Weird, weird, weird, weird, and WEIRD!

What I’m about to put in this post will most likely be laughed at by many of you readers (and, by the way, how in the hell are so many of you finding this site?  I just checked my web stats, and this goofy little rant page is getting swamped!), and I think that less of you rather than more will believe me, and that’s okay… really, because I’m not sure what I believe myself!

Let me start by saying that I am a woman who doesn’t rule out the possibility of the supernatural existing, but I’m not a true follower of the phenomenon, either.   I have had personal experiences I can’t exactly explain, from an imaginary playmate back when I lived in Oak Cliff, who happened to be a fortyish looking, dark suit wearing, fedora sporting imaginary playmate, to having occasional ‘revisits’ from some of my animals who’ve lived and died here.

Still, though, I would consider myself psychically retarded…so much so, that I think if there was a school for psychics, I’d probably be driven there on the little yellow bus, complete with helmet and headgear.

Well, all that’s seemed to have changed lately, and either I’m a complete nut, completely bored, or I’m going through some sort of psychic reawakening that I have yet to still deal with.

The place is called ‘The Baker Hotel’, and it looms amongst much smaller buildings in the considerably smaller town of Mineral Wells, Texas.  It’s about eighty miles to my right, and the town is a place I’d never thought of, except during the occasional Fox 4 news weather report Doppler pic.

Once again, let me stress to you, I am not a disbeliever, nor am I a devout believer.  I am one of those purgatory type people who finds themselves stuck between the science and the spirit.  I am an animal lover, and I am a caretaker of special needs animals.  As a result, most of my thought and time is devoted to them and their care.  I haven’t thought about a good ghost story in ages, though in my past, there have been times when the subject has interested me.  I’m on the edge of the proverbial razor, so to speak.

Back to the big deal…

A few days ago, and I’m talking just a few days ago, three or four tops, I end up surfing around the web, and I stumble across the Baker Hotel Website.

I look at its shape, its architecture…the skin on my body tightens…then I click on the virtual walkthrough…

And as I live and breathe, something inside me turns on like a light switch. 

Have you ever seen a place…driven by, seen it in a picture, or on film, and been drawn to it? 

I have before;  the Buck Mansion in Vacaville, California.  I loved that place.  Until a few days ago, it was the only place I’d ever had that kind of magnetic reaction to.

The Baker Hotel made the Buck Mansion look like a plastic igloo style WalMart brand doghouse in comparison.

For the last few days, I have been reading up on this hotel’s history, and I’ve found both paranormal and historical sites that have somewhat sated my addiction.  And the more I find out, the more unusual things become.  I won’t go into all details, but I’ll share some, and start by giving any of you who are still with me some basic facts about this building.

The Baker was the dream child of hotel magnate T.B. Baker, constructed and finished just before the great Stock Market Crash of 1929 at a cost of a little over a million dollars, if my research serves me well.  The Baker banked on the healing qualities of the local springs in the small town; the water held an unusually high mineral content, and had been attributed as a cure for just about any disease you could name. 

Before anyone knew it, the small town of Mineral Wells, TX became the town to see, and the Baker was its altar at which to kneel.  The rich, the not so rich, the unknown and the famous stayed under its regal roof.  From past presidents to Bonnie and Clyde, the hotel is a historical landmark.  T. B. Baker somehow knew this would happen, and he was right.

Long story short, the hotel left the control, fatherly embrace, and foresight of T.B., and slipped into the hands of a relative.  In the 60’s, the hotel closed its doors, only to be reopened again later in the decade, and closed to the public once again in the early 70’s.

Yup, that’s right; the great hotel, dubbed ‘The Grand Old Lady’, hasn’t seen its true purpose in that long.  Other than some ground floor space leased out, the Baker Hotel has been empty, its rooms no longer enjoyed, her history not nearly as fully added to. 

She is starving.   She feeds on energy, and the city of Mineral Wells seems to think she needs to be on a diet.  She once got the treat of the occasional snack, consisting of tour groups allowed to walk her once and still somehow grand walls, but now, apparently due to a paltry unpaid utility bill, her doors have been closed to even that amount of deserved attention. 

I’m so seriously digressing that I just literally slapped myself, there’s so much to say here.

The Baker Hotel is haunted.  And remember, I am not a gal who openly uses that word.  It’s haunted.

From the research I’ve done in the past few days, I understand that the hotel sports a double digit population of residents who liked the place so much, they stayed when the shell we all call a body broke down.  Some liked it so much that they, though passing on in a different location, returned here in spirit, the memories held their hearts so fully.

