The Original Austin Ghost Tours
Ghost stories told, in Austin’s history. Back in the day before, it was an urban mecca.
This is from the October 1974 issue of Free and Easy. It is an article on famous Austin ghosts and haunted houses. Obviously of the 1970s, as new houses have been discovered and others have been destroyed or torn down.
Phantom of the Parking Garage.
”Perhaps one of the most intriguing structures ever built in Austin was the home of Colonel EM House, the House house. The mansion, built in 1891 and demolished in the 1960s,, enjoyed a noble existence during the early twentieth century, but one that faded to ignominy when the house was no longer appreciated nor wanted. Colonel House was a powerful behind the scenes politico. It is said that Woodrow Wilson’s run for presidency was inspired in a smoke filled room in the elegant home at 1704 West Avenue, later, House was credited with assisting FDR in the planning and implementation of the New Deal. The election of at least three Texas governors was a result of houses string pooling”.
( I would like proof of the above statement)
”The House house was built to resemble a riverboat. It had spacious porches or ”decks”, a basement, a ”galley”, with a dumb waiter to transport meals to the upper floors and, in many places, ”portholes” instead of windows. In small, heavily buttressed rooms, there were a number of rooms and compartments accessible only via swinging bookcases or sliding mirrors. Though denied by family members, it was widely reported that the red stone masonry and parquetted floors were laid by convict laborers, sweating and straining against leg irons, the Hardy Boys would have found the House house properly sinister”.
(In fact, convict labor was a cheap way to get labor and used often in Texas history.)
” From what we know about the good Colonel, the unorthodox construction of his house was. The result of harmless eccentricity, But a few subsequent residents were convinced that evil spirits roamed the narrow corridors.
History records only one human tragedy within the house’s walls. On Thanksgiving night, 1930, a. UT. Coed celebrating the Longhorns win over A & M that afternoon imbibed a quantity of overly potent bootleg whiskey and died of acute alcohol poisoning. Later, In the 1950s, when the house belonged to the Delta Zeta sorority, the residents were disturbed by other worldly doings. Members claim they heard and saw the usual ghostly manifestations, footsteps, moans and fleeting nighttime visitors, possibly, they thought it could be the ghost of the poisoned student.”
” When the house was abandoned years afterward, the ghosts were unable to scare off looters, who made haste with the stained glass windows, cut glass chandeliers and other valuable furnishings. Fire, which police attributed to arson, gutted the House house in 1966,, two years after it was finally raised amid a clamorous outcry by a preservationist.
Among the notables requesting artifacts from the structure after its demolition was. CBS Newscaster. Walter Cronkite.
Another dwelling that has seen more than its share of politicians and ghosts is the Neill Cochran House at 2310 San Antonio.
Georgia immigrant Washington Hill Commission the House’s construction in 1853 and later leased it to the state for use as a school for the blind. During the Reconstruction Era, a yellow fever epidemic swept Austin and the school was converted to a hospital. Many of the people who died in the hospital were buried on its grounds. The victims spirits were thought to roam the yard at night, superstitious persons avoided upper San Antonio street.
The house remained unoccupied after Neill’s death and the ghost stories began to circulate.
Not only were observers endowed with generous imaginations and acute vision able to see the spirits of the epidemic victims, but also, The ghost of Neill galloping around the yard on a white horse. The susceptible also claimed phantoms of Colonel Neal rocking on the balcony each evening at twilight. Reports of the ghost sightings in and around the Neill Cochran House persisted throughout the years.
The Original Austin Ghost Tours
