NEW BRAUNFELS, TEXAS - The Faust Hotel located at
240 South Sequin Street was built on the Faust family homestead.
Some 2,000 citizens cheered at the groundbreaking event for the
new Travelers Hotel on October 12th, 1929. The local vice
president of the chamber of commerce and president of the First
National Bank raised funds for the construction and poured himself
into the project. He was Walter Faust Jr. He loved the art nouveau
Spanish Renaissance style hotel so much that he became its first
owner. Walter moved his family into one of the suites and lived
there until his death in 1933. In his honor the hotel was renamed
"The Faust".
Many guests have spotted a "quaint
and old-fashioned" man around the building.
3One former night
manager reported the elevator doors would open and no one could be
seen exiting the elevator. It happened about the same time every
night. He also reported doors would open and close by themselves
and chairs would be pushed back into place without anyone near
them. Employees grown used to these kind of strange things and
brushed them off as Walter is still taking care of the hotel. Lisa
Farwell wrote in her book "Haunted
Texas Vacations" that a visiting young couple saw an older man
running the elevator. The bellman was wearing a plaid jacket. They
ask a desk clerk who the man was and he assured then that the
hotel did not employ an elevator operator or bellman. It must have
been the ghost of Walter.
(This photo of The Faust Hotel is courtesy of TripAdvisor)
It seems Walter's spirit is not
alone. Reports of a women carrying a child have been seen in the
hallways of the grandiose hotel. They were surrounded by a bluish
glow. As the witnesses watch the spectacle they just disappear
before their eyes. It's not known who the woman and child are.
A housekeeper has spotted a ghost of a
young four or five year old girl playing in the third floor hallway.
She is believed to be Christine, an ancestor of Walter Faust.
Christine's portrait hangs on the third floor hallway.
When you're in New Braunfels and in
need of a place to stay consider the hotel that Walter Faust built.
It's still there and so is he.
Walter Faust (This photo of The Faust Hotel is courtesy of TripAdvisor)
It was about 1990, maybe a year or so after the death of Ann Ruff, author of Historic Hotels of Texas. My wife and I had purchased her book and being avid travelers, had actually had her autograph the book for us at a previous gathering at the hotel in New Braunfels, The Faust Hotel.
ReplyDeleteWe met some really nice people, one of which was Dan Montrose, a former NFL player that said he lived on the Guadalupe River and we could come back to visit he and his wife any time we were in the area.
As luck would have it, we did want to come back and stayed on the first floor, down the left side hallway, just about near the front desk that would have been below us, but not all the way to the end of the hallway, as there was one room at the end that was to our right, facing our door.
We went into town that night and at at Hans Keller, in the basement of the Prince Solms Hotel. We had wine with our dinner and decided to turn in early.
About midnight, I awoke to loud laughter and excitement in the room that was at the end of the hallway, and it had an adjoining door to our room that was trapped on the other side of me by our oversized mattress. These mattesses could not have been part of the original hotel design, but were more for the modern traveler, so it blocked the doorway to this adjoining room.
As the noise got louder, I raised up in bed and started to become angry that it would wake my wife. Then, the doorknob rattled vigorously and the woman that was in the other room laughed out louder than before....I grabbed the doorknob and shouted, "hey, you stop that right now!"
The noise and the doorknob fell still and silent and after a moment or two, I drifted back to sleep myself.
When I woke up, I walked across Main Street and purchased coffee and streudel at Naeglin's Bakery for our breakfast....upon return to the hotel, I dropped off the coffee and pastry and headed out behind the hotel to a quaint little store called, Fossils and Gemstones. I went in, looked at all the fantastic fossils and even a petrified mammoth stomach!
Well, a sweet little old lady came out and I started talking with her about the hotel, sipping my coffee and she asked how I had slept. I told her the story and she called for her partner to come out and when I recanted the story, they asked which room and both had a look of fright when I told them which one. They thought it was the room of the the Faust son, whom was murdered in that room for his philandering about the area back in the depression era....along with the sife of a jealous husband!
I thanked them, raced back to the hotel and asked the desk clerk if she could open that room, after she told me it was storage only. When she opened the door, it was filled to just where the door could barley open with old twin mattresses turned up length wise and wall-to-wall....the man or woman that rattled that doorknob would have had to have an arm that was roughly five feet long from the armpit to the wrist.
I went white! No one had been in the room, but I saw that doorknob rattle! Iheard that laughter! I have never been back and will not go back!
Morgan Mohr
Fulshear, Texas