Ghosts along the Texas Coast (21 page)

The Ale House in the old Montrose section of Houston first came to my attention via a short article in the
Houston Chronicle
, by writer Michele Meyer, which mentioned the place along with other haunted spots in the Halloween edition of October 31, 1991. I decided to call the place and do some of my own investigating.

The Ale House, located at 2425 West Alabama, looks very much like an old English pub, complete with dark paneling and a dart board! It enjoys a brisk trade as a gathering place for lunch and libations and has a large following of regular local clientele. My husband and I were warmly welcomed by the staff when we visited there in 1994. We had already talked by telephone to the then night manager, Tim Case. He was a great help to me in writing my story for this book. Case told me that the place used to be a private residence and is very old, dating back to the early 1900s. He knew little about its past, except that the current owners had heard it was once a private residence, then it was rumored to have been run as a speak-easy during the Prohibition years. It once enjoyed a rather unsavory reputation as a house of ill repute as well. He said that a former owner had passed away in her bedroom on the third floor, and that area seems to be where much of the “spirited activity” takes place. Perhaps this former owner is just letting the current owners know she thinks it's still her place, and she is still in charge of things!

Case said he had intended to do some extensive research on the old building but had not had the time. Evidently, he never did this because a recent conversation with long-time manager Angela Jenkins revealed Tim had moved on, and is now the brewmaster of another Houston establishment.

Ms. Jenkins told me that there is still, as of this writing, some indication of manifestations from time to time, so the ghost, or ghosts, must still be around. The happenings seem to occur most often when just about everyone has gone for the day and it is fairly quiet around the old pub. A candle will suddenly light up on a table, although no one was around to light it; footsteps will echo on the third floor staircase, and there will be a feeling that somewhere, someone is watching. Jenkins said she recalled one night when she was alone in the upstairs office and thought she heard someone in the hall outside. She looked out and saw no one, but noticed a candle had been lit in a room across the hall. The room was unoccupied.

Ms. Jenkins said once they held a seance in the place, and she got the “willies” when the medium took on the voice of a young girl. The
Houston Chronicle
article had mentioned that one time, when a radio interview was being made from the Ale House, a sad, whimpering female voice was heard to moan in the background, “let me out . . . let me out!”

Often, there will be noises like a party is going on, and mugs will swing on their hooks and chairs will creak and move about the room. Sometimes the entities play around with the light switches and have also been known to break glasses.

Tim Case had told me he had seen doors opened just after they had been locked, lights turned on by themselves, and glasses had flown off racks and shelves for no logical reason. Sometimes keys and other objects “misplaced themselves.” Once, Tim told me, he questioned another employee named Nat as to why he had not turned the third floor lights out. Nat told Case he certainly HAD turned off the lights. They both went up to the third floor where the dart boards are located now. The lights above all three dart boards were turned on, and even more unusual, all three boards had been rotated about fifteen degrees on the wall from their customary positions! This happened just minutes after Nat had checked everything and turned out the lights before coming downstairs.

The Ale House, 2425 W. Alabama in Houston

Case mentioned he detected a note, or aura, of sadness, sometimes when he was up on the third floor. Maybe the lady who is said to have passed away there just wasn't ready to depart this world and was sad about leaving her home behind. Or perhaps she regretted the nefarious activities that took place in the house under her management. For whatever reasons, there is a spirit—or several—still at the Ale House. The presence seems to be content to stay there. I would venture to say, from a recent conversation with Angela Jenkins, that it may be somewhat of a guardian spirit, just looking after the place in its own unique fashion!

In researching for this book I ran into a couple of interesting, but brief accounts of Houston hauntings that I wasn't able to explore any farther than what I originally found in news articles and clippings. Even though there isn't much here, I found them intriguing, and I will share with you what little I could find out. Perhaps if you live around Houston and have a little time on your hands, you can do a bit of sleuthing on your own.

There's one old Houston neighborhood near a little Catholic church where a small cemetery is located. An occult shop is located in the area, and the owner of that place of business was quoted in a
Houston Post
article of October 28, 1984, as saying people in the neighborhood had spotted what looked like “white ectoplasms” near the church. Other people reported “a mysterious ghost-like figure” in the neighborhood. Some described it as a “white amorphous blob” while others said it looked like a misty woman in white. Various people have reported seeing the filmy spirit inside the little church, near a grocery store across the street from the place of worship, and in an empty old warehouse several blocks away.

There are those who say a ghost lurks at the Alley Theatre, 615 Texas Street, where longtime manager Iris Siff was robbed and strangled with a telephone cord outside her office in the middle of a January night back in 1982. A security guard was convicted of the heinous crime. A call to the theatre was made, and the lady who spoke with me told me out of deference to Ms. Siff's family, who still live in Houston, they had rather not discuss it further, but they did not deny that the theatre has experienced some hauntings.

