I felt the chill begin at me knees, and swiftly rush to my heart. I felt as if I had entered an industrial freezer, but it was only the hallway of the Menger Hotel. Gooseflesh rose on my arm as I gasped. Beside me I heard my friend Judy gasp at the same moment. “There is one here!” she whispered excitedly. “Yes,” I said. There is!”

It wasn’t the first time we had “felt” a ghost that evening. We had walked into several “cold spots” on the third floor and on the fourth. That shouldn’t be surprising since reportedly the historic Menger Hotel in San Antonio is haunted by anywhere from thirty-two to forty ghosts (depending on which tale you choose to believe).

Haunted stairwell in the Menger Hotel

We were standing in this stairwell between the third and fourth floors. No, we were not feeling a draft from the window. I checked. There were no air conditioning vents nearby. And, I couldn’t take this picture with my camera until after about ten minutes of trying.

This happened to me before when I was in a haunted area — my camera wouldn’t take a picture, but just said, “Busy.” I could turn it different directions and snap a picture. If Judy stood in front of the camera on the stairwell, I could take a picture (I swore upon my mother’s grave that I would not show you pictures of her … those pictures were doggone scary!). Otherwise, all I got was “Busy.”

I snapped the picture above when a group of giggling teenagers approached. At that moment, Judy looked at the Ghost Radar application on my iPhone and said, “It says, ‘gone.’”

We could no longer feel the cold, and I could easily snap pictures after the teenagers arrived. We decided to move to another part of the hotel and search for more. The halls are like rabbit warrens, turning every direction and branching out.

There is definitely a ghost in this area!

We felt another area of extreme cold on this stairwell. It ended in a “T.” I snapped the picture above and pivoted to take a picture down the hallway. At that moment, I saw something “flit” past that table. It was the size of a bat. I turned to tell Judy, who was turning to tell me that she had seen something flit past, too!

At that moment, there was a thunderous crash inside a locked closet beside us. We almost jumped out of our skins. Judy was backing away, but I walked up to the closet below and tapped on the door. I said, “If you are in there, tap back.”

Haunted closet?

Drat! Nothing happened. I guess I was too sassy to the ghost.

Around another hallway, where we once again felt that chill, I stepped ahead of Judy. She called out, “Ghost radar is saying, ‘tea.’ T. E. A.” At that moment, I almost tripped over a room service tray laden with a teapot, teacups, and teabags. Judy had not yet stepped around the corner to see it!

I snapped picture after picture all through the night, but we never found an “orb” in any of them. I think that’s because my camera kept saying, “Busy.” The ghosts wouldn’t let me take pictures of them!

But, we had a blast (a very chilly one at times) on our very own haunted ghost tour of The Menger. It was MUCH more fun than the tour we had tried to take earlier in the night! The one we paid $15 each to endure.

If you go to San Antonio, AVOID The Alamo City Ghost Tours. These people were so greedy for money that they booked more than 100 people to go on a tour with ONE TOUR GUIDE! They herded us like cattle through the streets of San Antonio, and we couldn’t hear a thing the man was saying. You would think they could have hired an extra guide or two. It wasn’t very professional, but I don’t think they cared. At $15 a head, that tour group made out like bandits!

We had some fellow tourists who were as fed up as we were. One of them called out to us, “We are going to go haunt a bar! We are going to Durty Nelly’s.” We had decided to ditch the tour, too, but had no intention of going to that bar! I’ve been to Durty Nelly’s once, and that’s all I need. But, I didn’t tell them that! They looked like the type who would enjoy a rowdy bar!

Ghost Busters in San Antonio

Our jaunt through the haunted hallways of The Menger made up for the earlier event. If you plan to ghost hunt there, however, I would suggest a time other than Halloween. There were so many giggling kids in there that it scared away the ghosts!

Did I sleep well knowing that I was surrounded by spirits? Heck, yes. That bed was so comfortable that I slept like the dead! Except … the dead don’t “sleep” at The Menger Hotel!

