April Slaughter

by Ghosthunting Texas

  I spent nearly twenty minutes sitting at the top of the cave, and for over half of that time, I got the impression that someone was trying to get my attention, or may have just been teasing me. Either way, I was never able to figure out what was going on.

  Allen came back from taking pictures and sat down beside me on the boulder.

  “What sorts of things have reportedly happened out here?” he asked.

  I replied by telling him that several paranormal investigators had made trips to Dead Man’s Hole to document any ongoing activity. Katrina Kindred and her partner Kelli Lindsay with Austin Paranormal had been warned by a psychic associate of theirs that Dead Man’s Hole had a “serious energy pull” they needed to be careful of while conducting their investigation.

  “When we got there, almost all of our equipment failed,” said Katrina.

  “We had two video recorders that had been charging over twenty-four hours, and a brand new pack of batteries,” she continued. “One video recorder never even turned on, and the other went dead in about a minute. When we opened the battery package, all eight of the brand new batteries had been drained. The only thing that worked was our audio recorders.”

  In digging a little deeper, I also found that several other teams had been out to Dead Man’s Hole in an attempt to document paranormal phenomena. Wendy Wilkins and Jennifer Trout of the Travis County Ghost Hunters have also spent nights out at the cave’s entrance and have been able to capture disembodied voices each time. One voice seems to give an indecipherable response to a request to tug on a rope Wendy and Jennifer had lowered into the cave from a small opening at the top. Another of these recordings sounds as if it may be the voice of a small child humming softly somewhere nearby.

  According to their website, the Travis County Ghost Hunters have repeatedly captured these same voices on their subsequent visits, leading them to believe that Dead Man’s Hole is manifesting residual activity—a playback of sorts, an imprint of a moment in time that repeats itself and does not directly interact with the living.

  When it came time for us to leave, we realized we had spent nearly two hours at Dead Man’s Hole, and that the strange silence we noticed when we first arrived was still lingering. It was as if we had been sitting inside a bubble that nothing could infiltrate. It was very strange to me, as I have never before encountered that sort of quiet in the outdoors, especially in the middle of a warm and humid day in Texas.

  Dead Man’s Hole was once a good place to “get rid” of someone. It’s bad enough to think about all of the poor souls who lost their lives and were then thrown into the abyss of the cave, but as we know so little about the exact circumstances surrounding these people, imagine for a moment if one (or more) of them had actually been tossed in there alive? No one knows for sure just how many bodies fell into the darkness, but I know one thing is certain—today, something is reaching out from it.

  CHAPTER 17

  Driskill Hotel AUSTIN

  Driskill Hotel exterior (April Slaughter)

  JESSE LINCOLN DRISKILL purchased a city block in the heart of Austin in 1885 for $7,500 and set out to construct his dream—the Driskill Hotel. The construction cost $400,000, an exorbitant amount of money in those days. The hotel first opened its doors to guests on December 20, 1886. Mr. Driskill and his family had amassed a fortune in the cattle business, but subsequently lost it after three thousand of their herd perished in a freeze late in the spring of 1888. The hotel became too much of a financial burden that year, and Mr. Driskill was forced to sell it to Doc Day. Two years later, Driskill died of a stroke. A life-sized portrait of him was hung in the hotel lobby, where it remains today. He truly loved his hotel, and some say he died of a broken heart shortly after suffering its loss.

  In 1895, Major George W. Littlefield purchased the hotel for $106,000 and vowed that it would never close again. He was a successful cattle baron, served as the president of the Texas Rangers, and also worked in banking. When he acquired the hotel, he made additions that included steam heating, electric lighting, and several upgrades to the guest rooms. He also opened a bank in the lobby of the hotel, and the original vault and door are still intact.

  Psychic healers and medicine men began to make frequent appearances at the hotel in 1909, attracting a large number of people in search of a magical elixir or a glimpse into their futures. Several political figures also utilized the property for various events. Texas politician Lyndon B. Johnson and his future wife Lady Bird enjoyed their first date dining at the Driskill. In 1948, he awaited results of his U.S. senate race against Coke Stevenson in the Jim Hogg suite—a race that Johnson ultimately won.

  Ownership of the hotel has changed several times over the last century, and it has continually undergone major renovations with nearly every new owner. Millions of dollars have been spent to keep this beautifully historic building up-to-date and one of the most prestigious hotels in Texas.

  Allen took me on my first trip to Austin when I was asked to present at a Ghostology Radio event with my friends Brian and Anna Marie Byers late in 2008. Allen mentioned that the Driskill was nearby, and that it was rumored to be haunted by several different entities. His stepsister Suzi had worked at the hotel a number of years earlier and recounted several of her experiences to him. If I was going to Austin, I thought, I was staying at the Driskill. I researched what I could about ghostly encounters and requested a night in one of their haunted rooms.

  The exterior of the hotel literally took my breath away when we arrived at the Driskill. It was pristine and ornate. From the moment I stepped inside, I was mesmerized by just how beautiful and elegant the hotel was. It was instantly fascinating; I wanted to explore every inch of it.

