The wonderful thing about Docia Schultz Williams is that she collected stories that were in newspapers around Texas about ghosts.
This story she found in a book called Studies in Brownsville History, edited by Milo Kearney. The story is told by Felipe Lozano in his Brownsville Barber shop to his customers in 1963 and was written and recorded by Peter. GAWENDA.
Way back, When Brownsville was still a small town, there used to be an empty area next to the old graveyard. People used to call it al pasto de almas, Meaning pasture of the souls.
It all started in 1849, when during an epidemic of cholera, more than 100 people died within a few weeks. As Brownsville did not have a priest yet, and as the Padre from Matamoros was busy across the border, many bodies had to be buried in a mass grave or unmarked graves without the blessing of the church. And as the graveyard was too small anyway, the bodies were hurriedly buried right outside.
In later years, the 1860s and the 1870s, when Juan Cortina, the Mexican revolutionary guerrilla fighter, raided the town and countryside killing people, or when bodies of unknown desperados were left behind after shootouts, they also were buried besides those outside the graveyard.
But around 1880, the night before All Souls Day,
several people observed a very strange phenomenon. As it is a custom to care for the graves of loved ones, before All Souls Day, people were still planting flowers or arranging decorations on individual graves. A thin fog had started to settle around the graveyard. At dusk and was slowly replaced by darkness, when suddenly a light popped out from the ground, right there where the Unknown people. Were buried. The light looked like the flame of a candle, and it seemed to float back and forth very slowly. And after a few seconds it was gone.
Only two or three people had seen it, but the word got around quickly.
And when suddenly another light appeared, then a second, a 3rd and even a 4th one, And when the lights seemed to float towards the graveyard, everyone ran as fast as they could. Although people were afraid, some dared to pass the graveyard during the following nights. In some of the town’s cantinas, the very brave or maybe the very drunk made bets that they would go visit the Pasture of souls. At midnight. And those that really did, would return pale and sober.
Very quickly the word spread that the flames were the souls of those who could not find rest because they had been denied the last rites or were buried outside of the blessed earth.
For several years afterwards the gruesome appearances would occur, especially around All Souls Day, until finally a priest blessed the peace of land and a Mass was read. Later, when the graveyard was expanded, this lot was included.