© for This Eclectic Life, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ghost Radar, ghost tours, Ghostly--Mostly, San Antonio Texas, South Texas Plains

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

The Menger Hotel in downtown San Antonio is our destination this Friday night. I did tell you it is haunted, didn’t I? My friend Judy and I are getting excited! We have our room booked (we are going to share a room, because we are a couple of scaredy cats) AND we are scheduled to go on a haunted tour of San Antonio on Friday night.

All this week I am telling ghost stories in San Antonio Middle Schools to get myself in the mood. Aw, heck. That’s a lie. I’m telling ghost stories to earn money to pay for all this ghost hunting business!

I have my Ghost Radar application on my iPhone, too — but I don’t believe in it anymore. A librarian at the school today downloaded it and we set our phones side by side. You would think that they would give the same readings, wouldn’t you? They didn’t. I think it’s bogus, but don’t tell Judy because I want to scare her silly.

The YouTube video below is what I’m really using to get myself in the mood. It shows a ghostly figure walking the halls of The Menger! Take a look. It sets my hair on end!

© for This Eclectic Life, 2009. | Permalink | 3 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ghostly--Mostly, San Antonio Texas, South Texas Plains, Texas Travel, YouTube

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

I’ve had my iPhone for a year, and resisted all temptation to download any “apps” that were not free. I know myself well, and I could get addicted to the little games that Apple offers for that phone of mine. But, I caved.
Yesterday, at the suggestion of my friend Thorne, I shelled out 99¢ for one called “Ghost Radar.” Yes, I know it’s silly, but I’ve already gotten 99¢ worth of enjoyment out of it.

You can visit the link above to get the full scoop on it, but here is a little bit of their blurb about it:

Ghost Radar employs a proprietary algorithm to analyze the quantum flux … Readings for various sensors on iPhone/iPod are analyzed to detect QUANTUM Fluctuations. Interpretations of the sensor readings are displayed graphically as blips on the radar along with numeric and textual readouts. Use your Ghost Radar to hunt for odd changes in the flux. Hunters of all types may find anomalous areas of their environment where readings simply can’t be explained. You be the judge. Are the results of your hunting evidence of paranormal activity?

Did y’all just read that and think, “Do what?” So did I. I couldn’t understand a single word they were saying, so I asked my husband (who is fluent in “Technical”) to translate it into a language I can understand. He’s from California, so he doesn’t speak “Texan.” I asked him to translate it into “Blond,” because for some reason we can both speak that lingo, although we do have problems with pronunciation sometimes. As with any foreign language, I can understand much more Blond than I can speak.

He said that what they mean is:

The app has, like, this thingie that sees ghosts and, like, other scary stuff. It sees dead people! And, it, like, let’s them TALK to you!

Cool!

Now, I know y’all think I’m crazy anyway, but I have good reasons to download this application:

1. For blog fodder. I got an e-mail saying that NaBloPoMo is using the theme “haunted” this month. If you are not a blogger, NaBloPoMo is a community of bloggers who decide to post every stinkin’ day in a month. I’m not going to do that, because I’m a bit frazzled right now, but I like the theme. If you are a blogger and want to join in, go to the NaBloPoMo site to sign up.
2. To mess with my friend’s head. I’m going to stay in a haunted hotel with my friend Judy at the end of the month, and we are going on a ghost hunting tour of San Antonio. I intend to milk this application for all it’s worth! Don’t y’all tell Judy, OK?
3. To increase my “cool factor.” I’m going to be telling ghost stories to middle school students later this month, and when they crowd around to talk to me, I intend to whip out my iPhone and show them that little old ladies can be wild and crazy, too.
4. I’m weird. That is the only reason that really counts.

I downloaded the application and discovered that it has a radar screen, and occasionally there are colored “blips” that show on the screen. Supposedly, these are the energies, or “entities.” The colors range from blue (not very strong) to green (a little stronger) to yellow (stronger still) to red (throw down your phone and run!).

Around the screen, there are numbers that keep changing all the time. I’m not sure what those numbers mean. But, at the bottom of the screen there are sometimes letters scrolling across. I think this is supposed to be the entity trying to communicate with words. Now and then, a mechanical voice says a word out loud and makes me jump our of my chair! According to the website, “Ghost Radar attempts to translate the quantum flux readings into an ENGLISH spoken word.”

