Galveston Walmart allegedly haunted by 100 victims of 1900 storm - Chron

Not somewhere you'd expect could be one of the most haunted spots on Galveston Island, right?

Photo by Chris Gray

When people head to the lone Walmart on Galveston Island, it’s often to grab last-minute beach supplies or stray toiletries they forgot in the rush to head out on vacation. But not all of them.

The store, which opened in 1994, also draws its fair share of visitors because of its tragic past. It’s even been called “the most haunted Walmart in America.” (True, on TikTok, but still.) Imagine being the one in the Arkansas retailer’s corporate office tasked with keeping track of those statistics.

But generations before Walmart came along, that patch of present-day Seawall Boulevard was occupied by the St. Mary Orphan Home, operated by the Sisters of Charity of the Incarnate Word. Almost to a one, its residents — ten nuns and at least 90 children — perished during the fearsome hurricane that came ashore on Sept. 8, 1900. The nuns used clothesline to tie the children and themselves together; the only survivors were three boys who had wrangled loose and climbed a tree.

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When a hurricane crossed Galveston, Texas September 8, 1900 it killed thousands and destroyed or damaged almost every building on the island. The Sisters of the Incarnate Word operated St. Mary's Orphanage three miles west of Galveston from 1874 to 1900. There were 93 children cared for by 10 sisters. After the storm, 90 children and 10 sisters were dead.

A historical marker along the Seawall honors the 100-plus residents of the St. Mary Orphan Asylum who perished in the 1900 storm.

Photo by Chris Gray

An undated photograph shows St. Mary's Orphanage just three miles west of Galveston, Texas. The 1900 Storm destroyed the orphanage and killed 90 children and 10 nuns.

File/Courtesy of the Rosenberg Library

By now stories of strange doings at that Walmart, especially after hours, are so pervasive that “I would be shocked to find a Galvestonian who's never heard of it,” said local author and ghost-tour guide Kathleen Shanahan Maca.

“They talk about the hauntings of some of the big historic locations that make a visual impact, but for someplace that people just go into every day, it becomes a talking point,” she added.

Although she has never witnessed anything spooky or unusual at the Seawall Walmart — not so elsewhere on the island, she noted — Maca has talked to plenty of present and former employees who have. “When people find out who I am, they usually want to tell me their Galveston ghost story,” she said. “It's kind of humorous how many people from Walmart have stories that they want to share.”

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This Walmart has more a lot more ghosts than just these Halloween decorations, many people on the island say.

Photo by Chris Gray

These employees, from grocery stockers all the way up to department and store managers, have reported all manner of eerie activity: disembodied children’s voices, both laughing and crying, cash registers going haywire, automatic doors opening and closing on their own, items out of place both in the store offices and on the shelves. One common story is a of a female child’s voice — often heard by several people at once, Maca notes in her 2016 book “Ghosts of Galveston” — crying out for her mother.

Perhaps understandably, a considerable number of tales stem from the toy department.

“They [the spirits] tend to like the electronic toys, because they will turn them on and off a lot,” Maca said. “And they will knock the balls out of the ball cage that they're held in, to bounce them around. There's evidently one little boy who bounces an invisible ball — there’s not really a ball, but [employees] can hear a ball bouncing down the aisles when you're standing there, which would be a little bit much.”

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Phantom bouncing balls are just one of the eerie occurrences reported in the store's toy section.

Photo by Chris Gray

Another widespread story concerns the time Walmart allowed FEMA workers inside the heavily damaged store to fetch supplies after Hurricane Ike in 2008. “When they entered, they heard children laughing and coughing,” said Maca, who devoted a chapter of her 2016 book “Ghosts of Galveston” to the haunted Walmart.

“They thought that some children had snuck into the building, so they did a full search,” she added, “and even though they didn't find any children, they found children's footsteps in the muck on the floor even though there was no other entrance at the time.”

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And then there’s Denise Sandoval, a self-described “ghost magnet.” After 15 years on overnights — supernatural stuff at the store most often happens around 1 a.m., which Maca said was the apex of the 1900 storm — she currently works the early shift as a greeter. She’s seen all kinds of things, from a fire extinguisher that spontaneously flew “five or six feet” and nearly hit a little girl (luckily, a shopping cart intervened) to ghostly faces churned up in the rubble during the store’s renovations last year.

Besides writing two books herself, “Galveston Ghost Tales” and “Galveston Orphans Home: The Caretaker” — both available on Amazon and at Peanut Butter Warehouse on the Strand, she said — Sandoval has documented her otherworldly Walmart experiences in a series of TikTok videos. One shows mysterious footprints in the tile; another features a Cry Babies doll eerily opening and closing its eyes for 13 seconds.

“My ultimate goal is I want a movie deal,” she said.

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Officially, the store seems happy to at least wink at all the alleged ghostly activity. The most popular video on its Facebook page is entitled “You know what they say about the Galveston Walmart…”

And early Friday morning, the trio of managers on duty were neither surprised nor annoyed by a Chron reporter’s questions. They declined to give their names and claimed to have never seen anything amiss themselves, but did allow that all the ghost stories have definitely been good for business.

As one quipped, “if it brings us tourists, there’s ghosts everywhere."

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