Stockyards Hotel II

On the evening of September 10, 2006 members of the Stockyards Paranormal Investigations team returned to the Stockyards Hotel in Ft. Worth for a second investigation. Our team conducted our very first investigation at the Stockyards Hotel in April 2006 and we have been anxious to return ever since.

On the April investigation we got our first and maybe our best EVP while exiting the elevator on the third floor. We had a voice that seemed to mimic a conversation that Dawn and Terri were having. You can hear this EVP and read of our first visit to the hotel on this website.

On this Sunday night, Terri, Lenka, and Kevin were joined by our guest Wendy. We were given access to three rooms and started our evening in room 310. Terri has been in this room several times while giving her ghost tours of the Ft. Worth Stockyards. She says that this room “gives me the creeps”.

We settled into the room and got our recorders started. Kevin performed an EMF sweep of the room and got an average reading of .1 or .2, which was to be expected. During the first thirty minutes or so we picked up a couple of orb photos. We also decided to utilize dowsing rods during this investigation. After several minutes we began to get some movement on these. Terri said she was beginning to get “goose bumps” and about this time the rods began to cross in answer to questions.

After being in the room for about forty minutes we picked up an EVP, which was a whispered “hello”. This was very faint and we can’t rule out the possibility that it was one of us, but we don’t think it is. We had been in the room for around fifty minutes when we got another “hello” EVP. This one is a little stronger. About one minute later we got a very distinctive EVP that was definitely not one of us. The voice says “Martin”. At this time we were asking any spirits in the room to make the rods cross in response to questions such as “are you a woman”, “did you die here” etc. This EVP is linked to this website.

After about an hour we moved to room 329. This is a large suite with a short hallway connecting the two rooms. Terri said that she had a lot of reports of paranormal activity from this room. We started in the back part of the suite, which is a sitting room. Kevin’s EMF sweep showed that the normal readings in this room were running higher than in the first room. The EMF meter was fluctuating from .4 to 1.5. Standing in the center of the room and away from all power sources we got a reading of 1.1. This is fairly odd and we could never account for it.

We had been in the room for about twenty minutes and Lenka asked for any spirits to make a noise. There was an immediate thud against one of the walls. We asked for this to be repeated but our ghosts weren’t cooperating at this time. We picked up a couple of EVPs at about this time. The first says “okay” and the second says “oh no no no no”.

I’ll take a second here to say that we always remind ourselves not to whisper during an investigation to prevent false EVPs. If we catch ourselves or each other whispering during an investigation we’ll say something out loud about it. This way we try to eliminate any false EVPs. However during a long night it is easy to forget and whisper something that gets picked up.

After about thirty minutes we moved to the other part of the suite. This part is the bedroom with several comfortable chairs. We resumed our questions to the spirits and again asked them to move the dowsing rods in response. For the next thirty minutes we seemed to engage a spirit in conversation.

Terri was holding the rods and asking most of the questions. She would ask a question and then ask that the spirit make the rods cross if the answer was yes. Through a series of questions, most with no responses we found a female spirit named Sue Ellen. She claimed to have been a prostitute who worked at the hotel during the 1920s. She claimed to have died there and to have had a child. She said that she moves from room to room in the hotel but does not leave the hotel.

This was an experiment for our group and one we will discuss repeating. This is not a scientific procedure and one, which we would not use to present as evidence of a haunting. The activity does seem to help focus the group’s energy and to prevent our minds from wandering. Investigations can be boring at times and will frequently result in unrelated conversations breaking out. An activity such as this may help the group stay on target and allow the spirits to manifest themselves in other ways.

We finished the night in room 218, the Victorian Room. Terri had investigated this room previously and had recorded an EVP in this room. Also there are reports from this room of the radio turning on by itself and unexplained footsteps both outside in the hallway and inside the room. Tonight, we encountered no activity in this room. It seems the spirits had entertained us enough and were ready for us to call it a night, which we did.

Again the Stockyards Hotel has provided us with some excellent material and some interesting experiences. We would like to thank the staff and management of the Stockyards Hotel for allowing us to conduct this investigation.