I sat in my living room giggling over this application, as blips of every color swarmed on the screen. Now and then, my phone spoke random words, but they didn’t make any sense. “Wooden.” “Maybe.” “Tim.” “As.” “Sail.” “Build.” Does that make sense to you? It didn’t to me. I walked over to a curio cabinet filled with family heirlooms, and that voice on my phone said, “Child.” I was pointing it at some antique toys from the 1800s!

ooooEEEEEooooo!

The Ghost Radar website suggested trying to talk to the entity, so I said, “OK, ghost. IF you are there, say ‘cat.’ You could do that …IF you are there. If you say ‘cat’ I will believe you are there.” It didn’t. It said all kinds of other random words. I got bored and turned the phone off. I needed to plug it in to charge the battery (Ghost Radar does seem to suck that battery dry).

When my husband came home, I turned it on to show him. I told him, “It never would say ‘cat,’ and I think it’s a bunch of bull.” Just then, my large yellow tomcat cried for his supper … and my phone called out, “Cat.”

Yikes!

I played with that application through the evening, until my husband’s eyes glazed over, and then turned it off. I was still laughing about it … then. Later that night, alone in my office, I decided to try Ghost Radar again. I was sitting in the darkness, with only the light from the computer screen and my iPhone.

I glanced down at the phone, and there were dozens of RED lights on the screen. Then that mechanical voice said:

Holy Cow! I turned off that phone and paced the office, trying to reason with myself: “It’s a toy, Shelly. Nothing more! It means nothing!”

To prove to myself that I am not a chicken, I turned the phone back on and pulled up the Ghost Radar. Again I saw all those blinking red lights. I looked at the letters that ran across the bottom of the screen and saw:

Have y’all ever looked at my by-line at the top of the post? My last name was once K.N.E.U.P.P.E.R!

“Oh, Fudge!” I squealed. “I’ve got a ghost who knows my name, but can’t spell it!”
[OK, that's not exactly what I said ... I'm "fudging" about that ... but you get the drift.]

The hairs stood up on my neck, as my phone said:

“I.” “Don’t.” “Freakin’.” “Think.” “So.” I haven’t turned on that application since then. Oh, sure I intend to use it when I go to San Antonio, because I simply have to show how cool I am. But, I’m never turning it on when I’m alone again … and after I have proved my coolness, I might even take it off of the phone.

I’m haunted by that Ghost Radar. I know it’s on the phone and I know it’s just a silly game …

… or IS it?

Do you have Ghost Radar? What do you think?

© for This Eclectic Life, 2009. | Permalink | 31 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ghost Radar, Ghostly--Mostly, haunted, humor, iPhone

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

A couple of days ago, I showed y’all some pictures of a dilapidated old house in Boyd, Texas. I thought it looked likely to be a “haunted” house, but told you that I’d have to figure out a ghost story that would work for it. I asked, “Got any ideas for a ghostly tale to match the house?”

Haunted House 2nd view

I want to share the story he wrote (I did too ask permission!).

Here is Joe’s ghost story, with very minor editorial changes. What’s the title for it, Joe?:

In 1923, right around March, Montana and Nevada became the first states to enact old age pension laws. Old Roland McCallsberg, who lived in a modest bungalow in Boyd, Texas, was thinking how he’d like to have an old age pension as he was certainly up in years. Would there be a way he could collect a pension from Montana while living in Texas? “Maybe so,” he thought, for he had an idea.

Suppose he signed up for the benefits in Montana? He could use the address of a friend who lived in Bozeman, an old friend and a good friend. He was sure Max Slater wouldn’t mind if he used his address. He wrote a letter to Max telling him what he was intending to do.

Max received the letter and sent a wire back telling Roland that he wasn’t
sure if he wanted him to do that. It was basically against the law and he didn’t want to be involved. Roland ignored that and went ahead and traveled up to Montana to get the papers and post them from up there. He didn’t want to raise any red flags with pension request papers coming from a post office Texas.

The train trip was long. Along the way, he met a woman who told him she was a widow. Roland was a single man and had never married. This woman intrigued him so! Before he knew it, he had told her everything about his finances and his plan to accept pension. He formed a relationship with her; her name was Joyce Kensett.

