around (the Alamo), not only for the battle, but because it's been a place where people have been for so many years," he said. "It is not necessarily how many people died there. It is a town built on top of a town and ruins built on top of ruins, so there is always going to be a lot of energy in those areas.”
“A lot of people talk about the battle of the Alamo, but there has been a lot of battles fought here," not just the military ones, he says.
Ghostly images also have been seen at San Fernando Cathedral, he said.
"There are people buried in the floors and in the walls in the church. It was a place of honor," he said. "Priests that have been on the tour have told us people have seen faces in the walls for centuries and they always believed they were past residents."
In just the last few year, JR says new faces in the wall have popped up on San Fernando Cathedral's facade.
“We found them by feeling the energy in the wall one night and we started noticing the faces. Then we started taking pictures, and of course other people would send us pictures with the faces that they found," he said.
Brave visitors may snap a ghostly picture.
“Only one time we saw something on the tour that was other than images people catch on camera. We watched a shadow walking across the room and sit down on a bed one night in the Spanish Governor’s Palace.”
JR gives thrill seekers a Dowsing rod to pick up energy along the tour:
“When we first started the ghost tours, we would use the dowsing rods to find positive or negative energy. It will locate positive or negative energy. You just need to learn how to pick it up."
JR says he believes everyone has psychic abilities.
“It is just things that I feel. You know how you feel when you really should not be somewhere but you went ahead and did it anyway? That energy you feel is the same type of energy I am talking about," he said. "I think we all have psychic ability we just need to listen to our gut."
For more information about JR's tours, visit www.alamocityghosttours.com.
