Green Oaks Hotel: A Night Watchman’s Ghostly Encounters

Would you work nights in a hotel you knew was haunted? The strangest places are sometimes the best places to hang out. Being a Night Watchman has its own rewards (It sure isn’t the pay). 

I was called by my supervisor to a new site. It was the Green Oaks Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas. My Supervisor wanted me to cover a night shift until he could get some other willing souls to pull the watch. He took me on the nickel tour of the place, showed me the room left open for us, so we could have use of the necessary, and specific locations where equipment was at risk. This was in the last days of the Green Oaks. The building was being demolished carefully due to asbestos. 

The basic post orders were to walk the site every hour, unless you smoked then it was every 15 minutes (guard humor, never mind). As I went on the first tour with my supervisor I felt something that peaked my curiosity. I was feeling the call of spirits. 

I’ve told you before that I view my own ghost stories with a certain healthy skepticism. Still when I get that feeling, I am game. I asked my Supervisor if he did not mind too much if he would let me work the site for the first weekend (roughly 35 hours in 3 days). He asked me why? I evaded the question by saying the site “seemed interesting.” He looked at me, and asked, “what’s so interesting?” I gave him my best cat-who-ate-the-canary grin, and said, “it is haunted. I can feel it.” He nodded and agreed to my request. 

Like most of us who work the night, we have a Brotherhood of the Paranormal. The Paranormal is Normal. After a bit of a discussion, he consented. Hotels absorb a lot of emotional energy. It is not unusual for a Motel or Hotel to become a haunted hotel.  The sensitive know the feeling. 

I returned that night at 11:59:01. 

The initial round was typical, and boring, but the feeling persisted. It wasn’t long, as I made my second tour of the site that my feeling spiked. I heard what sounded like a young woman crying. I turned the corner of the first set of rooms, and stepped into the garden. She was sitting on the bench at the far side of the long dried fountain. She sat there looking at the water in a white taffeta dress, I stepped closer, and a wave of knowing washed over me. She had been jilted by a wayward lover. Nothing more. Nothing less. I looked again, she was gone. 

Over the ensuing month, as they continued to dismantle the hotel, different encounters occurred. The Banquet halls off of the hotel lobby were locked. We could not get into the lobby, we could not get into the halls. As the demolition creped closer and closer to the front of the hotel walls were torn down and replaced by framework and plywood. More than once my patrol took me past the abandoned, dark, halls to hear the sounds of New Years Eves of the past. Sometimes it was Guy Lombardo’s Auld Lang Syne, other times it was the big band sound of  Glenn Miller’s Swing, and sometimes it was good old Rockabilly. All accompanied with cheers, corks popping, and the shouts of “Happy New Year.” 

It was quite the treat.

To Be Continued