Let me preface this by saying that I don’t really believe in ghosts. Perhaps it’s why I love writing about them. In real life I don’t hold out much hope for encounters with the dearly departed. I own a hundred year old house which is not haunted, much to my chagrin, for the people who passed away there are people I’d love to visit with. But this is not what this story is about.
This story is about something that happened a few years ago on Galveston Island. I was staying at the Hotel Galvez with my Boston Terrier. She loves hotels almost as much as I do. The Galvez, built in 1911, is rumored to be haunted, but the dog and I didn’t care. We loved our room, our view, and dreaming ourselves into a life of luxury where other people make our breakfast and our bed and give us teeny tiny soaps that smell like the ocean.
Late one night, as we were getting ready for bed, my dog started barking and freaking out. She’s a feisty little thing so I assumed that someone was committing the unspeakably rude act of bringing another dog into one of the nearby rooms. There should be a rule, only one dog per hotel floor. Or maybe one dog per hotel, and it should be worshipped, fed crispy bacon, and carried around on a red velvet cushion. I looked through the peephole to see if indeed there was an enemy (read: dog) in the hallway.
I did not see a dog. What I saw, instead, were three women dressed in very formal uniforms – black dresses and white aprons, pushing a cleaning cart. Ok, I thought. Housekeeping.
It took me a moment to realize there is no housekeeping at night. When I looked again the women were gone. My dog had calmed down and had curled up on the bed.
To this day I have no plausible explanation for what I saw. Maybe they were strippers going into one of the other rooms for a bachelor party? I must say, that explanation seems a bit far fetched. I should have asked the front desk the next day. But I enjoy not knowing. Perhaps there are ghosts out there after all, but we can’t really pick and choose the ones we get to see. For good measure, however, I have recently asked one of my aunts to start talking to my house. Perhaps if we take the right steps in befriending it, it will reveal its secrets.
