She had real long hair, wore bright red lipstick and had a pale complexion. She wore sort of bag-lady clothes and acted strange. I believe over time the story of our Donkey Lady and the traditional Donkey Lady legend have become intertwined and merged. ~ Sherillyn Flick
San Antonio’s Donkey Lady Legend
Growing up in San Antonio, I was told the Donkey Lady Legend twice, in two different areas of town. The first time was when I was very young. My cruel older brother and his friends thought it would be fun one night to share the spooky story with me when I was about five years old.
It was a warm summer night, and I convinced my brother and the two neighborhood boys to let me into the tree house with them before our mom came outside yelling for me to “get in the house.” As I sat on the plywood floor of our above-ground bunker, the boys told me the tale of a woman who lived in a shack in the woods with her pet donkey. One night, someone set her shack on fire while she and her donkey were sleeping, killing them both.
When they found her, her body had been deformed by the fire; she now looked like her donkey (I was in kindergarten, it was believable). Now, her misshapen ghost roams the night, looking for the people who set the blaze and torturing anyone she comes across.
About four years later, we moved to a different area of San Antonio, and I started fourth grade in a new school, making new friends. However, I heard the same old story. Only this time, the Donkey Lady had moved to the woods in Helotes, just northwest of San Antonio and a few miles from our new home.
She, too, had died in a fire with her donkey. Only in this version, it was two high school boys that were the arsonists, sending her on an eternal haunt, tormenting any youth who came into her woods.
My new friends would talk about their older brothers and sisters going up to the property where the Donkey Lady once lived and seeing hoof tracks in the dirt. Some said that if you sit quietly in the dead of night, you can hear a donkey’s bray floating on the air surrounding you. There was even a Donkey Lady phone number we would call from our home phone landlines (anyone remember those?) to listen to the eerie static and otherworldly sounds float through the receiver.
Little did I know that the Donkey Lady legend lives all over San Antonio. There’s even a Donkey Lady Bridge on the city’s south side. Visitors report hearing the sound of hoofs and screams in the darkness, and some claim to see the ghostly apparition of a disfigured woman traversing the bridge at night.
In the Southside version of the tale, the Donkey Lady was a woman who raised donkeys alone on a farm in the early 20th century. She died in a fire and, unable to rest in peace, continues to haunt the bridge named for her.
So, we have a handful of stories scattered around the San Antonio metropolitan area, all with corroborating pieces and similar outcomes. Imagine my surprise when, during my curious research, I discovered an actual woman in the San Antonio area who many believe fit the role of the real-life Donkey Lady.
The Real Donkey Lady
Often young high school students would tease and harass Doc Anderson. They would sneak up at night and cut the ropes on all the donkeys and horses, and Doc would have to hunt them down in the woods. I saw her crying one time after that happened. ~ Flick
In a 1951 San Antonio Express News article, we are introduced to Doc Anderson, owner of Doc’s Little Dude Ranch. On a piece of undeveloped land, she hosted families and children for horseback riding experiences and hay rides.
Doc started her business in the 1940s near what is now the Medical Center in Northwest San Antonio, which was not far from where we lived when my brother and his cronies originally told me the horrifying story. There, it’s believed, she owned several donkeys and horses, but she didn’t own the land she kept them on. She squatted. When the property owners found out about her occupying their land, they evicted her. That’s when she moved to Northeast San Antonio (Live Oak) and started her dude ranch.
The folks in Live Oak reported seeing Doc emerge from the woods with half a dozen donkeys on a string to get water from fire hydrants. They described her as pale and always wearing a bonnet with bright red lipstick.
Doc grew up in Ft. Worth, Texas, and spent her youth working the ranch with her father and cowhands. She brought her love for ranching to San Antonio and started her dude ranch, where she trained horses, drove hay wagons, and raised donkeys.
Fast forward to 1965, and Doc is once again featured in the Express News, but this time, 65-year-old Doc is now a skunk hunter. We go on to learn about Doc’s supernatural talent of capturing skunks and living with families of them in her bedroom, some sleeping in the bed with her, yet she never gets sprayed. (It’s a riveting read.)
So, what makes Doc the Donkey Lady?
So, what makes Doc the Donkey Lady? The Live Oak Donkey Lady was a one-armed skunk trainer who wore a bonnet and would pop out of the woods leading her donkeys at night along Weidner Road. That is the stuff of legends, and everyone around here knows the legend of the Donkey Lady. ~ Scott Wayman
Doc ended up on some land that is now the Woodcrest subdivision. She was old and frail and in bad health. She had lost an arm to diabetes but was still trying to care for her animals, which included Mohawk, her prize horse that had been with her for most of her life and all of his.
One night, a group of kids snuck onto the property Doc was living on and shot Mohawk in the neck with an arrow. Mohawk passed away from the injury. Doc was devastated. Neighbors helped her bury her lifelong steed, but her heartache never healed. Not long after, Doc was once again evicted from the property she was living on with her animals. This was the last time.
Documents report that Doc was moved into a nursing home. But there is no mention of what happened to her menagerie of critters and equine family.
Donkey Ladies
She wore sort of bag-lady clothes and acted strange. I believe over time the story of our Donkey Lady and the traditional Donkey Lady legend have become intertwined and merged. ~ Flick
The Donkey Lady legend has become a tapestry, different stories blended into one. San Antonio is a big city; I reckon they can handle a few tall tales. I just wish that Doc’s tale had a happier ending.