Tuesday, April 23, 2024
Some who work or own businesses on Granbury’s historic square know that one of the keys to success is learning how to live with the dead.
Distinct footsteps when no one else is around? Best to just ignore them.
Voices after closing time? Try to shrug them off. Lights turning on and off on their own? It happens. Loughry and Sam Morrison, new owners of Paradise Bistro & Coffee Co., are among the latest to be initiated into Granbury’s paranormal realm.
Their building, next to the Granbury Opera House on the south side of the square, was once a mortuary and, reportedly, a glass-blowing business where the owner’s little girl died in an accident. (Local historian Karen Nace said she has not heard of a glass-blowing business having been in that building.)
Since taking over the bistro in June, employees have reported a variety of odd occurrences.
Barista Angelica Delcastillo said that she and other workers have been told that there are three spirits that inhabit the building: a man, a woman in a red dress and a little girl, presumably the child of the glass-blower.
Sam believes he saw the little girl himself about three weeks ago when he was working on the hot water heater in the restroom.
“All of a sudden I look around and there’s this little girl at the sink,” he said.
The child was facing him, he said, and had short, curly blonde hair. She was wearing a blue and white dress and was holding her hands as if washing them.
Thinking the child wanted to use the restroom, Sam said, “Oh, I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
He left the bathroom and waited for her to come out. She never did.
“There was nobody in here except the girls who were working,” Sam said. “And I would have heard her go out the back door.”
A check the next day of the security camera in the hall showed only Sam coming and going from the restroom.
Delcastillo has not seen the child but said that “a lot of people” have told her they have seen a little girl “wandering around.”
Her response to those comments now is, “Well, there are ghosts.”
As for the male spirit, Delcastillo said she does not know who he is, but she has felt his presence. He seems to hang out in the kitchen area toward the rear, back where bodies used to be brought into the mortuary.
The barista said there are times when she has a strong feeling of being watched. Lights in the kitchen have been turned back on after she turned them off at closing time, she said, and she has distinctly heard the back door open, even though it didn’t.
Another employee also reported hearing the back door open while she was inside by herself, the server stated.
“I don’t like whenever I close and I’m alone,” Delcastillo continued. “I definitely feel as if somebody is watching me from the kitchen, and other people have mentioned that, too.”
Regarding the woman, Delcastillo said that a customer recently told her that the spirit’s name is “Catherine” and that she has been seen by others coming down the stairway inside the Opera House next door.
Delcastillo said she did not question the customer about how she knew the spirit’s name.
Sam and Loughry said they have repeatedly found what appears to be cigarette ashes on the floor by a front table, even though the restaurant had been thoroughly cleaned the night before and no one is allowed to smoke there.
“It didn’t matter who closed; (the ashes) still ended up there the next day,” said Sam, a lifelong Hood County resident and Tolar volunteer firefighter.
Loughry said that despite creepy feelings at times, her employees are enjoying the other-worldly interactions.
“I think they’re all excited about it,” she said. “They’re like, okay, who’s going to see somebody next?”
Loughry bought Paradise after spending 30 years in the medical field. Although she had never thought of owning a cafe, she became fixated one night last May on a notification she received on her phone.
The post was an announcement that the owners of Paradise Bistro were looking to sell.
“I read it, slept on it, thought about it and prayed about it,” she said.
The next morning she phoned Sam, who was on the road. He is a truck driver.
Sam immediately said no but, according to Loughry, he always says no.
She told him to think about it and pray about it. He called her back a few hours later and told her to set up a meeting with the owners.
Pretty quickly, Loughry saw clues that investing her mother’s life insurance money in a business on the square was maybe the right move. Loughry’s mother passed away about a year ago.
“My mother’s name was Laura,” she explained. “When we met with the McDaniels, their manager, her name was Laura. And the first time I met Tony McDaniel, I teared up because he looked so much like my stepfather. He passed away 18 years ago now. It was one of those, okay, this is a good thing” kind of feeling.
NIGHTS AT THE NUTSHELL
The Morrisons are new to sharing space with ghosts, but Kay Collerain isn’t. She has been coexisting with hers for decades.
Collerain is the owner of the Nutshell Eatery & Bakery on the same side of the square, at the corner of Pearl and Crockett Streets.
“All these old buildings have ghosts,” she said. “They all do.”
Collerain isn’t sure whether more than one spirit hangs out at her place. The Nutshell just might have a connection to someone very famous – or infamous – but since the man didn’t die there, Collerain isn’t sure his spirit is responsible for odd goings-on.
Back in the 1800s when a saloon was operated out of the building, there was a bartender who worked there who was known as John St. Helen. According to legend, St. Helen was actually John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.
According to the tale, someone else, not Booth, was killed in a tobacco barn in rural northern Virginia on April 26, 1865, as authorities hunted for the president’s killer.