  Mike Kemp, director of sales and marketing for the Driskill, met us in the lobby to discuss all of the paranormal happenings in different areas of the building.

  “We hear ghost stories from guests quite often here,” he said. “Some of them get really excited when they have taken pictures and an odd shadow or orb shows up in them.”

  Mr. Driskill himself is believed to haunt the hotel as he took great pride in it when he was alive. He has been seen many times relaxing in the lobby and lounge areas reading the paper, occasionally smoking a cigar and smiling at guests as they pass by.

  The ghost of a four-year-old girl haunts the grand staircase leading from the mezzanine level to the lobby. She was the daughter of a U.S. senator visiting the hotel. As the story goes, the girl ran down the staircase after the ball she had been playing with slipped from her grasp. Both she and the ball went tumbling down the steps—an accident she did not survive. Staff and guests often hear her energetic laughter as well as the sound of an unseen ball bouncing down the staircase. During her years as an employee at the Driskill, my sister-in-law Suzi said she had seen the apparition of the little girl run through the lobby on more than one occasion.

  Another popular story adding to the mystique of the hotel is that of the “Suicide Bride.” Devastated by a broken engagement, she checked herself into a fourth-floor room at the Driskill for a quiet respite. After a brief and expensive shopping excursion courtesy of her ex-fiancé’s credit cards, the unwed bride returned to the hotel carrying several packages to her room. Sadly, her shopping trip was not enough to help her forget her grief. She entered her guest room bath, lay down in the tub, and shot herself in the stomach, using a pillow to muffle the sound of the gunshot. A housekeeper discovered the body after becoming concerned when she noticed that the young woman hadn’t left her room in several days.

  Some believe that the Suicide Bride still haunts her room at the Driskill, making herself known to guests by knocking on the walls and moving objects to different locations. Could I get her to manifest if I stayed in that very room myself? Luckily, I had the chance to find out.

  When Allen and I returned to the hotel after the event earlier that evening, we spent some time talking about how hurt this woman must have been, and how sorry we felt that she had endured such a
heartbreak. We were both sitting on the bed when we heard a whimper near the closet. Allen immediately opened the closet doors and looked around but found no explanation. We heard the strange whimper twice more over a period of nearly two hours before we decided to turn in for the night.

  At about 1:15 in the morning, something poking the bottom of my right foot suddenly awakened me. I quickly sat up in bed, but my eyes could not adjust well enough in the dark to see if anyone had been there. It was not a slight poke and I waited for the sensation to return, but it never did. I fell back to sleep without further incident that night.

  The next morning, Allen and I went to have breakfast in the hotel’s café. After our meal, we casually strolled around the lobby and admired all of the little architectural details throughout the lobby and the mezzanine level. As we stepped into the elevator to return to our room, we were both instantly covered in goose bumps. A sensation washed over us at the exact same moment that felt like something was crawling on our skin from our feet to the tops of our heads. We had no obvious explanation for the event. We stood there stunned and just looked at each other.

  “Do you feel that?” I asked.

  “I can’t help but feel it,” he said. “This is just too bizarre!”

  The sensation and goose bumps quickly subsided as we approached the fourth floor, and we stepped off the elevator wondering what exactly it was that we had just experienced. It wasn’t until weeks later that I learned the elevators in the hotel have long been the center of paranormal curiosity, as several people have reported strange occurrences in them.

  As we gathered our things in preparation to check out, Allen and I talked about how truly impressed with the hotel we were. It is truly one of the most amazing places we have ever visited. Upon checkout, we thanked the staff for how wonderfully they took care of us and promised we’d be back to visit when we could.

  When we arrived home, I recounted our experiences to friends who were eager to hear about our stay at the Driskill Hotel. Our good friend and associate John Melchior from California has often stayed at the hotel while traveling for business, and explained that he too had experiences there that he could not explain. On one particular evening, John had been watching television in his room on the fourth floor when he decided it was time to try to get some sleep.

  Driskill Hotel lobby (April Slaughter)

  “I turned off the TV and half an hour later it just came back on,” he said. “An hour or so passed and once again the set turned itself on.”

  Another friend of mine, Ben Borth, relayed an experience to me that was unlike any other I had heard in regard to paranormal occurrences in the hotel. He had also occupied a room on the infamous fourth floor.

  “The atmosphere, especially if you’re staying in the historic section of the hotel, really has the potential to creep you out,” he said. “There are pictures in the hallways of people who are now dead and mood music on the clock radios in the rooms.”

  Knowing he had experienced something even more frightening, I asked him to share the details with me.

  “It wasn’t so much an experience as it was a very intense dream,” said Ben. “It was one of those dreams where you feel like you have actually woken up but are still in fact asleep. It began with me lying in bed when someone started pounding on the door.

  “I jumped out of bed and through the door I could hear the maid yelling at me to get out of the room because I had slept through my check out time. She yelled, ‘GET OUT!’ to which I quickly replied, ‘OK!’ while I was scrambling to assemble all of my stuff. I opened the door and the maid was in the hallway with her hand around the neck of a friend of mine, pinning him up against the wall. Just as she turned to look at me, I woke up.