Joyce wanted Roland to take her back with him to Texas and get married. She
would take care of his needs, as far as cooking and cleaning. That’s what happened, and in a whirlwind courtship, engagement and marriage, the two settled in to life of a retired married couple.

The highlight of this encounter with Miss Kensett is that she had a legitimate Montana address. Roland did manage to sign up for pension benefits using Joyce Kensett’s address in Bozeman. The years rolled by and not too long after their third year of marriage, Roland wanted to see the statement that showed the pension deposits from the bank in Bozeman where they were deposited.

Joyce told him she would have to wire the bank and have them sent to them via US Mail and that it would take a couple of weeks. Thinking he was rich, as he would have the illicit pension money and his bank interest on deposits and investments in Texas, Roland planned an elaborate trip abroad for himself and his spouse Joyce.

Joyce left one day to go to the town and accept a postal notice. She told Roland she had to sign for it. She never returned.

Roland waited a while and did all he could do to find out what had happened to his beloved. When all was said and done, Joyce had gone back to Montana and taken all the pension money as she had signed up in Roland’s name, but used herself as a beneficiary.

She knew that Roland would expire as soon as when she left … she made a cake and a pie and laced each of them with arsenic. Roland, who devoured home made sweets in large quantities, ate both the cake and the pie and died. When the authorities found him, it looked like a death from old age.

Joyce continued to get survivors pension benefits in Montana as having been married to Roland. The house in Texas was hers too, except she never wanted it. She sold it.

The buyer, unaware of the shady dealings that Joyce Kensett did to get Roland’s money and house, was not amused when the ghost of Roland McCallsberg came nightly to see if Joyce had returned with the post from the bank in Bozeman. He sold the house soon after seeing and hearing the ghost.

The house went through three owners before finally word got out that it was haunted. The legend of how Roland McCallsberg roamed the house seeking his wife every night raced around Wise County until everyone knew the tale. No one ever thought of buying that house and in 1928 it was abandoned and has sat empty ever since.

Many years later, in 2009, a woman with a penchant for the unusual came by and took some pictures. If you look very closely, you can see Roland roaming around looking for Joyce.

Thank you, Joe, for that delightful story! You can bet that I’ll be telling that to students at schools next year. Do you tell scary stories like that to your lovely little grandbabies?

If y’all liked that story, rush over to visit the Round Circle Blog and say “hi.” You’ll meet Joe, and you’ll discover a blogger with a heart as big as Dallas … and a wonderful way with story.

© for This Eclectic Life, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Boyd Texas, fiction, Ghostly--Mostly

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

We continued traipsing through the halls of the Driskill in our search for some kind of ghostly presence. In the bar, the leering steer hanging on the wall was a bit frightening. I’m not fond of hanging dead critters on the wall, but then I guess the management had to prove that this is Texas — cattle country.

Leering Steer

As I told you in Part 1, we were sniffing for cigar smoke — hoping to catch a whiff of the ghostly Jesse Driskill’s cigar. We were also listening. Especially near the stairwells. We hoped to hear the sound of a bouncing ball and a little girl giggling.

Grand Stairwell going down

It seems that, according to the ghostly lore, a U.S. Senator visited the hotel with his family (the hotel doesn’t pinpoint what year this took place). The Senator attended a function on the Mezzanine, while his four year old daughter played with a ball near the staircase. The child tripped and fell to her death at the base of the stairs.

Grand Stairwell looking up

Many people have reported hearing that bouncing ball, but we didn’t. We even tried listening at other stairwells, hoping that the ghost child had gotten fickle and gone elsewhere to play.

Another stairwell

I wondered if the hotel put this miniature furniture in the lobby for the convenience of that tiny ghost.

Tot furniture

Some folks claim to see the ghost of “Mrs. Bridges,” a former employee of the hotel, arranging unseen flowers in the lobby while dressed in a Victorian style uniform. Others claim to have seen the apparition of Mr. Peter J. Lawless, who lived in the hotel from 1886-1916, checking the time on his pocket watch near the elevator on the fifth floor.

Other hotel guests have complained of waking to the sensation of an unseen someone trying to push them out of bed at night. Guest have claimed that the furniture in their room was moved in the night. Elevator doors open without the button being pushed, and the elevators run on their own (without a living soul inside them).