There are several documented cases of individual spirits, from the dog who seems to love to run around the lobby, to a poor teenager named Douglas, a bellboy who met an untimely death in the basement elevator, to Virginia on the seventh floor, the infamous mistress of T.B. Baker who leapt to her death, according to most tales, to the ghost children of the Baker, from Charles to Henry, both children who lived and died in this grand shelter.  I could go on, but you get the idea.

I first saw the building, was first drawn to the building itself, but as I clicked on link after link, I started to read the stories of hauntings, reading the accounts of paranormal investigators, listening to EVPs and watching the videos, looking at the orbs, and reading the official reports. 

I clicked on sites whose pages were rife with Grim Reaper and skeletal graphics, listening to horribly silly spooky midi music…but then I’d find other sites, the ones my gut just told me to read each and every page of.  If I can get the site owner’s permission, I’ll put the links here in the future, they were so convincing.  I will say this; one is a site dedicated to not just investigating this hotel’s history, but to preserving it.  Each and every word read by the human eye on this site conveyed nothing to me but the complete and utter love for this place.  Not the desire to exploit it, not the desire to profit from it…only the pure desire to save it.  There were a couple others with websites who had this same love for the Grand Old Lady, and they were an oasis for me to stumble on.

Ok…ready for it to get weird now?  Or, shall I say, weirder?

I am not a psychic, as I said before.  I may have some ability to tap into some things, sometimes, but hell no, I am not a psychic.  However, as I’ve researched this place, some extremely strong feelings have overtaken me, both in dreams, and in my waking thought the last couple of days, and I’ll share a few, while saying a prayer that I don’t get institutionalized or sued in the process.

As I’ve read more and more stories from both the paranormal and non-paranormal sites, strong, and I mean STRONG, thoughts have come to me.  They’ve pushed themselves into my thought processes, almost voice like, so I’ll voice them here:

Virginia….the stories all refer to Virginia, mistress of T.B. Baker who lived on the seventh floor.  Virginia who jumped to her death, some say on a dare, some say out of heartache, and some say she was pushed.  As I read these stories, something kept saying ‘NO! That’s not how it happened!’  I’m going to take a chance here and post my feelings.  I’m probably just insane, probably been surrounded by cat hair for way too long, and the strands of all my pet’s dander has somehow ended up lodging in my brain, but hey, humor me:

There was a Virginia.  Some say she was Virginia Graham or Grant, and that she was the hotelier’s mistress.  My gut tells me that she was indeed Virginia, but Virginia never jumped to her death, nor was she pushed.  She was closer to Mr. Baker than your average Baker woman, but I’ll not say that I get the gut feeling that she was really his mistress in the sexual definition of the term.  She probably was, but that’s not the primary feeling I get.  What I do get a gut feeling about is that Virginia lived on the seventh floor, and that she is not the only woman in Mr. Baker’s life on that floor.  In other words, I’ll be so bold as to say that, as I was reading all of the Baker’s history, I got a driving sensation that told me that Mr. Baker took care of women, young and pretty ones, more than one, a Sugar Daddy, and that he purposefully put them on the seventh floor together, on opposite sides of each other.

As for the pushing, there was a woman who fell to her death, but it wasn’t Virginia.  This was another woman, and she did jump, but regretted it the second her feet left the Baker’s architecture.  My gut tells me that these were both women directly involved in T.B., not Earl, Baker’s life.  My gut also tells me that these are not the only two; they’re just the only two who’ve remained at the Baker.

There’s so much more of my instincts to report here, but I’ll try and wrap this up somewhat by telling of my other, extremely powerful instinct.  The Baker has several spirits who’ve remained, and only a couple have reached out to my psyche to leave an impression, but of the ones who have, I am told that it is not what happened to them in life, it is not the land the hotel is built on that holds them here.  It is two things…it is the building itself.  The actual life the structure itself holds in its beams combined with the memories that so many have imprinted on the place.  This combination is uncommon, but when it happens, it really happens, and it doesn’t really care if you’re skeptical or not.  It’s there, and just like it draws people like me, it draws people unlike me, people without that pesky DNA and tissue.

So, here I sit, at my computer, a house full of foster animals to care for, a house full of errands to complete, and instead, for the past few days, I’ve been driven by a force outside myself that compels me to further investigate this place, to go to it, read it, listen to it, and help it.

I read the plight of the people so desperately trying to save it, and I literally cry for them.  And hey, I don’t cry easily.  I hate crying.  This place is significant to me, and I don’t know why.  It calls to me, and I don’t recognize it fully.  It says “I know you”, yet I don’t know it, but love it already.

I don’t know if any of you have ever had that experience, but I just have, and you know what?  I feel like I’ve won the lottery.