This is from the book ghost stories of Texas by Joanne Christensen
I have heard so many similar stories to this one. I remember the story of a woman who was day-dreaming and looking out of a car window when all of the sudden the entire area that she was looking at looked like it was in the 1940’s. The people were dressed differently, the businesses were not the businesses she had seen numerous times before, the building facades were different, it was as if she had a glimpse back in time.
There is the story of the woman who was not thinking of much just waiting for the elevator door to open onto the 4th floor where her room was. The door opened onto the 2nd floor first where it had stopped for someone in the elevator who oddly could not recall what she looked like only that it was a woman. When the elevator doors opened, she saw a long hallway. There were rails on either side; it was like a bridge from the elevator that extended over the lobby and then the elevator door closed. She pressed the button frantically, to go back to floor number two. The elevator went down and the doors opened again, this time onto the second floor of the hotel where all of the rooms were located as expected.
When she told me the story, what she didn’t know was what I knew, which was that in the 1890’s, before the second part of the Driskill was built in the 1940’s there was just the old side of the Driskill. The old side was built and completed in the 1880s. Before the new part of the hotel was built they had an elevator specifically for women to take them above the lobby and directly to the ladies parlor. The lobby was a place of commerce, like a mall with a bank, a saloon, a barber etc. The elevator and it would take them right to a refreshing parlor which was a place where after traveling and if you weren’t staying at the Driskill you as a female could sit down, relax change clothes and have tea in a biscuit it was just a parlor for just traveling women.
In Jo-Anne’s book she tells this story of a couple by the name of Davidson who were vacationing near Corpus Christi when they found themselves attracted to a historic, two-story house overlooking the ocean. Despite the homes’ well tended gardens and fresh appearance, it seemed to be vacant. Mr and Mrs Davidson, who wanted to spend their summer in the area hoped that the place might be for rent. They didn’t have time to investigate at that particular time but took careful note of the house’s location and planned to return later.
Only a few hours had passed before the Davidson’s were back on the same street, looking for the tidy, old fashioned house. On their second visit, however, the place was nowhere to be found. ‘’ We drove all over the area, but we saw nothing even resembling that magnificent old house. When we spoke to the nearest neighbors, we could find no one who had even a memory of such a house ever having been in the neighborhood.’’