Spring, Texas, is a small city a few miles north of Houston on Interstate Highway 45. The Harris County town was founded by German immigrants in 1840. But it wasn't until the early 1900s that the little town began to flourish. When the Great Northern Railroad came to town, a real building boom took place. Seven saloons and a number of small hotels sprang up, practically overnight, to accommodate the railroad workers and the travelers the rails would carry on this Gal-veston-Houston-Palestine line.

Jane and Carl Wunsche were children of some of the German immigrants who first settled Spring. Two of their sons, Charlie and Dell, who were former railroad men, acquired a piece of property near the railroad depot in what today is called Old Town Spring. Along with another brother, William, or “Willie,” as he was called, they constructed a two-storied frame structure on the property. It was the very first two-storied building in Spring!

The new establishment, which opened for business in 1902, was named The Wunsche Bros. Saloon and Hotel. The main purpose of the new business was to accommodate railroad employees on overnight stopovers.

The town prospered, and so did the Wunsche brothers, until 1923, when Houston and Great Northern (now known as the Missouri Pacific) moved the Spring railyard to Houston. By 1926 most of the little town's wooden buildings had been torn down, the lumber salvaged for barn construction and firewood. Somehow the Wunsche establishment survived. The saloon was the last one to close in Harris County when Prohibition hit the country.

In 1949 a lady named Viola Burke leased the building, renaming it The Spring Cafe. She was known for her delicious homemade hamburgers which the railroad workers passing through town delighted in ordering. In fact, word of her wonderful burgers spread far and wide, and soon the cafe had the reputation of having the best hamburgers anywhere in the country! When Viola died in 1976, her daughter, Irma Ansley, inherited the business and continued on making the famous hamburgers.

In fact, the entire shopping village of Old Town Spring traces its origins back to the famous hamburgers! Back in the 1970s, just getting one of the burgers required a long wait, because all were made to order. Sensing a good opportunity, an enterprising couple opened a gift shop for cafe customers to shop and browse in while they waited for a table. Slowly, more and more houses and buildings were converted into shops, until quite a variety of gifts, crafts, antiques, and works of art were made available to the cafe patrons.

As Old Town began to flourish, the little cafe that helped to bring about its birth was going downhill. Finally, the building, now quite dilapidated, was sold in 1982 to an enterprising couple, Brenda and Scott Mitchell. The old building was carefully restored by Scott, a Woodlands builder, and his charming wife. Today, the building, which bears a Texas Historic Landmark plaque, is a popular restaurant. Staying in tune with its pioneer heritage, the Mitchells call the place The Wunsche Bros. Cafe and Saloon. (It's no longer a hotel, so don't plan an overnight stay!) From the looks of the menu, and a delightful cookbook entitled
The Wunsche Bros. Cafe Cookbook
written by owner Brenda Greene Mitchell and offered for sale at the cafe, there are plenty of good viands available at Wunsche Bros. including the famous made-to-order hamburgers.

Wunsche Bros. Cafe and Saloon, Spring, Texas

In addition to great food, there's also a ghost! Well, maybe more than one; the owners aren't really sure. Telephone interviews with Brenda Mitchell, who now resides in Austin, her current manager, Sherry Sinini, and former employees Alma Lemm and Ilona Langlinais all indicate that Charlie (they're pretty sure that he's the “haunting brother”) still comes around to check up on things at the place.

Lemm, a cook who retired a few years ago, is now in her seventies. She loved working for the Mitchells and it was only on doctor's orders that she finally hung up her apron. She said in about 1988 (she recalled it was in the fall of the year) she had a real shock when she went to the linen closet to get a hand towel and heard the unmistakable sound of a man's voice. “It was sort of mumbling. I couldn't understand the words he said but I definitely did hear a voice,” she said. She was so startled that she shut the closet door and scurried to the kitchen to tell a fellow worker what she'd heard. She says now she wishes she had had the presence of mind to ask it what it wanted. This was the first time she heard a voice, but there were a lot of unexplained occurrences all during the time she worked at the cafe.

Lemm said she and Gladys Barton, another employee, were in the habit of having a cup of coffee together early in the morning to kind of “get going.” The tables in the cafe had candles on them that were lit each evening for the dinner hour. They were always extinguished when the last patron had departed. But on Saturday mornings, Lemm and Barton kept finding one candle lit when they opened up the restaurant. Each Saturday the lit candle would be on a table closer and closer to where they customarily sat for their morning coffee visit. When the candle finally “arrived” one Saturday, and was glowing on their table, it never came again. There is no possible explanation except that Charlie finally had a silent Saturday morning visit with them!

Back in 1989 and 1990 the ghost was more active than he is now. Lemm said every time a new manager came in there would be quite a bit of unexplained activity. (This is not unusual. Ghosts dislike change, and until Charlie was reasonably sure the managers were doing things that met with his approval, he would naturally have become more agitated.) Sometimes when she came in very early, about 5 a.m., Lemm said the chairs would “rattle and move about quite a bit.”

When she first went to work at the cafe, an upstairs room, in the section that had been part of the old hotel, was rented out to a young man who was an artist, according to Lemm. One morning when he came downstairs, he asked the cooks if they knew something strange was going on. They told him, yes, indeed they did.