Magnificent, Mysterious Hotel Galvez By Linda Houle

Galveston Island is the perfect getaway for fun and sun. Stroll along the Seawall, shop the Strand, and savor island flavors offered by the island's many fine restaurants. Museums, art galleries, theaters and historic homes offer the traveler culture and history. Galveston Island and the Gulf of Mexico have a magic symbiosis. This relationship was nearly destroyed with the great storm of 1900--when the island was nearly consumed by the sea. The people who survived were determined to restore their island. Built on the site where the Beach Hotel, Electric Pavilion, and Pagoda Bathhouse once stood, a new symbol of economic recovery arose. In 1911 the magnificent Hotel Galvez was contructed, and it became the "Playground of the Southwest" for socialites, businessmen, and celebrities such as Jimmy Stewart and Frank Sinatra. American Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Lyndon B. Johnson stayed there, as did General Douglas MacArthur. Galveston Island's only truly historic hotel, the Galvez is remeniscent of a gilded age gone by. It's no surprise that a hotel with so much history should have it's own mystery--the guest who checked in but never checked out... Yes, the Hotel Galvez is haunted! Staff and guests have experienced many unexplained events, leading them to suspect that there are several ghostly residents. The most well known spirit is the lovelorn lady of the fifth floor. Many years ago she check into room #500. She often would go upstairs to the turrets and gaze out at the bay. Her fiance' was at sea, and she was deeply concerned for his well-being. One day her greatest fears were realized when she got word his ship had perished. She refused to believe he was really gone. After a month of denial, in a moment of utter despondence, she returned to one of the turrets on the top of the Hotel Galvez and hung herself. In a sad twist of fate, a month after her death her fiance' returned, looking for her--he had survived! Now the woman's spirit is "locked" in the hotel, showing her presence to staff and guests with a sudden cold breeze from nowhere. Staff knows she wants room #500 all to herself when their equipment suddenly malfunctions when trying to make a key for that particular room! No matter how hard they try they can't make an electronic key work. Another sign of the lovelorn lady was a light coming from one of the turrets when power to that area of the hotel was shut off for some rennovations. Other unexplained activity occurs in the ladies room, when stall doors begin to violently rattle, or the commode in the next stall flushes when nobody is there. Staff members sometimes feel a presence with them on a back stairway. One extremely odd incident involved the wall in room #500--it seemed to "bow out" several times in front of a guest. Sometimes on a quiet Sunday afternoon the hotel will feel charged with energy--as if a moment from the past is overlapping onto the present day...