A ghostly tour of Yorktown Memorial Hospital, where history and hauntings meet
May 13-YORKTOWN - Stephen Garza Guzman stood on the front steps of the old Yorktown Memorial Hospital, a dilapidated house of healing about 75 miles southeast of San Antonio.
The midcentury building seemed to crouch in the brush, a faded two-story structure with a tall tree bracketing its left side. Its arched entrance bore the hospital's name in stone between a crown of broken windows and a pair of padlocked doors. Chain-link fence topped with barbwire circled the building, which extended in four directions like a giant cross.
A small group gathered around Garza Guzman at the foot of the stairs, most of them in black T-shirts and blue jeans or shorts on a muggy Friday night in late April. Garza Guzman addressed them with a crackle from his portable voice amplifier, which hung from his neck.
"We will ask that you do not open any doors that are closed," he said. "We will ask that you don't touch any walls. And there are going to be certain gated areas that say DO NOT ENTER. Please respect those signs. Do not go to those areas. We want to keep everybody safe here tonight."
He then added with a smile, "We don't want to add to the spirit count of Yorktown Memorial Hospital."
Last year, Stephen Garza Guzman and his husband, Fred Garza Guzman, purchased the derelict hospital, said to be one of the most haunted buildings in Texas.
The Alamo City natives run Curious Twins Ghost Tours & Events, a San Antonio-based tour company that strives for what the Garza Guzmans call "equitable perspectives of history and the paranormal." No jump scares, no made-up stories, just a grounded approach to what's fact, fiction and folklore, with the occasional EMF detectors and dousing rods.
"We are eagerly wanting to make sure skeptics are given just as much interesting things as those who have seen every single episode of 'Ghost Adventures' three times," said Fred Garza Guzman, who was unable to attend the recent hospital tour. "Deep down inside we are just nerds and are interested in all of these weird things, but it is because we care about Texas history and history in general."
The Garza Guzmans have hosted dozens of educational tours and investigations at the Yorktown hospital since 2019. On this particular Friday night, Stephen Garza Guzman led 16 very living souls on a private tour of the hospital's ramshackle hallways, past its decrepit patient rooms and offices, down to its clammy basement and boiler room, up to its squat living quarters that once housed the nuns who founded the facility, and finally to its rundown chapel with its broken windows and rickety pews, plus a discarded casket the previous owner got from a funeral home.
According to Curious Twins, the hospital has an estimated 2,000 deaths in its history. Some say a few of those lost souls stuck around. A few people on that Friday night tour said those souls made their presence known.
Where the past still lingers
Yorktown Memorial Hospital lies tucked on a craggy lot less than a mile west of the corner City Hall on Main Street. The quiet road cuts through a quiet town of roughly 1,720 residents, about 100 less than the number listed on the city limit signs that mark the 1.73 square mile area.
Yorktown had a population of nearly 2,600 when a group of Felician Sisters of the Catholic Church opened the hospital in 1951. Designed by San Antonio architect Leo M.J. Dielman, the 27-bed facility would serve the sick and the injured, the expectant and the dying across DeWitt County and the neighboring areas. The hospital ceased operations in 1986 when a new hospital opened in nearby Cuero. It then served as a drug rehabilitation center until it was decommissioned in 1992.
In 2010, former San Antonio attorney Phil Ross took over the property to host ghost tours and investigations. By then the site had a reputation as a hotbed for paranormal activity and investigation.
Members of the popular TV series "Ghost Adventures" famously explored the hospital in an episode where host Zak Bagans took off his shirt in the hospital's chapel to provoke the spirits of the nuns said to choke people with tattoos. Today, a dim hallway in the basement is plastered with the names of individuals and groups from around the world who have explored the building.
The group on that April night would include a government contractor from New York City who would give only his first name, Mark. Mark wore a black T-shirt that on the back read, "I'm very vulnerable right now if any Goth girls would like to take advantage of me." Then there was Haley Kachmarik from the Houston area, who wore her own apropos T-shirt: an Ice Nine Kills band tee with the words "Sometimes dead is better," the heavy metal act's nod to the famous line from Stephen King's "Pet Sematary." There were also two horror writers from the Houston area, Jae Mazer and Chantell Velasquez, the former with a small backpack shaped like a cartoon sheet ghost, the latter with a smartphone stand and a cane.
