Ghost stories as told by Monica Ballard that she collected while working as a tour guide inside the Capitol.
From her book True Haunted Tales of Austin.
The Lovely Lady
As one approaches the door of the Senate chamber, there’s a small room to the left with an umbrella. With an elevator. For guests in wheelchairs or who can’t walk up the stairs. Above this is a portrait of an elegant black haired woman.
When the Capitol hired chef Tim Matteer to create dinners and hors, d’oeuvres for receptions, he wandered through the hallways to familiarize himself with the areas involved. In exploring the hallway behind the Senate chamber near the Lieutenant Governors Reception Room, he saw a lovely woman, fashionably dressed, who nodded and smiled at him as they but walked towards each other. Suddenly, she turned to her right and disappeared behind a partition. As he passed, he looked and was astonished to see there was no door there, just the ornate glass partition. He told no one about the incident at the time.
Upon preparing for his first reception at the Capitol, he found that the best way to transport trays of food to the Senate level was via the elevator. But as he was giving orders to his helpers for the event, he spied a portrait and recognized the woman. “That’s the woman I saw who disappeared”, he announced to his assistants. He then told the whole story. “Who is she”?
That’s the first lady, Kay Wright Stevenson. You couldn’t have seen her, She died of cancer in 1942.
Fay often played Hostess for the Senate functions while her husband Coke Stevenson, was Lieutenant, governor, and it was said that her office was once where she was seen entering the wall. She briefly lived with her husband at the mansion, the Governor’s Mansion, when he was elected to governor in 1941, but then grew ill and passed away.
Straight from the horse’s mouth.
Towards the end of my first full year at the Capitol, I was learning a new tour that we were going to give during October, which featured the spookier side of the building’s history. They weren’t ghost stories But spooky nonetheless.
There was an occasion when I ended my tour on the underground modern extension and then hurried through the basement corridor to return to the first floor tour guide office. But as I entered through the old basement doors, I heard and felt something so bizarre, I had to broach the topic with my supervisor when I reached the office.
I know we’re not supposed to talk about. Ghosts in particular, but when I came to the basement doors from the extension just now, I heard the sound and felt the breath of a horse. The supervisor rose from his desk to approach me and share the forbidden knowledge confidentially, once or twice that I know of, he said. Someone from the State Preservation Board was coming through the same area and said he heard a horse’s snort and whining along with hoof beats. A maintenance worker heard the same thing.
Other tour guides hearing some of our conversation drew over to to start discussing what was going on. And in fact, there used to be stables right where that part of the capital extension is today. In fact. It was a Texas Rangers station. In the very, very early days of Austin. The hilltop where the capital now stands was once tents and stables for Texas Ranger horses, it was one of the stopping points to refresh a horse.
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As messengers were passed from East to West Texas.
