For the past couple of weeks I have been chasing a research lead in TEXAS, of all places. This is the fun part about doing historical research – you start in one place with a bunch of assumptions and then 2 weeks later you’re deep in the weeds of the TEXAS RANGER ARCHIVE IN WACO, TEXAS. Like, this is not a place I ever expected to be but someone tell Chip and Joanna I’m stopping by. Just kidding, we all know the only place I’m stopping is the site of the Branch Davidians incident.
I’m tracking someone who fought in the Mexican American War, and while I do REMEMBER THE ALAMO, I needed a whole refresher on the geography and settlement of the Republic of Texas. As a Californian, I feel entitled to make Texas my mortal enemy (them and PG&E), but the more I research, the more weird similarities I see in the histories. It’s almost like we’ve always been foils for each other, and there were plenty of Texans who made their way to San Francisco for the Gold Rush. Many of them even brought their slaves!!!!!! Fucking Texas.
The landscape there in the 1840s was unbelievably violent. Even for someone who reads books like “An American Genocide,” it’s kind of shocking. Local natives and colonists from other parts of the South were viciously battling it out over territory; Mexico was asserting itself against the invasions; the land itself is a scrub desert that was constantly trying to kill everyone. This will go on to repeat itself in California – hence the research – but it’s just like everything else in America: once you pull back a few layers, the land is absolutely soaked in blood. I have finally discovered Cormac McCarthy, and I’m not happy about it.
I do have a great ghost story to share, though. As is my wont, it’s the perfect encapsulation of the vibe of the environment at this time. Violent, vengeful, and gothic as fuck. The story takes place in a town called Refugio, which still exists. Refugio and its neighbor, San Patricio, were settled by Irish Americans from the East Coast. My people are everywhere and they even made Saint Patrick Mexican. Bless.
The settlers were called empresarios, and they had land grants from the Mexican government. These grants allowed empresarios to recruit other Americans and bring them down to farm, and presumably “civilize” the area. Empresarios had to be Catholic, which is how a lot of them came to be Irish Americans. Two of the most powerful were John McMullen and James McGloin, who worked together as partners and recruited Irish-born men and women from New York and Philadelphia to settle the area in the late 1820s.
In 1853, McMullen was murdered in a robbery in San Antonio, in his own home. And from that murder arose the tale of the “McMullen ghost:”
This type of ghost is called a fetch – a ghostly body double that appears from far away to warn of a loved one’s death. The term “fetch,”is from Old Irish, but this type of ghost appears in a lot of different cultures. In old English they are wraiths and in German they are dopplegangers. I have heard fetch stores in Icelandic folklore and they even appeared after the massive Japanese tsunami of 2011. As a purposeful and tragic ghost, the fetch materializes to let distant family know that something terrible has happened.
Symbolically the fetch expresses the fear of losing a loved one far from home. When you think about Texas at this time, none of the white people living there were born there. Family contact was severed – it’s almost like it took a paranormal act to connect to home.In the case of McMullin and McGloin, they’d actually left Ireland, crossed an ocean, then traveled thousands more miles southwest to end up there.
You may have encountered the fetch in another form as a double, a staple of gothic literature. The gothic double can be interpreted to express the unspoken or underlying conflict in a story. In Texas, McMullin was killed in an act of senseless violence in a hostile and dangerous land, but he was also part of the reason why it was so violent there. Irish settlers were taking land that already belonged to someone else – the Native Americans who were actually indigenous to the region. The Spanish who colonized Mexico did the same thing, and suddenly there are multiple groups of people fighting over the same resources. McMullin isn’t just a victim of violence – he’s a perpetrator. However racist and misguided people were at the time, this was surely in their subconscious, which is how it shows up in folklore.
Speaking of doubles, McMullin actually has ANOTHER ghost story. Modern day locals believe that “the ghost of John McMullen ‘walks’ the library building that is on the site of his old home. The old empresario has been reputedly seen on the staircases of the current building – and it is said that he will continue to appear until the identity of his murderer is brought to light.”
A ghost looking for justice?? GROUNDBREAKING. We’re all familiar with this kind of story, it’s probably the most popular motive in the ghost stories we all know. This is like, campfire 101. I do think it’s cool that the story has survived so long, though, and that the building he haunts now is a CIRCUS MUSEUM. Has anyone told Bagans???? This is layers upon layers of history, with the violence rising up to the top a ghost. It’s too good – maybe I need to change my position on Texas.