Booth allegedly escaped capture and ended up in Somervell County but fled to Hood County when he feared he might be discovered. He made a living pouring drinks and sometimes performed in the local theater.
In 1877, St. Helen became ill. Fearing he was near death, he summoned a young Granbury lawyer named Finis L. Bates to his bedside. (Bates was the grandfather of actress Kathy Bates.)
St. Helen allegedly confessed to the lawyer that he was Booth.
St. Helen lived through the night, though, and went on to recover from his illness. Having revealed his true identity, he fled Hood County.
The assassin began using the alias David E. George. He lived another 25 years before committing suicide in a hotel room in Enid, Oklahoma by swallowing arsenic.
Collerain believes there is truth to the tale.
“The government has lied to us for centuries, so I have no doubt,” she said.
Collerain paid homage to the legend by having a large mural painted on a wall inside the Nutshell. The mural depicts St. Helen tending bar.
Collerain said that the artist who painted the mural years ago did the work at night and would bring a radio to keep her company.
The woman reported that every time she would climb the ladder, the volume on the radio would be turned down.
“She finally said, ‘Alright, I know you’re here, just leave it alone,’” Collerain said.
Items get moved or tossed onto the floor, she stated, and it is common to hear the sound of footsteps.
Collerain said she would sometimes hear footfalls and voices during the 12 years she lived in the apartment on the building’s second floor.
She said that one night she heard the downstairs door open and the voices of several people, though she couldn’t make out what they were saying.
Thinking that an employee had forgotten to lock up, Collerain started down the stairs, only to find that there was no one there.
Collerain also recalled a time when she was in the living quarters and her doberman suddenly jumped off the bed, ran toward a corner bookcase and started growling, its hair standing on end.
She was so rattled by the dog’s behavior that she grabbed her gun. Mustering her courage, she peered around the bookcase.
“There wasn’t a thing there,” Collerain said.
That was the only time she felt frightened at the Nutshell, she stated. In her view, the haunting is merely fact, and the historic square is replete with spirits.
“It’s wonderfully fascinating,” she said.
PERMAMENT GUESTS?
When Melinda Ray used to own the Nutt House Hotel on the north side of the square, she would let groundskeeper Larry Grass know when there were guests so that he would not disturb them while performing pre-dawn tasks.
Grass was surprised, then, to see a gentleman in overalls standing at the foot of the bed in Room 5 early one morning. Ray had not informed him that a guest was staying in that room.
Grass said that after walking past the room he turned back to ask the man if he would like a cup of coffee.
He wasn’t there.
During his almost 10 years at the hotel, Grass became well acquainted with the paranormal activities that he said happen routinely.
Like Paradise Bistro, there is a little girl who makes a regular appearance, he said. One guest reported waking up one night to see the girl looking through her purse with harmless curiosity.
The man in overalls is believed to be a county judge who lived at the hotel for $1 per day and died there of natural causes, he said.
“Little kids can have a conversation with this gentleman, but parents cannot see him,” Grass related. “They’ll ask them who they’re talking to, and they’ll say, ‘The man standing in the doorway.’”
The spirit of former Nutt House owner Mary Lou Watkins is also believed to linger there, sometimes adjusting blinds on the windows that face the street.
Watkins, a descendant of the Nutt family that played an important role in Granbury’s history, has been credited with doing much to preserve local history.
Watkins’ statue stands on the corner of the courthouse property directly across the street from the hotel. Known for the popular restaurant she operated, she is depicted ringing a dinner bell.
“Many, many people have had (paranormal) experiences,” Grass said of the hotel once owned by Watkins.
Teri Ewing, who has handled social media for the Historic Granbury Merchants Association (HGMA), said that photos she has taken in buildings in and around the square included orbs that she did not see when snapping the pictures.
Ewing took a group photo on a stairway at the Nutt House during the 2012 HGMA Christmas party only to find an orb behind the head of then-owner Ray. (Ray sold the hotel to Cindy Thrash Nobles earlier this year. It is currently closed for renovations.)
Ray confirmed to the HCN that she told Ewing that she ducked in the photo because she felt as if someone tall was standing behind her.
Ewing said her camera has also captured orbs at the Opera House dorms on Houston Street off the square and at Granbury Live as well as in the second floor courtroom of the courthouse.
In the courthouse photo, taken as crews worked to renovate the courthouse more than a decade ago, three orbs can be seen above the head of a worker.
Johnny Ray Leach, a plumber who has performed work at many buildings on the square and within the historic district, said he has heard lots of stories from lots of people.
“Everybody’s haunted,” he said. “There are a lot of things that go on with old buildings.”
kcruz@hcnews.com | 817-573-7066, ext. 267
