If you are ever in or around Oklahoma City or just have an unnatural urge, I recommend you visit The Skirvin Hotel. My advice is to make sure any kids are safely tucked in for the night and then head straight for the darkly inviting Red Piano Bar and order one very red glass of wine.
Driving to Lincoln
Nebraska from Houston with my son for his new job as IT Support Specialist
(computer nerd) I decided to stop over in Oklahoma City. Not a whole lot to see
on the way, steady decrease in elevation and water and increase in speed limits
and casinos. I had heard of the Skirvin Hotel there and nothing else so by
whatever is the opposite of the process of elimination, decided to stay there.
History
The hotel was built in 1925 by William Skirvin, business magnate in oil and real estate, who left Galveston after the 1900 hurricane disaster. It was considered the premier hotel in Oklahoma City for most of the twentieth century, hosting VIPs such as Richard Nixon, Dean Martin and Sidney Applebaum.
The haunting stories began with one about Skirvin and a woman at the hotel who he knew, not only as an employee. According to legend she jumped out a window of the hotel (without a parachute).
The modern haunting stories are famous for involving NBA teams who stayed at the hotel to face the Oklahoma City Thunder in their prime. It must have been pretty scary facing Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook and James Harden on the same team, so it became a popular excuse for teams that lost (badly) to blame it on hauntings since the reputation for hauntings was there while the reputation for non supernatural nightlife was not.
Check in as follows:
“Can I stay in Room 1408?”
“We don’t have a Room 1408”.
Check –
“Can I stay on the 13th
floor?”
“We don’t have a 13th
floor”
Check –
“I’ll take the highest room you
have.”
“Room 1212”
Check -
As far as natural observations:
The hotel is almost all shades of brown. Combined with excessive windows as to numbers and individual size, from the outside, it does exude the potential for creep as the lights are way out of proportion to the visible structure, especially at night. 1 Shivers. My scaremometer was lit to the “Strange” range. The inside is a stylish and elegant Art-Deco, aged like a good, but not great Scotch. Hundred years ago, different era. Haunted hotels age like Scotch. They get better with age. So, the Skirvin is still aging in the barrio, not ancient, but not nouveau creepche either. 1 Shiver. Most remarkable is the (over)use of the number 3. The entire hotel consists of 3 Towers. The prominent feature of the interior is 3 oversized and perfectly symmetrical elevators. On the crowning 14th floor are, well you can guess how many beautifully decorated special event rooms there are. 1 Shiver. This may sound strange but be sure and go to the dining room when it is closed. Check out the colorful picture overlandly the entrance of a long ago but not forgotten nightlife.
The Room was nice. Our room just happened to be positioned next
to another tower, so pulling back the drapes revealed a brick wall that looked
like it was only 1 foot away. Jon Cusack, look out! Performing the same
procedure on the other window was no more comforting as it had an unnecessarily
too good view of the mysterious 14th floor, which was built with
Suites and where the VIPs stayed. These suites had their own accessible balconies
with a combination of being way too long (the entire length of the suite) and edge
way too short, seemingly inviting one to take a really long walk on a really
short peer. 1 Shiver.
As far as unnatural observations:
I have to confess here that I’m not a believer. I thought I
heard a voice once but it turned out it was just my wife telling me take out
the garbage. For a Science Project my son and I did a study of haunted hotels
in Texas with a hypothesis that there was a direct relationship between claims
of the supernatural and changes in ownership. The implication was that a
significant factor in claims of haunting was what the ownership wanted.
Strangely, the study demonstrated the opposite, no change in claims of haunting
despite changes in ownership. The Science Project won first place. To this day
I still worry that proponents of the supernatural refer to this, “Award winning
scientific study proves the existence of the supernatural.” Anyway, your author
had no unnatural observations to report during his stay (although the food was
scaringly good).
I do have to mention that when I took a picture of the
elevator floors display from the inside of the elevator it came out all blurry
with thin wavy lines of bright colors and looked like something Andy Warhol would
have painted after staying at the hotel (and doing acid). First time that has
happened with my iphone. Checked my scaremometer and it had moved from “Strange”
to “Bizarre”.
Stories are written by storytellers and therefore, are not
good evidence. Evidence is told by
witnesses and therefore, is evidence. Bob, who was the valet and the first
person and last(?) I saw there said he had heard lots of stories of the
supernatural from employees and guests but said I should ask others there for
the stories. Carol, the check in clerk, said she once heard music early in the
morning coming from the bar but when she went there, there was nothing there. Ted,
another check in clerk, said that one time when the hotel was snowed in, early
in the morning he saw a bottle of Scotch moving around by itself but staying on
the counter (apparently aware, at least of the saying, that there is a special
place in Hell reserved for those who waste good Scotch). Alice the maid said
that when NBA teams had stayed there she often heard the clanking of rubber
against iron above her. All in all, in the words of Madeleine Kahn, “How
owdinary”.
Rating
1 –
Exterior = Pretty creepy
2 –
Interior = Creepy.
3 – Atmosphere = Stories are just mehpy.
With apologies to Stephen King, I give it 5 (out of ten of
course) shivers.
For those scare-challenged souls
who followed my advice by starting this journey into the heart of the Skirvin
and have what was originally a full glass of very red wine, I now advise you to
finish it before I continue. I’ll wait…As I was ready to depart a person I had
not seen before the whole time I was there, Jeff, significantly older than all
the other employees with white hair and dressed all in black, brought me my
car. I of course asked him if he had any good haunting stories. He said he did.
He told me he used to be the engineer for the hotel and one time, at night, when
it was closed for renovation and no one besides himself was in the building he
went into the lobby and all three elevators came down to the first floor and
opened at the same time. They then all closed and again at the same time all
floor displays in big red numbers showed they stopped and stayed on 6. Jeff
apparently noted the polite look on my face so he offered to text me a picture.
Sure enough it showed all 3 elevators stopped at the 6th floor.
Interesting. I don’t know if it really happened but nonetheless, good story. I talked with Jeff for a while
and then followed Larry David’s New Year’s resolution before I departed for
Lincoln. On the way out I told Carol about the story I had just heard and
showed her the picture on my phone. She said she had heard the story before but
had never seen a related picture and asked where I got it. I said Jeff the
valet just gave it to me. She said “What, Bob is the only valet right now.” I
said the guy said his name was Jeff. She shook her head, “What Jeff?”. As I
noted that my scaremometer had now moved all the way into the “Macabre” zone I
said older guy, white hair, he said he used to be the engineer here. Her hands
froze on the counter and she took half a step back, “That Jeff died 13 years
ago.”
[Postscare - We will be conducting a seance at the Emily Morgan hotel in San Antonio on Halloween 2022 to try and contact "Jeff" and get his/its permission to post here the picture he sent me of the 3 elevators rolling a 666.]
