Ask a bartender who has worked a few closing shifts in an old building, and sooner or later you’ll hear about the door that swings shut by itself, or the footsteps upstairs after everyone has gone home.
Believe it or don’t. Either way, every stop below is open, pours a good drink and has a ghost story that has outlasted generations of staff. With Halloween coming, here’s where to have a drink with the dearly departed in Dallas and Fort Worth.
Sons of Hermann Hall, Dallas
If Dallas has a haunted headquarters, it’s this old lodge hall on Elm Street, between Deep Ellum and Fair Park. Four German fraternal lodges built it, and it held its grand opening in April 1911. People often call it the oldest freestanding wooden building in the area, and more than a century later it’s still a working bar, music hall and swing dance floor.
Most of the stories come from three spots: the stairs, the upstairs ballroom and a downstairs room that used to be a bowling alley. People talk about footsteps with no one there, doors opening and closing on their own, a child laughing when there are no children around and, in the old bowling alley, the sound of pins going down. One ghost is said to be Louie, a longtime caretaker who never had much patience for kids running through the hall. The best-known story goes back to the 1990s, when Walker, Texas Ranger was filming there. Extras having a late drink downstairs said a couple in formal clothes walked in, headed down a hallway and vanished.
Sons of Hermann Hall is at 3414 Elm St. The bar opens at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and stays open until 2 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Wednesday is swing night.
The Adolphus, Dallas
Beer baron Adolphus Busch’s downtown hotel opened on October 5, 1912, and it has been collecting ghost stories ever since. The best known is the Lady in White, said to be a 1930s bride who was left at the altar and took her own life. Guests and staff have reported a woman in a white gown on the 19th floor, sometimes with the sound of an old music box. Others say they’ve heard a big band playing in the middle of the night, with no band anywhere in the building. There’s also a story about a longtime regular of the hotel’s bistro who, after she died, kept turning up at her usual table.
For the record, people who have dug through old newspaper archives have never found any trace of the jilted bride. That hasn’t hurt the legend one bit. Pull up a stool at the Rodeo Bar, open until midnight most nights and 2 a.m. on weekends, and ask the bartender what they’ve seen. The Adolphus is at 1321 Commerce St.
Snuffer’s, Lower Greenville
Snuffer’s has been feeding Lower Greenville since 1978, and its Greenville Avenue location has long turned up on lists of haunted Dallas restaurants, with staff passing along stories of a presence in a hallway. The building was torn down and rebuilt on the same spot in 2013 and reopened in 2014. The ghost stories survived the construction, and so did the cheddar fries. Snuffer’s is at 3526 Greenville Ave.
White Elephant Saloon, Fort Worth
The White Elephant bills itself as the oldest honky-tonk in Texas, and it comes with the most famous gunfight in Fort Worth history. On February 8, 1887, former city marshal Jim “Longhair” Courtright, who had a reputation for running a protection racket, called gambler and saloon owner Luke Short out of the original White Elephant in Hell’s Half Acre. Short fired first, and Courtright was killed.
Prohibition shut the original saloon down in the 1920s. The Dooley family brought the name back in 1970, this time in the Stockyards, almost directly beneath the big Stockyards sign. The bar is now owned by Fort Worth chef Tim Love. Plenty of people will tell you Longhair Jim came along for the move, and he gets the blame when things go missing or move on their own. Every February 8, reenactors stage the gunfight on Exchange Avenue. The White Elephant Saloon is at 106 E. Exchange Ave., 817-624-8273, open from noon Sunday through Thursday and from 11 a.m. Friday and Saturday, until 2 a.m. on weekends.
The Stockyards after dark, Fort Worth
Longhair Jim has plenty of company in the Stockyards. Cowtown Winery started the original Stockyards ghost tour in 2010 after deciding its own building on Exchange Avenue was haunted. The 90-minute walking tour runs every weekend, with some weeknight dates on the schedule, and stops include the Stockyards Hotel and Miss Molly’s Hotel. Miss Molly’s started life in 1910 as a boarding house for cattlemen, later spent time as a bordello and is now known as one of the most haunted places in the Stockyards. It cheerfully lets overnight guests know they may not have the room to themselves. Cowtown Winery is at 128 E. Exchange Ave. on Mule Alley, 817-626-1011.
The one that got away
No list of haunted North Texas dining is complete without the Catfish Plantation in Waxahachie. For more than 30 years, Tom and Melissa Baker’s restaurant served fried catfish in an 1895 Victorian house that billed itself as the most haunted restaurant in Texas. It closed during the pandemic, and in January a fire badly damaged the old house, which had just reopened as a butcher shop. The catfish is long gone. Whether the ghosts left with it is anybody’s guess.
Happy haunting. Tip your bartender well. You never know who else is listening.
