When better to tell a ghost story than on Halloween? And this story actually involves several ghosts that reportedly haunt a hotel in the Historic Fort Worth Stockyards.
Miss Molly’s Hotel, on Exchange Avenue just off of Main Street, first opened in 1910. Over the decades it has been a boarding house, a high-end hotel for wealthy cattlemen, a bordello and the city’s first-ever official ‘bed and breakfast’.
And during that time it has apparently accumulated a collection of spirits, including a cowboy (who multiple mediums have identified as “Jake”), a small child and a woman who may have been the madam of the house.
“I had no clue it was haunted [when I took the job] so when I came to work here, after a few months, things started happening,” said Paula Gowins, the Manager of Miss Molly’s who has worked at the hotel for more than a decade.
About the resident cowboy named Jake, Gowins did not have to take anyone’s word about him – she saw him once with her own eyes.
“I saw him in full body. He walked into a room and shut the door behind him, and I went up and knocked on the door and opened the door and no one was in there,” Gowins said, with a laugh. “That is when I knew something was up because I’m sitting there thinking, ‘I know I’m not crazy!’”
According to the hotel’s website:
The Scene
The seven themed rooms in the hotel all share stories of paranormal activity, with the Cattlemen’s and Cowboy rooms having some of the more famous sightings of apparitions. Visitations have also occurred in the current owner’s private room’s number eight and nine of a young girl, who is considered a former tenant of the hotel. Most of the sightings have involved the former working girls from the hotel’s days as a bordello.
One the website TripAdvisor there are many reviews – marked as ‘Excellent’ – that tell similar stories.
“We stayed in room #3 one bed had a spirit sit on it in the middle of the night, the other bed was shaken by a spirit in the middle of the night,” noted dancepatti of Tulsa, Oklahoma. “It was an exciting night!”
“Made a non-believer into a true believer,” wrote llee44881 of Saint Louis, who indicated she planned to return.
