You can’t talk about Del Valley Ghosts without talking about Mooresville.
Mooresville was a crossing on the Colorado River. Far east from the bridge at Congress Avenue which crossed the Colorado River. Mooresville was the center of Del Valley at one time. Now it’s just full of ghosts.
Written by Mrs. Sanders
Mrs Sanders recalls Mooresville community during the early 20th century and during her early years of marriage.
“Mr John B Moore built a store in about 1910 or 1909 and it was called Moore’s Crossing.
AL. Sanders rented it and we got married on December 5, 1911 and lived there until 1923. Then we bought a store in Colton and moved there. Sometime about 1913 or so the blacksmith shop caught fire in the evening and they thought they had it put out and in the middle of the night it caught fire again and it burned down our store and we lost everything we had.
Then Mr Moore built the present store and we left in 1923 and my brother rented it for a while. We had a real bad flood in 1915 or 1914 and it washed the bridge away and some of us donated some money to help get a bridge there and it is now. When I was the little girl, there was the schoolhouse close to where the bridge is and there was 5 of us children to go to school and we had to walk about two miles to school and we had dirt roads. It was so muddy and cold to walk, sometimes they take us horseback.
I may be wrong on some dates, but this is the best I can remember”.
This is what the historical marker at Mooresville or Moore’s Crossing reads:
Moore’s crossing bridge. This structure was originally part of a six-span bridge across the Colorado River at Congress Avenue in Austin, constructed there in 1884. It was designed by the King Iron Bridge and Manufacturing Company of Cleveland, Ohio. In 1910, it was dismantled and placed in storage. Five years later, three spans were rebuilt here, but destroyed the same year in a flood. The current bridge, comprised of the remaining spans, was completed in 1922.
The postal history of Del Valley community has been a tale of floodwaters in earlier days and relocation in later days.
In 1875, William Boss Gibbons opened a general store in what would be the center of Bergstrom Air Force Base. In a two story structure with the living quarters on the upper level. As the population increased in the community, the need for a post office became apparent and Gibbons was appointed postmaster in 1878. The name Del Valley was suggested by Gibbons because of its location in the Santiago del Valley Spanish Land grant.
In 1900, a new building was built directly across the road from the old structure, which contained a much larger store and the post office. In 1914, the post office was moved about 150 feet northwest to another building on the same side of the road. In 1922, this building was destroyed by fire. In 1935, a brick structure was built at the same location, and it still stands on Bergstrom, where it is used by the Security Police K 9 corpse.
When Bergstrom was activated in 1942,, the post office was moved a mile directly northeast and relocated on the highway in the rear of the building, with a service station and grocery store in the front. When the office became 3rd class, it was a separate wing. In 1968, a new building was built one fourth of a mile northwest of the area. The mail from Austin was delivered to the Dell Valley by a rural carrier in a horse drawn buggy.
JD Copeland was appointed as a rural carrier in 1916. Hardtop roads were unknown. “I used a gig which is a two wheel vehicle drawn by one horse and I alternated horses every other day. I had about six miles of gravel road in the 24 mile route I serviced and during rainy weather I had just one mud hole 18 miles long between barbed wire fences”. ” As time passed on, conditions became worse. In places, bridges were washed out and it became necessary to deviate from the regular route in order to get around washed out bridges.
Docia Schultz Williams author of:
The History and Mystery of the Menger Hotel
Here are the ghosts that have been seen off and on in the hotel over a period of many years.
Suicidal spirits.
Sadly there are several suicide ghosts at the Menger. This is not uncommon in hotels. Everywhere around the world where people go to commit this dastardly act and not leave a mess for people that they care about to have to clean up. Psychic say that some suicides live out what would have been their natural life spans by staying in the environment they last knew before their death for a certain number of years, and then they eventually move on. Hotels have suicides and Menger is no different than any other.
Ghosts and Bedspreads
A couple attending a high tech convention reported an unusual occurrence that happened to them while they were staying in the hotel. The wife saw the apparition of a male spirit grinning at her in their room. Then he got frisky and tried to pull the bed covers off her. They were promptly moved to a newer part of the hotel. I don’t consider the bed covers being moved as frisky. That is one of the most common experiences of people when sleeping. It is the motion or movement or pulling of bed covers. It just seems to be one of the ways spirits manifest.