A houseman, who is supposedly still employed at the Driskill, made a gruesome discovery back in the 1990s: a dead body! It seems that a Houston socialite had gotten jilted before her wedding. She came to Austin to “recuperate,” armed with a gun and her ex-fiance’s credit cards. After an extensive shopping spree, the socialite took her own life in her room. She is often seen walking the hallways in a modern wedding gown, with her gun in hand. She has also been known to leer up at women from under the stalls in the bathroom on the Mezzanine.

Keep in mind, folks that this is a different jilted bride than the one I told you about in Part 1. The Driskill has two jilted brides hanging around. This should probably serve as a cautionary tale: if you are a jilted bride, don’t check into the Driskill hotel to recuperate — you might just “check out.”

I showed you the YouTube video of the song that Concrete Blonde singer Johnette Napolitano wrote about her ghostly experience at the Driskill. She isn’t the only celebrity with a Driskill ghost tale to tell.

The Scottish singer Annie Lennox stayed at the hotel once before a concert performance. She couldn’t decide what to wear for her performance that evening, so she laid out two dresses on the bed before taking her shower. When she came out of the bathroom, one of the dresses had been put away — but she was alone in the room! Her ghostly visitor must have been a fashionista.

Exhausted from our photographic tour of the hotel, we returned to our haunted room on the fourth floor. As we opened our door, I heard giggling, and the thunderous sound of running. We stepped inside and were closing the door, as a herd of little girls (with cameras in hand) came around the corner. They stopped in their tracks as they saw our door closing, and their shoulders dropped in disappointment.

I knew why.

I opened the door again and smiled at the little girls, who ranged in age from about six to thirteen. I said, “You are ghost hunters, aren’t you?”

They all started babbling at once. The oldest girl whispered, “Do you know you are in a haunted room?”

“Yes, I do,” I said. “Do you want to see it?”

As my husband discreetly covered our dirty clothes with the bedcover, I opened the door wide for those five little girls to peer inside. One of them asked, “Have you seen anything weird happening?”

“No,” I said — as the storyteller came out in me. Mischievously, I walked to the end of the bed and put my foot in the depression in the floor (I told you about it in Part 1 — but you didn’t read it, did you?!).

“There is this strange indentation on the floor,” I said. “It’s about the size of a woman’s head. Do you think that’s where she hit her head when she fell?”

All the girls gasped and crowded around. Then, I noticed the youngest child. Her eyes were wide behind her thick glasses, and her knuckles were white as she clutched her camera. Suddenly feeling remorseful, because I don’t want to be a part of a child’s nightmare, I knelt before that little girl.

“I’m telling a story,” I said. “The woman who died in this room hanged herself. Her head never hit the floor. You aren’t scared are you?”

As the little girl solemnly shook her head, the oldest girl said, “She is the one who wanted to go on a ghost hunt!”

That tiny, sweet-faced girl looked at me and held out her camera. Her face was the image of innocence, as she said, “Wanna see my orbs?”

I stifled a snicker, hoping it would be a very long time before she uttered those words to a boy.

“Sure,” I squeaked. All of the girls then clustered around me to show the pictures on their digital cameras with “orbs,” or unexplained balls of light in them. I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t see much more than the cameras, but I played along as best I could for a blind woman.

Before their excitement had a chance to wane, I sent them on their way to the Mezzanine to check out the bathroom. They ran down the hall giggling, but I pitied their poor parents. I didn’t expect those parents would get a wink of sleep that night.

The rest of our trip was taken up by a visit to see the bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge and some shopping the next day at two intriguing shops we saw from our hotel window (a post that is still in the works). I confess that the only “unearthly” sound I heard in the night was my own snoring (and I hear that every night).

We had no ghostly experience at the Driskill. Maybe the ghosts were on vacation, too? I didn’t care, though. I had fun. I’d rather see five giggling ghost hunters, filled with the thrill of the chase, than a ghost any day.

Although, next time I want to join the folks who were taking in this luggage:

Bubbly and presents

Do you think under the influence of all that “bubbly” that they saw a “presence?” I hope that wasn’t a bridal party! The Driskoll has enough ghostly brides for any hotel!