  “When I got up the next morning, I looked at a dead person’s picture there on the wall and I could have sworn it was the maid I had seen the night before in my dream.”

  Ben told me that in the few times he has returned to the Driskill, he has never been able to get a full night’s sleep, and yet it remains one of his favorite places to visit.

  My stay at the Driskill Hotel is one I will not soon forget, as it far exceeded any expectation I had before arriving. The staff and accommodations are phenomenal, as are the stories of those who still hold a connection to the hotel from the other side of the veil. Should you ever have the opportunity to visit, take some time to soak in the beauty of the hotel, enjoy a delicious meal in the café, and relax in your fourth floor guest room—that is, if you can. You never know who might come knocking on your door.

  Spotlig t on Ghosts: The Ca itol Haunting

  There is the perception a ong paranormal enthusiasts that ghosts make themselves known only in the dark, late-night hours. Nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, there are places where specters are seen and experienced in the middle of the day as well as at night, like the Capitol building in Austin.

  h g have unexpectedly encountered the ghost of Governor Edmund Jackson Davis (1827-1883) staring out of the building from a first-floor window, most often with a cold stare and blank expression that sends a chill up the spine. He not only haunts the interior of the building, he is also repeatedly seen walking about the grounds. Those who cross his path are caught in his unbroken stare until they pass, and then he vanishes from sight.

  Another resident of the Capitol building is rumored to be the spirit of State Comptroller Robert M. Love, who was gunned down by a disgruntled former employee as he sat working at his desk in 1903. He walks the halls, often disappearing into walls and reappearing in different sections of the building. He too has stopped to meet the gaze of visitors and employees, scaring them as they try to go about their business.

  Misty days on the Capitol grounds seem particularly active, as several unidentified apparitions have been witnessed walking the path up to the building. Why on a foggy, dreary day? No one quite knows for sure, but the atmosphere this type of weather creates is certainly enough not only to attract the souls of the dead, but also those eager to see and interact with them.

  Whether the sky is filled with sun or covered in a canopy of clouds on the day of your visit, it is certainly worth it to make the trip to Austin. The Capitol building is a beautiful piece of architecture to behold; a place where the history of Texas has been honored and shared by not only the living, but by those who have long since passed on.

  CHAPTER 18

  Caldwell County Jail Museum LOCKHART

  Caldwell County Jail Museum exterior (April Slaughter)

  IN NEARLY EVERY COMMUNITY, there is a place tucked away among the homes, churches, and businesses that the locals whisper about; a building with history, whether good or bad, where people have seen and heard things that defy explanation. Scary stories are fascinating to all of us, but seeking them out to experience them firsthand can be a little frightening. There are those who keep their distance out of fear, while some of us are driven to conquer our fears. We seek out the places with creepy reputations. In doing so, I discovered this historic jail.

  My friends Brian and Anna Marie Byers live in Lockhart, where they broadcast their popular radio show Ghostology every Saturday night on CBS Radio. Their investigative group, the Emania Research Facility, is an affiliate of The Paranormal Source, Inc. and had already been to the Caldwell County Jail on several occasions to see if they could validate any of the paranormal phenomena that reportedly occurs there. Whenever we discussed locations in Texas that intrigued them the most, Brian and Anna Marie would speak about the jail. My curiosity about the place grew, and when I was invited to speak at a Ghostology-sponsored event in Lockhart, I saw a golden opportunity to see the building they had told me so much about.

  The jail is an impressive red brick, castle-like structure just off the town’s main road. This, however, was not the first jail for Caldwell County; it was the fourth. The original jail was a log cabin building constructed in 1855. After only three years in operation, the jail burnt to the ground and took with it many of the histor
ical county records that were stored inside. In 1908, a man named T.S. Hodges constructed the building you see today.

  The Caldwell County Jail Museum now inhabits the building, which closed as an active holding facility in the early 1970s when a newer and more modern structure was erected. The old jail was recorded as a Texas Historic Landmark in 1977, and has been impressively preserved and opened to the community.

  The jail has four floors. The basement, which is primarily used for storage, is not accessible to the public. The main floor, which originally served as the living quarters for the local sheriff and his family, is now the reception area, where visitors are greeted before taking a tour. Various household items that were common in the past are displayed here. The third and fourth floors contain a total of fifteen cells made of concrete and steel. One cell at the top of the building sits alone, and was used for solitary confinement.

  On our initial trip into Lockhart, I immediately took notice of the jail and asked Allen to stop the car so that I could take a few pictures before heading to the event with our friends. The museum was not open and I did not have the opportunity to look inside just then, so we made arrangements with Brian and Anna Marie to come back another time for an official investigation of the building.

  When my husband and I finally made it back out to Lockhart a few months later, we sat down with Brian and Anna Marie to talk about their experiences at the jail, and I had never heard a story quite likes theirs before.

  “We conducted a nighttime investigation with our team from Emania,” said Brian. “We really did not know what to expect out of the evening, but it turned out to be a pretty productive investigation for us.

  “We had set up our audio to record on the third floor, and while none of us heard it at the time, we later discovered what sounded like a baby cooing in the background.”