SOUTH TEXAS
YORKTOWN
MEMORIAL
HOSPITAL
728 W. Main St., Yorktown.
210-748-4475
FROM THE OUTSIDE, Yorktown Memorial Hospital looks like the
definition of “haunted”: a 30,000-square-foot building with a gran-
ite and concrete façade and overgrown bushes around its sides. Bro-
ken windows lead into a black interior; the door is chained shut. In-
side the building, a cool breeze wafts down the dark hallway, leaves
press against dusty windows, and wasps crawl along the walls.
Originally built in the 1950s and managed by the Felician Sisters of
the Roman Catholic Church, the sprawling facility contains two main
floors, a basement, two wings, a chapel, and an observation tower.
The hospital closed in 1986, says current caretaker Stephanie May-
field, after a new facility opened in nearby Cuero. From then on the
building operated as a drug rehab facility, but the state closed it in 1992.
The building sat empty, attracting stories of terrible malpractice and
lurid misbehavior. Rumor has it that hundreds of patients died there,
Mayfield says.
Naturally, it also acquired a lasting reputation for ghosts. There
are stories of patients killed by neglect or surgical mistake and the
ghost of the surgeon who is often held responsible. A fearsome black40 texashighways.com Photos:^ Tom McCarthy Jr.
From Left: An old doll sits
on top of the mantle at
the Yorktown Memorial
Hospital; many rooms are in
a state of disrepair; inside
the chapel, an old organ sits
coated in a layer of dust.