© for This Eclectic Life, 2009. | Permalink | 4 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Austin Texas, Ghostly--Mostly, Hill Country, hotel, photographs, photos, Texas Travel

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

On our recent trip to Austin to view the bat flight at Congress Avenue bridge, we stayed at a landmark hotel. The Driskill Hotel is located on Brazos Street in the heart of downtown Austin. It was built in 1886 by a fellow named Jesse Driskill, who was not only a cattle baron, but had been named an honorary colonel of the Confederate Army during the Civil War.

Lobby of the Driskill Hotel

Driskill built this opulent hotel for the insane amount (at the time) of $400,000. People told him it was foolish to spend so much money on a hotel and for him it was. He went bankrupt and lost the hotel in a poker game. Colonel Driskill died penniless three years later.

More of the Lobby

It is said that he still haunts the hotel, since he didn’t get to enjoy his creation in life. There are tales of many ghosts who haunt this historic hotel. Seen in black and white, I can almost believe the place is haunted.

Haunted Stairwell

Statue in the bar of the Driskill

Come to visit me tomorrow, and I’ll tell you more about our visit to this haunted hotel. For today, you can visit other bloggers who are posting photos in black and white. It’s a photo project by Aileni called Monochrome Weekly.

© for This Eclectic Life, 2009. | Permalink | 9 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: black and white, Ghostly--Mostly, My Neck Of The Woods, photographs, Texas Travel

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

She resides over the piano at The Woodbine Hotel in Madisonville, TX. This picture of the mannequin was one of many photographs I took at the hotel last week.

I wandered through the hotel, after dark, with my camera on the tripod while I took random pictures in the hopes of capturing an image of an “orb.” The night before I had heard “ghostly footsteps” in the middle of the night. Earlier that day, I had spoken to Susan (the owner of the hotel) about ghosts that she had seen throughout her years of owning the place. She had invited me to snap the pictures, so I took her up on that offer.

I won’t bore you with all the pictures. Most of them were unremarkable, because I wasn’t even framing the shots. I did have one very strange experience, though.

Upstairs, I pointed my camera at the door of room #7 to take a picture.

“Busy”

That’s what the screen on my camera said. “Busy.” When I pointed the camera to the right, or to the left, the picture snapped. But, the camera didn’t seem to want to take a picture of the door of room #7. I was puzzled, because my camera had never done that before. I walked closer to the door, and felt a strange sensation.

I don’t quite know how to describe it. It was a sort of “resistance,” as if I were trying to move my arms under water (only I wasn’t wet). Do y’all know that feeling? Like when you try to “walk” in the pool? I didn’t feel anything touching me, but I felt the “resistance.” I gave up and went to find the owner of the hotel.

Susan accompanied me back to the room and watched as I tried to take a picture of the door. I tried every setting on the camera, but it resisted taking the picture. Since room #7 was a suite, Susan suggested we enter it from the other door. I set up the tripod inside the room facing the door that resisted me, and tried to take a picture. “Busy.”

I let Susan try to take the picture, as I walked toward the door. Again, I felt the resistance, and again the camera resisted taking the picture. “It says ‘busy’ on the screen, again,” Susan said. She kept trying to snap my picture at the door as I literally struggled to open it. As I stepped out of the doorway, the camera snapped a picture.

Later that evening, a group of local folks invited me to join them in the bar. They shared stories of some of their own strange experiences at The Woodbine. There have been many over the years. Those are stories for another day. I’m not the only person who has felt strange near room #7, though. The man who is working on some repairs to that suite feels very odd sensations in the attic above that room.

I took more pictures through the night, and never again did the camera say “busy.” The camera was on a tripod, which makes me wonder about these two photos I took in the bar.

It’s hard to tell on the smaller size pictures, but everything else except for those strange lights are in focus. Orbs? A sorry photographer? I can’t say.

I can say that, if I want another eerie experience, I’ll book room #7 at The Woodbine.

© for This Eclectic Life, 2009. | Permalink | 5 comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: Ghostly--Mostly, Madisonville, My Neck Of The Woods, Texas Travel

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh