Despite the ongoing national financial crisis, the community of Big Spring became the location of a new hotel during the early 1930s.
The hotel was extensive and lavish, and quickly became the talk of the town.
However, many people started checking into the hotel with a single, sinister purpose.
Hotel Settles: A Luxury Hotel of Big Spring
Updated 2/11/2020 – With the Great Depression well underway, with no end in sight, many people began to check into Hotel Settles to commit suicide.
Over the next couple of decades, the hotel lost some of its appeal and closed down due to financial struggles.
The building sat empty for many, many years.
That is until 2012, when an extension renovation project began.
As construction crews and designers meticulously restored the hotel to its former, lavish glory, they unwittingly woke up many spirits within the very walls of the building.
As guests begin to check into the hotel, many of them started reporting seeing apparitions of people in period clothing wandering around in the hallways—even in some of the rooms themselves.
Theresa, a local paranormal enthusiast, became very excited when she heard about the onslaught of paranormal activity at the local hotel.
She had been wanting to begin her own paranormal investigation team and she figured Hotel Settles was the perfect place to begin.
“I was still trying to recruit people for the group at that point, and while I wasn’t exactly pleased with the idea of checking out the hotel by myself, I knew collecting evidence could possibly gain me new members,” she reasoned.
A Crowd of Ghosts
“So I walked into the hotel and started exploring each floor.
It was a Monday evening so there weren’t a lot of people around.
As I walked down the hall, I got this sudden, inexplicable urge to go to the top floor of the hotel.
“I’m not sure why,” Theresa said, shaking her head.
“But since I planned on going through the whole thing, it really didn’t make any difference.
I rode the elevator up and the moment I stepped foot on that floor I felt suddenly uneasy.
“I turned and looked all the way toward one end of the hotel…and seated in the window was a man.
He had a suit on, but something about the fabric and style of it made me realize it wasn’t some trendy, modern suit.
It had seen better days.
“I must have been seventy feet or so away when I made eye contact with the man.
Something about his expression, and the aura around him, gave me the chills, and then…then he pushed himself off the ledge and plummeted out the window,” she murmured, getting teary-eyed.
“Naturally I cried out for help and ran to the window.
“I looked down but I couldn’t see anything.
Still, I knew I had to get help, so I turned on my heels and found the exit sign that led to the stairwell.
The moment the door closed behind me I knew something was terribly wrong,” Theresa whispered.
“All over the stairwell were people hanging from ropes tied to the ceiling.
Their pale, ghostly faces just blinked and stared at me as I cried and shrieked, overwhelmed by what I was seeing.
Hotel Security found me ten minutes later in a state of psychosis.
I had to be escorted out of Big Spring and sent to the nearest psych ward for evaluation.
I haven’t been the same since,” she said.
