I

 do not know Mitchel Whitington from Adam and have no reason to plug his 2005 book Ghosts of East Texas and The Pineywoods.  But one thing is clear: the fellow has a nose for good ghost stories.  That is why his book is the main source for this week’s column.    

Fourteen of the 40 or so short chapters and vignettes come from Jefferson, the old riverport turned tourist magnet a short distance from the Louisiana line in the northeastern corner of Texas.  That stands to reason since the town first made famous by the 1870’s “Diamond Bessie” murder case (the subject of the opening chapter in my book Murder Most Texan) is where the author has lived in recent years.

Jefferson may well be “ghost central” for the Lone Star State.  The historic hotels, which date back to the nineteenth century, fairly teem with spirits that are kept alive – no pun intended! – by local folklore and imaginative word-of-mouth.

On his first trip to Jefferson in the 1990’s, Whitington and his wife stayed at the famed Excelsior House.  In preparation for the visit, he read a 20 year old article in the Marshall newspaper that described a male apparition that materializes in the courtyard of The Excelsior and, on occasion, roams the halls of the hotel.  He has been known to enter rooms uninvited and to give female guests quite a scare, when they awake to see him standing at the foot of their bed.

The then-president of the garden club ventured the opinion that the ghost could well be Abe Rothschild, the accused killer of “Diamond Bessie” who never paid for his alleged crime.  Many believe to this day that his daddy, a wealthy Cincinnati jeweler, bought the jury that found his son not guilty.   

The Whitingtons themselves claimed to have experienced a supernatural encounter during their long weekend at The Excelsior.  Late one night, Mitchel exited their room on the second floor to retrieve restaurant leftovers from the car. “As I passed through the downstairs hallway the smell of sweet, floral perfume overwhelmed me.  If was as if a lady had oversprayed herself with the scent right there in the hall.”

On the return trip to his room from the parking lot, Whitington again walked through the cloud of perfume.  “Not only was it as strong as it had been ten minutes ago, but it had also moved!”  Then he remembered only one other room in the hotel was occupied, and those guests had turned in early.

Between bites from the to-go box, Whitington succeeded in piquing his wife’s curiosity.  After polishing off their midnight snack, the couple went on a perfume hunt through the hallways and stairwells of The Excelsior House.  They picked up the scent in various locations during the course of the search leading Whitington to the conclusion “the unseen person wearing the perfume was definitely wandering around.”  

But the identity of “The Perfumed Lady” and whether she was dead or alive remain a mystery.

The Excelsior House is not the only haunted hotel in Jefferson – far from it.  While researching his book, Whitington spent quite a few nights at The Jefferson Hotel, where the owner joked, “We have several non-paying guests.”

As it turned out, the innkeeper was not kidding.  Most rooms have a haunted past all their own.  The Whitingtons personally added to the lore of Room 19 the night the missus awoke “to see a strange, gray shape at the foot of the bed.”  Her husband alertly tried to capture the image with his handy video camera but, in spite of an auto-focus that acted like it had zeroed in on something, he got nothing on film.

Another couple had better luck in Room 21.  Hoping to catch the spirits off-guard, they set up a camera to monitor the premises while they were out for the evening.  The tape later “showed bright orbs of light following each of them around the room.  After the couple left, the orbs continued to float around the room in front of the camera….”  

Room 5 had a more traditional ghost story.  It was bitterly cold the night this particular couple signed the register at The Jefferson.  “The woman suddenly sensed a warm, heavy blanket being placed on the bed, and it felt wonderful.

“She opened her eyes and was surprised to see that it wasn’t her husband taking care of her.  Instead, an elderly lady dressed in a white, flowing dress with her hair in a bun was standing beside the bed.  The old woman reached out and touched her hand softly.”

The woman rolled over to wake up her husband, but “as she did the elderly woman faded away.  But an extra blanket was indeed on the bed.”

Every room in The Jefferson Hotel has an otherworldly story to tell, and Room 25 is no exception.  A guest stepped out of the bathroom one night years ago “to find a young girl standing in the room with shoulder-length brown hair, dressed in a pink floral dress with 1920s flair.”

“I’m waiting on a young man,” the ghostly girl said, “and we’re going to dance the night away!”  When the flesh-and-blood witness stepped toward the intruder, she vanished like a vapor in the breeze never to be seen or heard again. 

“Texas Boomtowns: A History of Blood and Oil,” Bartee’s latest book, will be published by The History Press on Nov. 30!  Pre-order your autographed copy by mailing a check for $28.80 to Bartee Haile, P.O. Box 152, Friendswood, TX 77581.