Other members of the group included a gray-haired Spurs fan from San Antonio who loves horror films, a father and daughter from the Corpus Christi area and a few more women from the Houston area. There was also Chris Dankowski and his 11-year-old son, Matthew, from Pflugerville. Matthew was so eager to explore whatever came next on the tour he often rifled off tidbits about a spot before Garza Guzman could discuss them. "You're welcome to lead the tour if you want," Garza Guzman said at one point with a smile, which made most of the group laugh.
As Garza Guzman collected waivers outside for the tour, a woman in black pants, a black button-up shirt and a black baseball cap remarked how her EMF detector suddenly lit up for no reason. EMF detectors measure the electromagnetic field for possible levels of radiation from faulty wiring or other electrical issues. Paranormal researchers believe such fluctuations signal the presence of a spirit or other supernatural entity interacting with the environment.
Garza Guzman unlocked the hospital's front door and the tour began.
The girl, the doctor and the nuns
The ghost stories of Yorktown Memorial run the gamut. Disembodied voices and shadows that crisscross the hallways. EVPs or electronic voice phenomena of recorded whispers often unheard by the ear in the moment they occur.
Then there are the spectral figures said to haunt the halls.
One of the most widely reported is of a little girl named Stacy, said to often frequent the space near the hospital's old nursery lined with old dolls. The story goes Stacy loved the classic children's book "The Poky Little Puppy," a gift from the hospital's veteran physician Dr. Leon Nowierski. Reading the book aloud is said to conjure Stacy from her unearthly station.
There's also the story of the elder Dr. Nowierski. The Yorktown physician is said to have worked at the hospital well into his 90s, until he retired after he accidentally slit the throat of a patient during thyroid surgery. The rumored incident and his reputed unsteady hand earned Nowierski the nickname "The Butcher."
Spirits from the site's days as a rehab clinic are also said to linger. A young man in the late 1980s who succumbed to a heroin overdose after his friends left him on a back loading dock. A love triangle that resulted in a double murder after a female employee was killed by a jilted lover who discovered her in the boiler room with another man, only to be killed by that man in self-defense.
And, of course, there are the alleged sightings of the nuns, fleeting glimpses of habits and robes throughout the grounds.
One such figure did startle the group that night early into the tour: a department store mannequin that property caretaker Eddie Mayfield propped in one of the rooms in full nun attire, a rosary hanging from its left hand at its hip. Mayfield did not wish to be interviewed for the story.
Phil Ross added other props to play up the hospital's haunted reputation. Coffin in the chapel. A rusty "human cage" in the basement said to detox addicts during the facility's days as a rehab center. Discarded, midcentury hospital wheelchairs and radiology equipment Ross purchased over the years in San Antonio.
The city of Yorktown, however, does not share the same enthusiasm for the hospital's purported access to other side, much less the public's access to the building.
'Educational purposes'
Soon after Ross acquired Yorktown Memorial in 2010, Yorktown officials cited the hospital with building code violations that forced Ross to briefly shut down tours later that year. Ross ultimately brought in a structural engineer to prove the building was safe.
When the Garza Guzmans took over in 2025, the city declared the site unsafe and prohibited entry by the public, actions the Garza Guzmans say were taken without notifying them. The Garza Guzmans ultimately met with city officials and a structural engineer once again deemed the site safe, its disrepair merely cosmetic. Tours resumed on the condition Curious Twins and its caretaker maintain the front of the site from excessive brush and litter.
The city of Yorktown said "no comment" on the facility when contacted for this story.
Yorktown Memorial is private property and not open to the public. Curious Twins only allows access via membership in its private club SPIRIT (Scientific Paranormal Investigative Research Institute of Texas). Members may only enter the property for tours and investigations by reservation or advanced booking.
The building remains abandoned with no electricity or working plumbing. The Garza Guzmans intend to keep the hospital's crumbling "Silent Hill" aesthetic for ghost tours and "educational purposes," which include doubling as a shooting location for horror films. The Garza Guzmans recently pulled a permit to repair the hospital's aging, leaky roof. They also have applied for historic designation and will apply for a historic marker.
