3. Reports of Paranormal Activity at the Hotel

Dallas Morning News reporter Joy Tipping says she had a paranormal experience at the Adolphus Hotel while doing a story for the Metro section in 2008. Ghost hunters were giving a seminar, and Tipping says her crystal "did a whipping- spinning thing" on its own that she could not control. The hauntings at the hotel supposedly center around a ballroom that no longer exists in the hotel, which opened in 1912 and cost a staggering (for then) $1.87 million. People who have rooms in the area that was once the 19th-floor ballroom often hear clinking glasses, Big Band music, cocktail chatter and other party-type noises late at night. Newer reports have mentioned a female ghost of some sort in the hotel's pastry kitchen (Tipping).

According to the Adolphus Hotel Ghost website, over the nearly one hundred years since the Adolphus Hotel opened, guests and employees alike have reported numerous instances of paranormal activity throughout the hotel. Many swear the ghosts of visitors from long ago, and who have apparently never left, are to blame. Many people who have stayed at the hotel swear they feel like someone is watching them. They hear doors opening and slamming shut. Many employees who work the aptly named “graveyard shift” say they feel someone following them around watching them as they collect room service carts but when they look around there is no one to be seen (Adolphus Hotel Ghost).

One such report of a haunting involves a woman who had been a regular customer in the Hotel’s bistro. During the weeks after the woman died employees swore the saw the woman coming in and sitting down at her favorite table that was near the front of the Bistro. Several housekeepers have claimed that an unseen guest would tap them on the shoulder while they were cleaning one of the hotel’s restrooms. Several hotel employees have reported different episodes of having windows flying open with a hard  blast of icy cold air (Adolphus Hotel Ghost).

Then there is the most famous of the Hotel’s specters — a sad figure of a bride. It is said that back during the Depression Era of the 1930s, a young woman was jilted by her husband-to-be and left standing at the alter on her wedding day.  When he never showed up for the wedding, she hung herself a mere few feet from where she had hoped to start her new life. She died abandoned and broken-hearted.  She is said to haunt the 19th Floor of the hotel—forever searching for her lost love. Many guests say they hear the sobbing of a woman either in the room next to them or going down the hallway but there is never anyone found.  Many people who have seen the apparition have sworn she has followed them to their destination and stays until either the party is over or they leave. Many people have reported that the soft and gentle melody of a music box plays continually while the melancholy bride is around (Adolphus Hotel Ghost).