The Driskill Hotel is rumored to be one of the most haunted places in Austin. Audio Staffer Jake Gripp delves into the myths and truths behind the hotel. Join him in the second episode of the Haunted Houses series. This episode was hosted and edited by Jake Gripp. Music is by Jake Gripp and Blue Dot Sessions.

Loretta Adams: The Driskill Hotel is Super Haunted

Scott Johnson:  Driskill Hotel has been haunted forever,  and it’s only been relatively recently that the employees are allowed to talk about it. 

*Different Music Starts Playing*

Jake Gripp: Six O’ Four Brazos Street, built by Jesse Driskill in 1886 has a long, storied history, from being the first meeting place of president Lyndon B. Johnson and his then future wife LadyBird to a three-day home for musician Louis Armstrong

But today, the hotel is well-known for … other … paranormal reasons …

I’m Jake Gripp, an Audio reporter for the Daily Texan, and this is Haunted Houses. A series where we exhume the history of the haunted houses and other buildings in Austin.

But just how haunted is Austin? I’ll let someone else answer that.

Scott: Austin has a particularly bloody history. It’s got a particularly, there, there are places in Austin that have a really, really nasty history.

Like if you walk down 6th Street, half of those buildings that are there have something attached to it. 

You can’t really throw a rock without hitting the proverbial haunted house, so

Jake: That was Scott A. Johnson, Author of Haunted Austin Texas, a book that goes over… well… the haunted stories of Austin. 

During my conversation with Scott  we did end up talking about a haunted house… or rather, a hotel…

The Driskill sticks out compared to its surroundings, but it is definitely Austin. The structure, of the Romanesque Revival style, towers over the street with its three tiers of balconies topped with arches and a facade, made from bricks pressed here in Austin , all trimmed white limestone. It’s even topped with longhorns on the gable ends of the roof. But it’s not known for its architecture…

Scott:  Driskill Hotel has been haunted forever,  and it’s only been relatively recently that the employees are allowed to talk about it. 

There used to be a contract that they would sign that said that they wouldn’t talk about the hauntings in the building.

 And then when foreign investors bought it, uh, they said, no, no, any advertising is good advertising. Any press is good press. So they finally were able to start opening up and talking about it, and that’s how I got involved. 

Jake:  Along with being an author Scott also has investigated the paranormal, I asked him about who he found at the Driskill… 

Scott: Well, there’s two that are the most famous. The first one that is the most famous is the chambermaid. Um,  she’s been seen by multiple guests. She’s been seen by  pretty much everybody that works there has seen her. 

Um,  and she is, uh,  she just goes room to room doing her cleaning a bit. Um, cleaning up things that aren’t even there anymore.

Jake: Wait, I found this interesting … Do you actually hear a lot about ghost Maids? 

Well they’re in fact actually more common than you think, here is Jeanine Plumer with why…

Jeanine Plumer: maids are really often, um, ghosts.  People don’t really talk about that. They’re the famous people. But, um, where, you know, You know, you’ll find water turned on. You’re, you’re in your desk or somewhere, anywhere, it doesn’t matter. There’s a bathroom and the water’s always being turned on. It’s like somehow they’re still cleaning.

Jake: Jeanine is the owner of Haunted Texas, Austin Ghost Tours, and Haunted Texas and Beyond. She says that ghosts are attracted to finding forms of energies to capture our attention…

Jeanine: They’re throughout the whole building. So those energies can move through water and move through electricity.

And so those are often things that they use lights turning on and off, faucets turning off to connect with us.

Jake: So the Chambermaid that Scott mentioned was using the energy of the house to capture his attention.

Jake: But that wasn’t the only ghost Scott found in the Hotel…

Scott: the other one is the ghost bride.  Um,  she  came to Austin,  was supposed to be in Austin on her honeymoon,  but her, her, she found out her husband had been cheating and, uh, she called off the wedding, but went on her honeymoon anyway. 

And she went shopping one day, spent all of his money, which  Good for her. Um, cheating bastard. But, uh, she, uh,  she spent all his money and then came back to the hotel room and killed herself inside the hotel room.  And  probably the most famous sighting of her was when there were renovations happening in the Driskill.

Jake: Scott went on to say that she was commonly seen as person in the hotels elevator.

Scott: There was nobody in that room. There was nobody on that floor.  And people reported writing up to, writing up on the elevator with this beautiful blonde woman who got off on that floor.  Um,  and there were a lot of folks, you know, that they were like, Hey, what room are you in? And she would tell them a room berth.

Jake: But there was a problem, the Driskill was undergoing renovations at the time… 

Scott: it was one of the rooms that was being renovated and there was nobody there.  Um,  she’s been seen multiple times and she does interact with people, which is weird. Um, that’s one of the rare, one of the rare occurrences.  And you know, it’s not that she’s malicious or anything like that. It’s that she can’t really let go of her grief. 

