Spooky Night at Green Oaks Hotel Demolition: Ghostly Visit

The Green Oaks Hotel was scooped up by a land developer, and put to the wrecking ball.

In the Autumn of 2007, I was working as a roving supervisor for the Night Watchman Firm who had the contract.

The Hotel was being taken down slowly. It had asbestos in every room, in every ceiling tile, and every walkway. It was for protection before it became so clear it was hazardous to the health. 

This was being taken down per OSHA, and EPS requirement for removing the carcinogen. Our access was limited because much of the remaining hotel was blocked off for asbestos abatement.

It was a chilly night. The late autumn nip had come to foretell of winter (yes, there is a winter in Fort Worth, Texas. Sometimes. For about 12 hours in January or February).

I was fighting a cold which should have kept me home. However, wage slaves are wage slaves. I dutifully drove my butt to work, and picked my posting for the night. It was an eight hour shift rather than a 12 hour shift that Night Watchmen usually are scheduled for.

I took up the initial post under the canopy of the main entrance. From that vantage I watched over the demolition equipment, the tented section of the demolition area, the muddy, abandoned, full sized swimming pool, a decorative fount which was used to divert traffic from the parking lot to the main entrance, and the tennis court.

From 22 hundred hours to 23:30, everything was pretty quiet. Staggering my rounds I took my first full round of the site late. I wanted everything to get settled in before I walked the night. I was on the far side of the building, about as far as I could be from my aged, white Dodge Ram Van.

I began hearing a faint noise. The kind of hollow noise of a tennis ball. I knew it meant something. It was damn near midnight. There was a miniature golf course across the street. It was not coming from there. I finished checking the far side, and worked my way back to my post. As I did, the noise became louder and defined. It was the sound of a tennis ball being volleyed back and forth.

I stood at the front bumper of my van, looking toward the tennis court. There was no ball. There was no one playing tennis. There wasn’t even a net. There was just the sound of someone playing tennis.

White Privilege aside, being a wage slave, I shrugged, and sat back in my van until the next round needed to be done. If the spirits wanted to play tennis, I was not going to intervene.

One may call my philosophy, live and let live, but they are dead (presuming we use the standard understanding of ghosts). Moreover, they were not hurting anything.

That bouncing ball kept echoing in the night for about three hours, and then it was gone. Just like that.

If you are wondering if I ever went back, the answer is, yes. I had asked to work on that site because it was haunted. I was not going to miss the opportunity to rub elbows with the high class ghost of a once great hotel. They aren’t all like the Overlook.

To Be Continued