A lady from Austin was assigned to room overlooking the swimming pool. It was the end of the day, and she was resting in bed. The television was turned on, And there were magazines. Located around the room. Her room had two beds, one she was sleeping in and the other was unmade. The next thing she realized that it was morning. Her phone was ringing. She got up, turned on the light, and then it hit her. She remembered sleeping with the magazines near her and the TV set on. Now the lights were all turned off, the TV was off, and the curtain which had been partially opened was closed. The bed next to hers, which had been fully made, was now turned down. At the Driskill Hotel we have several pictures of what look like vortexes their. Circles and spirals that almost seem like there is. An opening. Where everything is swirling inside of it.
Swinging doors.
One of the employees was at the front desk doing his job when he noticed the big double front doors of the hotel slowly swing open. But no one came in. These doors are extremely heavy, made of brass and glass and they just would not blow open. According to this employee, there was no wind at all that night. At the Driskill Hotel in Austin, I was literally in the lobby and I watched one of the doors next to where the valet is opened by itself, as if someone pushed it and walked in and it closed.
The leaking ceiling
A couple told the story of awakening at 2:00 AM by what they thought was rain pouring on their bed from the ceiling. The sudden deluge only lasted a few minutes, just long enough to thoroughly focus, to thoroughly soak their bed. When they reported this to the front desk, the room on the floor above where they were staying was carefully inspected, but showed no leaks in the bathroom or plumbing. There was no explanation. In Austin, Texas, at the Old Bitter End Brewery, one of the employees saw a mist form and create moisture that looked and was literally like rain. Just in one corner of the room. And it stayed there for about three hours, just emitting what appeared to be rain. There was no liquid above the mist, just below it.
Moving Jiggers
One woman who worked at the gift shop actually witnessed a display of little shot glasses, which she had just arranged on the counter, Get up and move one by one, from the left to the right side of the counter. They were apparently lifted, moved, and then set down by carefully invisible hands.
The telephone bill.
Many years ago. A gentleman was checking out of the hotel. Some of the items on his bill didn’t seem quite right. There were a number of telephone calls billed to his room and he said he had made no calls at all. The phone number he supposedly called which appeared on the room was his mother’s old telephone number, but she had been dead for many years.
Beds Again
Taking care of the bed. Nnew paragraph. A longtime Bell person at the Manger recalls a very disturbing night. He and his roommate had slept in separate double beds. He was awakened in the middle of the night by feeling someone running their hand over his bedspread, as if to smooth it out. He assumed it was his friend doing this, but he found out most odd that he would be doing this in the middle of the night. And he questioned him about this. When there was no answer, he turned on the bedside lamp, only to discover that his friend was sound asleep. He turned off the light again and felt the invisible hands running over the bedspread. He could give no explanation for this. Strange. Experience.
Vaporous forms
The banquet captain and his assistant had just finished putting a final touches on a meeting room on the 3rd more floor in the original section of the hotel. They secured the room and started to walk towards the service elevator at the East End of the 3rd floor. Suddenly, they saw this shapeless form of vapor or smoke moving towards them. They stopped, and the vapor passed right between the two of them. They felt chilled. The vapor headed towards the West End of the floor where the 2 French doors were located. Silently, without speaking, both men moved together as this, as if they had had been instructed by the ver the shape to follow it. The smoke like vapor went right between the French doors, and as the men approached the doors, the section on the left opened all by itself.
Then there was Rosie, a longtime maid, who was busy making up a room on the 3rd floor in the section overlooking the swimming pool.
She had already finished making the bed nearest the pool door, and now was making up the 2nd bed, the one nearest the wall. Suddenly, she felt hot breath on the back of her neck as she was bending over making the bed. She thought it was one of the other maids, And said. Stop it. She went back to her work and felt dark. Hot air on her neck again. At that moment, a shapeless cloud of smoke or vapor appeared and moved towards the pool door. As the vapor passed in front of the large mirror, she noted it was not reflected in the mirror, although she could plainly see it. The vapor got to the balcony door, and it was evidently solid enough to move the sheer curtains as well as the heavier curtain over the door.
A security guard was told to come immediately to the front desk. It was 1:00 AM, and a guest was standing at the front of the desk, clad only in his underwear. The man said he had been sound asleep and had been awakened by the sound of someone beating on his second story window and trying to open the window from outside. The guest was so nervous he left his room clad only in his undershorts. He was quickly assigned a room on the 5th floor. He asked the security guard to accompany him to his old room to get some of the things he needed. He would get the rest in the morning.
Lady on the camera
A security man was working one evening and he was looking at the monitor. There are several TV screens. Because there are several monitors around the hotel. Suddenly the image of a lady dressed in an old fashioned clothing appeared. Common Momentarily on the screen, she disappeared almost immediately and appeared on another screen. Then she disappeared from you. The screens were picturing different parts of the hotel and no one could possibly have moved into view from 1 area shown in the first picture to the area on the next monitor.
