Bruja haunting not just for Halloween
Cowgirl Sass & Savvy

Julie Carter

Across the West, reports of hauntings are common to homesteads, old ranch dwellings and at locations of bloody battles that represent the taming of the land.

Sometimes you can feel the presence of the restless spirits of those cheated of life in a moment of anger, greed or determination to civilize the land. The irony of the violence to advance progress is perhaps what keeps the phantoms tethered to a particular place.

Ghostly voices and melodies are heard frequently as they waft across a wind-swept hilltop or through a valley that gives an echo to the eerie whispers and wails. No one can explain them with any convincing facts, but plenty try to justify it to ease the tickle of fear quivering in their gut.

Cowboying on a land that has seen hundreds of years of living, dying and battles for boundaries often provides a notable response in man and beast.

Here in the Southwest we know that the brujas abound.

Riding through a lonely place and having the hair stand up on the back of your neck, feel a cold wind on a hot day, or see a shadow where none should be, heightens the senses of awareness in every fiber of your body.

Simultaneously your horse will pull up on full alert, tense, ears searching for a sound, breath coming in snorts while nostrils flare. They will sometimes, for no obvious reason, refuse a trail or resist going through a gate.

A legendary haunting takes place down in the South Texas brush country at a set of corrals that, historically, was used to rest cattle when they trailed up from Laredo to San Antonio.

Sometimes cattle buyers would take delivery at these pens, so they would arrive with cowboys to finish the drive and enough gold to pay for the herd.

The legend goes that one time the vaqueros trailing the cattle decided to take the buyer's gold and keep the cattle.

A gunfight broke out and a number of vaqueros were killed while others escaped.

The gringo buyers, fearing an ambush on the trail back home, buried the gold in the pens along with their fallen comrades. The vaqueros watched from the brush as the burial of gold and cowboys took place.

The story goes that the vaqueros were too afraid to disturb the graves to take the gold and the white cattle buyers wouldn't return for the gold out of fear of the vaqueros.

Supposedly, the gold remains and so do the spirits of the fallen.

Today's modern vaqueros at the ranch, not aware of the legend, will regularly come to the patron during a cattle working and tell him there are brujas at those corrals. "Muy peligroso," they will say. "No good to work there."

At these corrals, cattle are hard to pen and often, both man and beast sense a presence that encourages the flight instinct.

The pens have been rebuilt over the years, but never moved. The patron said any time there was a plan to relocate the corrals, strange things would occur.

The reigning ghosts and brujas seem to think those pens belong right there and nowhere else.


Visit Julie’s website for a discount offer on her new book, Cowboys You Gotta Love ‘em. www.julie-carter.com