company
while they
cleaned up and shut down the restau-
rant after their shift. Suddenly the
lights went out; those of us from
Terlingua jumped while our Lajitas
compatriots laughed. They came on
again a moment later, and our friends
explained that the Ocotillo ghost was
just hustling us along, nudging us
toward the door so to speak. It hap-
pened all the time there.
The restaurant was built around the
old building that had been there,
which had apparently been a clinic of
sorts to serve the residents of both
Lajitas and Paso Lajitas across the
river. It was supposedly haunted by
several entities, one of whom was a
woman who had come across the river
to have her child. The story went that
neither had survived the childbirth.
She could be heard, the bartender
explained, gently calling, “Hello?” by
the door, looking for help in a tired,
resigned sort of voice.
Then a waiter told the story of when
he first moved down there to work. He
was taking a walk along the winding
paths of the resort toward the river on
a blazing, sunny day. He approached
one of the buildings and saw a gangly
man standing still in front of the door,
his back turned toward the path. “Can
I help you, sir?” the waiter asked,
struck by the man’s stillness and the
strange cock of his head as he stared at
the closed door. The man turned slow-
ly around and the boy’s blood turned
to ice: his face was an insane rictus
grin, his eyes bulging, his arms dan-
gling at his sides. The waiter turned
tail and ran back up the path, stopping
fifty yards away to turn and see what
was behind him. There was nothing
continued from page 21
there, just an empty path and a quiet,
empty doorway.
As we all paused to digest this story,
the lights went out again. We jumped
to our feet as they came back on, star-
ing accusingly at each other, but we
were all accounted for in the middle of
the room. There was a bang from the
direction of the door, and we decided
to call it a night.
Years later I found myself again
keeping a bartender company as she
finished her shift, this time in the Gage
Hotel after I had moved to Marathon.
She had asked me to stay while she shut
down because she was uncomfortable
alone in the bar at night; all of us staff
were, actually. Back then it was part of
my job to refinish the restaurant floors
once a month in the mornings, and I
was constantly plagued by televisions
turning on and off, and phantom foot-
prints in my fresh varnish. But being
there at night was quite different, so I
was happy to hang around with her.
I sat reading in one of the leather
chairs by the fireplace while she did her
duties. “I’m bringing the till to the front
desk,” she said, and made her way
through the bar and down the hall by
the hostess stand, swinging through the
door into the wait station and out of
earshot. A few minutes later I heard the
same sounds in reverse: the swinging
door, the footfalls on the wooden floor
in the restaurant then the hall then the
bar, and she pulled out the chair oppo-
site me and creaked down into it with a
tired sigh. Ten seconds later, suddenly
aware of her silence, I looked up from
my book to ask if she were ready to
leave. There was no one there.
Every hair on my body stood
straight up and I leapt to my feet,
scooping up my belongings and fleeing
to the doorway. I stopped there and
looked back in disbelief, expecting to
see her somewhere in the empty room.
I noted only that the chair across from
me was slightly askew, as though it
held an occupant, before I ran through
the kitchen and up to the front desk,
where I found my startled friend doing
her paperwork with the night manag-
er. “Can’t stay,” I gasped, and
explained. “Don’t make me go back in
there by myself!” she protested, and I
suggested that she call it a night and
have the night manager get the lights.
The Gage Hotel is rather famous
for its ghosts. Room 10 in particular is
supposed to enjoy heavy visitations,
though the staff knows most of the
excitement happens in the basement.
Once a paranormal crew visited the
hotel, hoping to find evidence of the
supernatural there. They were ulti-
mately unsuccessful, but during their
stay they invited a number of locals to
come and share their stories at Captain
Shepard’s, where they were rooming.
I had been working at Captain
Shepard’s, scraping and painting the
billion wooden details on the exterior
with my friend Matt, who thought it
was amusing to drop tools off the bal-
conies every time we would hear phan-
tom footsteps in the empty house, forc-
ing me to go inside and down the stairs
to retrieve them. I joined the group
and shared my stories of doors and
windows closing in the house, which
was built in the late 1800s.
Another local who was there that
night told a tale that I’ve never forgot-
ten, of the time when the Spanish
Influenza raged through the Big Bend
in 1918, claiming many lives. She said
that some families who had lost several
members could not afford individual
grave sites and coffins for all their lost
loved ones, and so one would be
buried and then disinterred a few days
later so another could share their final
resting place. Her story was of one
such burial, wherein a young boy had
died and been buried, only to lose his
brother a week later. When the first
boy was dug up and opened to receive
his brother, it was found that he had
turned over in his coffin and had, in
fact, been buried alive. “I believe that’s
the boy who haunts the school,” she
said, referring to the ghost of the young
boy who is said to be seen there from
time to time. “Such a sad story.”
Hallowtide belongs in this time of
year because the autumn reminds us of
our mortality. That insidious under-
standing of the finite nature of things,
usually so easy to ignore under the
more insistent drone of everyday life, is
brought to sharper focus by the short-
ening days, the bare branches and the
sudden chill in the air. It’s easy to
remember that all living things die
when there are so many visual aids.
Our hope or fear that we go on after
we die is mingled also with a desire to
know that our beloved dead never
really leave us, but watch over us with
love and understanding, and hear our
prayers. It’s fitting that we honor and
celebrate those whom we’ve lost with
All Souls’ Day, even while we try to
scare ourselves silly with Halloween.
And while I can’t say that I believe in
ghosts; and while I’ll readily admit to
having been terrified a time or two
because of the idea of them, I will
affirm that I’m looking forward to
knowing the answers for myself, some-
day. And who knows? Maybe when I
do I’ll be the one flickering the lights,
and laughing.
We move equipment in the
Big Bend and nationwide.
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22
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Cenizo
Fourth Quarter 2014