Since we were on the road participating in the 4th Annual Dallas International Book Fair during Halloween, which is my favorite holiday, I missed getting to see our usual neighborhood trick-or-treaters. Amazingly, we did have a Halloween-y thing happen after all. The hotel we stayed in, the Magnolia Hotel Dallas is an old, uniquely renovated historic building that was originally the office building for Mobile Oil. And, even before that, Magnolia Oil. A famous Dallas landmark, really. We were in and out of the hotel a lot during the book festival to receptions and activities and the fair itself, which lasted several days. While in the elevators, we found that the elevator doors, without anyone pushing the button for the 5th floor, always opened on 5th floor. The doors would come open, stay open for a short while and then close again. As this happened over and over, I began to say, out to the empty hallway, things like, “Hello! Good morning! See ya’!”
One night, while in our room, in bed during the early a.m. hours, something quickly and gently gave a small tug on the bed covers at the end of my bed just below my feet. I pulled my feet up. I was glad Larry was with me. He was sound asleep and had not moved at all. About 5 minutes later it happened again. This time I pulled my feet up even further, trying to tuck my knees under my chin. Being a ‘sensitive’ of sorts, I do have these kinds of things happen to me on occasion, but thankfully, not often. I’m not that brave. But, since this was the extent of the interaction, after a point, I fell asleep.
The day we checked out, Larry and I talked to several people who knew of and have had all kinds of unexplained personal experiences with things happening in this wonderful old hotel. It seems like the hotel has been haunted for sometime, particularly the 24th floor. They also said there’s a little boy that plays with the elevators that people have seen and there’s a little girl that haunts the 6th floor. That’s when I told them about the bed covers being pulled. So, it seems, we didn’t miss Halloween after all.