Emily Morgan Hotel (Downtown San Antonio)

Located in one of the largest and most imposing buildings in downtown San Antonio, the Emily Morgan Hotel is one of the city's quintessential lodgings — all the more so in that it is the "official hotel of the Alamo" — and at the same time stranger and much different than any of the others. Its merits as a beautiful luxury hotel aside, it has both a unique and atypical history and as its namesake the woman who may well have inspired the classic song "The Yellow Rose of Texas." 

"The Emily Morgan Hotel was originally developed as a hospital and then in 1984 it was converted into a hotel," Allison Schiess of the Sisters Grimm Ghost Tours told me. "It is named after the woman, an indentured servant, who was 'distracting' Santa Anna when the Texans attacked the Mexicans during the Battle of San Jacinto. So, she helped us win our independence." 

Those are the opening two paragraphs of my chapter on the Emily Morgan Hotel for Ghosthunting San Antonio, Austin, and Texas Hill Country! Among other things, it explores the history of one of the most colorful and controversial figures in Texas history, the woman known variously as Emily Morgan and Emily D. West.