Ghostly World of Austin, Texas
A ghostly world lurks alongside the businesses, buildings and people of downtown Austin – a spirit world as active as our own and just as rich in history – according to the many who have encountered the spirits they claim are living alongside us.
“The interesting thing is there are lots of spirits lingering in downtown Austin, and the majority of them are content spirits,” said Jeanine Plumer, owner of Austin Ghost Tours. “They’re not angry, and they’re not frightening people. They are at peace in a lot of ways, and most people are at peace with the ghosts they are finding on their premises.”
Austin Ghost Tours, operating year round but particularly popular around Halloween, offers several different tours designed to introduce the spirit world of downtown Austin to those who are interested in the possibilities of life beyond the human existence.
According to Plumer, the most haunted building in downtown Austin is the Driskill Hotel. She said at the Driskill, spirit activity is “all over the building and ongoing in many different ways. There is ongoing, constant activity there.”
The activity ranges from more common ghostly occurrences – such as chairs on the balcony unexplainably rocking and electrical and water disturbances – to more personalized stories, such as that of a group visiting the Driskill:
It is said that a woman went in to a restroom while her companions waited outside the door. While using the restroom, the woman saw the face of a woman pop up underneath her stall. Angry, the woman yelled at her, and upon leaving the restroom, told her companions what had happened. Her companions, who had remained at the door, insisted no one had entered, and a search of the restroom also revealed no one.
Discussing spiritual activity in the Driskill is part of the “Ghosts of Austin” tour, which also hits on activity at the Paramount Theater, the Capitol Building, the Governor’s Mansion, and other buildings, including a home on the Bremond Block – where the spirit of a woman is said to be seen at times gazing out a window, just as a childless woman who lived there long ago gazed outside at neighborhood children.
According to Plumer, “6th Street is the place that has had the most (ghostly) activity since Austin was founded.” In the “Haunted 6th Street Tour,” people can learn about the many ghosts said to inhabit the street, including those at the Hard Rock CafÃ?©, known for its
“visitors” to the upstairs women’s bathroom. At times when the restaurant is quiet, women going in to the restroom are known to hear someone following them in, except – there’s no one there.
At Buffalo Billiards, Plumer herself had an encounter. After being interviewed by a local television station, the station’s audio crew called her about the tape. Coming only from her microphone, not from the larger, more powerful microphone of the reporter, was the voice of a man with an Irish accent who began speaking when Plumer said the words, “and the ghosts in these buildings.”
Another tour, “The Servant Girl Annihilator,” involves a widely unknown recounting of “the tragic murders of young women that began December 30, 1884, and ended December 25, 1885,” said Plumer.
Although not well known, it is the first identified serial killing in the United States, and the victims had particularly gruesome and violent deaths. “It made us arm ourselves; it was a huge event in our history.” Yet, “They were never solved. After every murder
they arrested somebody, mainly to make the community feel safer, and every one of those people was found not guilty.”
Perhaps that the murders were never solved has affected present day – one theory is that when a horrific event occurs, it creates a negative packet of energy around the area, causing the area not to thrive for many years. To illustrate possible evidence of this theory, Plumer said that every location where the eight killings took place
downtown is now a parking lot or parking garage.
Despite the tragic murders, Plumer said the human and spirit worlds in Downtown Austin “coexist. On the human side, they seem to be coexisting respectfully and on the spirit side tolerably. The spirits are tolerating the changes; now the people that are living in the city are being respectful of the spirits.”
She said, “There’s no rule, no logic, no time, no space. We human beings want to try to understand these spirits and put them in
to a pattern or compartment, but in the spirit world there is no time; there is no logic. We’re trying to rationalize things, but it’s a spirit – They are just energies that are different from ours manifesting themselves in different ways in our dimension.”
Originally, Plumer single handedly investigated the hauntings of downtown and organized the tours to share what she learned. “I was a history buff – and people would have these reoccurring stories that were the same.” She found that as she was talking to people, they
always wanted to hear more about the ghosts. Thus began the ghost tours, which have grown each year as more people learn about them.
As there are so many ghost accounts, each tour is designed to focus on a particular aspect of downtown Austin hauntings. Also offered by Austin Ghost Tours are “Graveyards of Austin” and, through November, a special tour incorporating an Austin Museum of Art
exhibit entitled, “Ghost Stories: the Disembodied Spirit.”
Tickets range from $10 to $15, with private group tours available. Many tours are kid friendly. For more information, visit HauntedTexas.com or call 512-853-9826.
“It’s a unique way to see downtown Austin,” said Plumer. “It’s one of the few things you can do downtown that doesn’t involve drinking that is entertainment. It’s a great way to see downtown and learn about the history of the city and learn about the supernatural.”