'Be respectful'
Throughout the hospital tour, Stephen Garza Guzman brought at least some of the purported ghost stories into stark relief.
There are no records or reports of Dr. Nowierski being charged or disciplined for the rumored thyroid incident or of any other patients dying under his scalpel, though he did die in October 1986, several months after his retirement. The nuns were not cruel taskmasters who loathed tattoos; rather, the Garza Guzmans have heard claims they were victims of abuse. And the drug rehab's so-called detox cage is an old Gillespie County jail cell that Ross added for extra character.
Which all made it easier on the group's nerves when Garza Guzman gave them free rein of the hospital to conduct their own investigations.
"No provocations," he said. "Treat this like going to grandma's house. Be respectful of the spirits that are here."
The members split up and disappeared into the hallways.
'I'm following you'
Around 9:45 p.m., several tour members gathered in the hospital chapel for EVP sessions with "spirit box" apps on their phones. A spirit box is a radiolike device that spouts off random words, which paranormal investigators believe to be a form of spirit communication.
In the dark, one phone beeped: "Sleep." Then: "Christina." "Karen." One member laughed. "Laughter," the app replied.
Another app chimed in: "I'm following you." Then came: "Stroll." "Sister." "Unquestionably."
A hush. Then: "Demonic."
"No, no, no," the group said at once - not in terror, but as if chiding a naughty dog. Garza Guzman said it's important for investigators to set boundaries at the mere hint of something untoward.
The chapel stayed dark except for the occasional green dots of an EMF detector.
'Is that you, Stacy?'
Around 11 p.m., Kachmarik, Mazer and Velasquez stood outside the hospital's sealed-off nursery, their lone source of light a smartphone propped on Velasquez's stand. They asked if Stacy wanted to play. The only sound was a bird chirping and the occasional truck driving down the road.
Kachmarik mentioned how when she was a little girl she was taken from her mother and how she recently reconnected with her.
"She actually just went to hospice yesterday," Kachmarik said.
"Are you looking for your mom, too?" Velasquez asked. "Are you tired, Stacy?"
"Do you want to go see your mom, Stacy?" Kachmarik asked.
Velasquez aimed a small flashlight at a scurrying sound from the ceiling. "Is that you, Stacy?" she asked.
"I would say maybe that's not Stacy but a rat," Mazer said. "Or a raccoon."
"Definitely a difference," Velasquez said.
Velasquez and Mazer would later recall nearly jumping out of their denim while upstairs in the old nuns' quarters. At one point they were asking questions when they suddenly heard the sound of furniture being moved.
"It was wild for about three or four minutes," Mazer said.
"Well, seconds," Velasquez corrected her with a laugh. "It felt like minutes."
'I am with you'
The evening ended a little after midnight in the chapel. Bathed in red light, Garza Guzman conducted a candlelit electronic "séance" for guests to ask questions of the Felician Sisters or any other disembodied residents.
To facilitate the discourse, Garza Guzman asked for a volunteer to shut their eyes and wear noise-canceling headphones connected to a spirit box. The participant would then say whatever they heard in real-time without knowing Garza Guzman's questions or anyone's reactions. Velasquez immediately raised her hand.
Garza Guzman set up the headphones, then grabbed a pair of dousing rods and began.
"What are you waiting for?" he asked.
"Jim," Velasquez replied.
"Jim, do you have any messages for us?" Garza Guzman asked. The rods crossed in his hands. "Yes," he said.
"I am with you," Velasquez said.
"Jim, how are you connected to this hospital?"
Silence.
"Louder," Velasquez said, then quickly added, "Others. Property."
"Are there other spirits with us?" Garza Guzman asked.
An EMF detector in the pew lit up.
"Are any of the sisters here?" Garza Guzman asked.
"'Obviously,'" Velasquez said, which made everyone laugh.
Another rainbow of lights blipping from the pew.
This would happen several times in those final minutes before Garza Guzman concluded the tour at 1 a.m.
The silence deepened. Then stillness. It was time.
"Thank you and goodbye," Garza Guzman said.
"Bye," Velasquez uttered in nearly the same breath.
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This story was originally published May 13, 2026 at 7:06 PM.