Jake: Scott then explained that this was a rare thing for ghosts to do … For them to interact with the living…

Scott: It takes a fairly strong will  to hold on to this plane of existence.  So,  they’re very rare because, you know, for most people, when they go, it’s, you know, they, they can let go,  most people can let go,  the ones that can’t,  they get a little, get a little weird in the afterlife, you know, for some of them, you know, if they were not particularly nice in this life, they’re going to be even more not nice in the next one, um,  for some of them, if they, uh,  if they can’t let go of their grief,  you know, they’re basically torturing themselves for eternity.

Jake: Chills ran down my spine for this whole interview, everything Scott said felt real. Because it was … I learned that these stories are based on historical documents, with a large amount of research behind them. Here’s Jeanine Plumer again.

Jeanine:  I go to the Austin History Center, and I go to old newspaper articles or any kind of files, historic files, and kind of, you know, make sense of it.

And that’s what we do, and that’s fun. But all of that, you have to be accurate, you know, it’s not the internet.

I’m not saying the internet doesn’t have information, because obviously it does,  but the best information is hidden in libraries and history centers.

Jake: And Scott gave me the same answer.

Scott:  it’s actually kind of boring. Um, the research for a book like this starts at City Hall,  and I start going through, uh, the county clerk’s office, and I start going through all of the newspaper clippings, and I start looking up keywords like, Haunting event, paranormal, all that kind of stuff.

And I go and I researched the folklore around the places first.  And then once I’ve researched the folklore, then I go back and look at the history of it and see if there’s any of the folklore that could possibly be true.  And then once we go through that,  then I start, you know, going to the places and, and, or actually I call first and then ask folks if I can, you know, Do an interview,

Jake: The Driskill has definitely had its share of paranormal activity.

Jeanine: In the Driskilll,  the senator’s daughter, um, is always, well, when we are giving a tour, we’ve, so many times have heard, if there’s a child on the tour, that whoever that little girl, it’s a girl

Jake: But that activity is based in tragedy … Popular legend says that this girl, named Samantha, was only 7 years old when she died on the lobby staircase.

Popular legend says Samantha continues to live on that staircase…

Jeanine: This is a little child who  fell down the stairs and doesn’t  really understand that it’s over.

Jake: But what is important is that her story is still being told …

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Jake: All these stories are based in the long history of the Driskill, and based in the long history of Austin. As you heard in our last episode, the Littlefield family, owners of the Littlefield manor on UTs Campus lived in Austin…

And they too … are still connected to the Driskill Hotel. 

In the lobby of the hotel there is the reminiscence of a bank, lining a small room is a safety deposit box, a teller window and, most importantly, a vault. Here’s Lorreta Adams, an employee of Haunted Austin.

Lorrestta Adams: George Littlefield was a banker, and part of the hotel that’s left behind is one of Texas first banks, which is this very small little vault room.

The vault door is still the same, like big steel. deal, you know, door.

And it’s interesting because the door is seen kind of blowing open or something. Swinging closed and generally moving around on its own. And so we think that there is a paranormal kind of presence that’s still going in and out of the bank. And we’re not sure exactly who that is. Maybe it’s multiple people, but George Littlefield was one of the bankers in Austin and the Littlefield building next door is still actually home to a bank.

Jake: These ghosts are deeply rooted in Austin’s history and, once again, are based in the history of the city itself.

But there was one question that I wanted an answer to: why do we tell these stories? 

Here’s Scott once again with an answer.

Scott: It’s  the same reason why we watch horror movies. It’s the same reason why we ride roller coasters.

The world isn’t really the way you think it is,  but then you can go back to your normal life and you can say, Ooh, that was a thrill.

For some people, it’s just the concept that  they’ve felt their entire lives that there’s something that they’re missing out on.  And so they hear validation and ghost stories and that kind of thing. Yeah. And for some of us, we’re just history nerds.  You know, some of us are folklore geeks.

Jake: So we each have our own reasons, but these stories continue to haunt us, to live on beside us.

Because if the story lives on … So too does the person. 

Here’s Monica Ballard, a tour guide for Austin Ghost Tours and a Paranormal investigator with Haunted Texas driving this point home.

Monica Ballard:  You’re never truly dead until the living stop telling your story.  And if we’re going to tell these stories, then I damn well want to make sure that it’s the right story.

I owe it not only to you, but I owe it to them, particularly when they come from the other side to correct us.

Jake: Thank you for listening, this has been a production of The Daily Texan Audio Department. 

Music, Reporting, and editing for this episode was done by me, Jake Gripp. Thank you to Elijah Carl  and Mercy Solis for supervising