SAN ANTONIO — Owners of the old Nix Hospital downtown are moving forward with plans to transform the building into luxury apartments.
Earlier this month, the owners of the Nix building, Innjoy Hospitality, filed a notice with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation showing they intend to renovate the old Nix Hospital. The estimated cost to convert the building into apartments is $10 million.
From the banks of the San Antonio River, the historic landmark reaches 24 stories high. Many units will boast a view of our iconic River Walk.
But, as KENS 5 learned this Halloween, the rooms may also come with company.
If this high-rise from 1930 is about to welcome new tenants, a former Nix employee thought it may be a timely opportunity to discuss the building's "permanent guests."
"I was the emergency room manager... from 1997 to 2000," said Todd Terry, a former Nix Hospital employee.
When Terry learned the future of the Nix hospital, he considered it an exciting housing opportunity—if you like ghosts.
"If they have no problem with it, they're going to really enjoy it."
During Terry's time at Nix, his first encounter with the paranormal involved a lady in white.
"I was the triage nurse that day, meaning I'd take their vital signs and get them ready to see the doctor," Terry explained. "They said she was a brand new diabetic and she had a lot of questions about her new medications and how to check her blood sugar."
He said the woman was about 4'5'', in her late-80s, wearing all white.
Including lace around her neck.
"She would wrap her arm around me and just continue to hug me and she's like, 'Oh my gosh! Thank you so much for taking care of me!'" Terry recalled. "Constantly smiling and full of love."
After talking with the woman for about 15 minutes, Terry said he stepped away for a moment to use the phone to call the woman's doctor. He said her bottle with medications had the doctor's name.
When he walked back to the waiting room, with no luck finding the doctor's number, something was missing: the woman in white.
"I went up to the receptionist and said, 'Where's that patient? Where'd she go?' The receptionist was like, 'What patient? What patient are you talking about?' I said, 'The one who was just here with the medicine. She wanted me to teach her how to do her diabetic testing.' She's like, 'I have no idea what you're talking about.'"
Was it an angel, he wondered?
Terry says the encounter with the lady in white was a positive experience that made him feel honored and grateful to be in his profession.
"I just thought it was some nice person that may have been there at the Nix, passed away there or something, and was just trying to say, 'Hey, good job! Keep doing a great job.'"
Terry's next encounter, however, really gave him chills.
It happened on the elevator.
In 1930, the Nix Hospital was the tallest and largest hospital in the United States at the time, according to the Texas State Historical Association. It was a one-stop shop in health care, deemed a "medical mall"—the first of its kind.
The first eight floors of the building were parking space. On top were 10 floors of doctors' offices, topped with six floors of a hospital. The ICU, Terry explained, was housed on the top floor.
When an ICU patient left belongings in the emergency room area, Terry hopped on the elevator to go to the top floor to return the items.
"I was the only person on the elevator. The elevator stopped on the fourth floor and I was on my phone, so I was looking at my phone but politely moved out of the way so this gentleman could get on the elevator," Terry recalled.
He describes the man as tall, middle-aged, clean cut and wearing a three-piece suit. Terry assumed it was a doctor.
"We went all the way to the 17th floor. Nobody else got on or off the elevator, so when the door opened again, I moved out of the way to let him walk by and there was absolutely nobody on the elevator," said Terry. "I went back into the emergency department and told all the staff what was going on. I was like, 'Here, one of y'all take it! I'm not getting back on that elevator by myself!'"
When Terry shared news about the future of the old Nix Hospital on a Facebook group comprised of former employees, comments with more stories came flooding in.
"They're going to 'hear' a lot of things," commented Felicita Pachie Sambrano. "Can't wait for them to meet all the little kids making so much noise at night."
"Or the whistling man," Michelle Marie replied on the thread. "Would hear whistling on the 22nd floor. And when they closed that floor I was down there using the C-section room for plastics cases. Heard whistling...I was the only one on the floor."
Some former employees said their most "haunted" floor at the Nix Hospital was the 20th, where the majority of hospice patients were admitted.
"And the priest the patients would say would visit them in the middle of the night," wrote Xochitl R Ocegueda.
Leticia Rangel said she witnessed many spirits roaming the hallways of the hospital. "Who on here was a witness to the slender gentleman in a suit and top hat?" she asked the group. "He mainly stood by the mail chute on the 19th floor."
Elizabeth Morelock, who worked at Nix Hospital from 2015 to 2019 as an RN, is all too familiar with the 19th floor. In room 1904, she says, patients would wake up and see a woman in white standing in the room staring at them.
"I thought a homeless person from downtown came in the room," said Morelock.
She said the woman in white would enter the room as if she were a nurse checking on patients overnight.
"(A patient said), 'I opened my eyes and a woman was staring at me. I was like, 'Can I help you?' and then she ran out of the room,'" Morelock recalled. "I was getting security involved but they said, 'Oh, it's just a spirit.'"
During her overnight shift, Morelock remembers the elevator doors opening without anyone there. When mentioning it to a hospital receptionist one day, she was told the elevator would stop on its own on floors where doctors got off every day.
Gloves flying across the room, clocks getting knocked off the wall, faucets randomly turning on and cabinets randomly opening. What would otherwise be a frightening experience wasn't the case for Morelock.
"It never felt scary. I'd feel a little bit of a presence, like curiosity, then they'd just move on."
For future tenants who are wanting peace and quiet, she says, they probably aren't going to get it.
In 2019, Nix Health closed all locations.
The City of San Antonio says that while the current zoning allows for apartments, no plans have been approved yet. Should the plan get the green light, renovations to the Nix could begin at the start of next year and finish by 2026.