By Robin Fletcher
Contributing Writer
October 31, 2001 

"I have never seen a ghost," reports Jayne Catrett, standing in a long dark hallway decorated with blood-red carpet, cursed by flickering lights and broken windows - and frightening howls. 

Catrett is the manager of the high-rise Baker Hotel, located in Mineral Wells, that was once considered by many celebrities and wealthy socialites to be the premiere resort in the nation. 

Reportedly, there are countless unregistered guests taking up residence there - ghosts. 

They attract investigators from as far away as California. 

This year, MTV’s "Fear" and Fox’s "Scariest Places on Earth" have contacted Catrett about doing documentaries and specials on the hotel, which are being considered. 

Recent tours catered scientists from organizations including Lone Star Spirits, Spooks, Dagulf Ghosts and Southwest Ghost Hunters Association-Arizona. 

Ghost hunters keep Catrett busy. 

Her schedule is booked until the end of the year, and she has had to turn down numerous requests again this Halloween, as well as allow two or more groups inside on the same night, which has never been done before. 

Catrett uses the proceeds of tour sales to sustain the hotel’s enormous upkeep. 

She volunteers full-time as the Baker’s guardian. 

She took on this immense task in 1990, along with her grandson Kyle Charles, several tour guides and maintenance man Ron Walker, who stays periodically at the Baker. 

The 14-story structure opened in 1929 and closed in 1972. 

A horror film was made there in 1986 called "Shadows on the Wall." This is the season in which Catrett receives the most calls. 

Overnight lock-ins are allowed, but only with a trusted tour guide to follow every ghostly step in this potentially hazardous building. 

Phenomenal Findings

Countless investigators who study paranormal phenomena venture to this landmark to snap thousands of photos and shoot many hours of video. 

Most are convinced that the hotel is a hotbed of spiritual activity. 

Many believe the four people known to have died at the Baker, among others who died elsewhere, remain there in the afterlife. 

A woman who jumped out of a seventh-story window and a 15-year-old killed in a 1948 elevator accident are the primary subjects of investigation. 

Catrett said every recent paranormal investigation recorded literally hundreds of orbs — small, round apparitions believed by many investigators to be ghosts or the ions of static electricity that feed a spirit, throughout the Baker’s interiors. 

She has seen videotape and photos on CD. However, as a self-professed semi-disbeliever, she doesn’t know what to make of it all. 

Guiding Ghost Hunters

Catrett and tour guide Wanda Rusher recently took four Metroplex ghost hunters on a complete tour of the property. 

Two hours later, some strange things happened. 

Twice the lights went off behind them and a door shut against a breeze from open windows. 

"It could be the wiring and a draft somewhere," Catrett said. "But I have an open mind." 

Joe Arellanes, an Arlington ghost hunter who felt a cold spot and developed goosebumps, said he has seen many orbs. 

He smelled perfume, along with Rusher. His partners, Mike and Karen Fiedler heard screams. 

Ghost tour visitors whom Catrett believes to be serious investigators receive a journey to the forbidden bell tower and even the basement. 

The underground structure is a seemingly endless and pitch-black maze of twisting hallways and often steep drop-offs where a careless person could easily become the haunt’s next eternal guest. 

Catrett takes only ghost tour visitors to the place where the teenager was killed in 1948. Occasional hunters report feeling a presence there and sometimes hear screams. 

"A person could get lost in here," Jayne said as she turned a switch that lights one section of the basement. 

The electricity still works 75 years later. 

Catrett said she has chased a few teenagers and even adults out of the basement. As a great-grandmother, she worries about the possibility of someone getting hurt, so she makes an inspection of the giant hotel and its basement several times weekly. 

Trespassers are dealt with severely. 

“It is so dangerous down here,” she said. “If someone finds a way down here and their flashlight batteries died, they are in a world of trouble.” 

Numerous tour guides have reported that the elevator, which had its electrical current cut several years ago, makes sounds and sometimes moves between floors. 

Unexplainable Encounter 

Catrett has not witnessed this, but she reveals that strange things happen in the old hotel. She doesn’t scare easy, but something unexplained happened several years ago that terrified her. 

"It was stormy. Usually I cancel tours because of bad weather," she said. 

"I didn’t want to disappoint a group of children there, so the tour was not canceled. 

Suddenly, the sound of a roaring train just deafened us." 

Catrett presumed a tornado had passed over the Baker Hotel, but that proved not to be the case. 

"We have gusts through here all the time, noises," she said. 

"But not this. I don’t know what it was. It scared the hell out of me." 

Late-night Lock-in

A group is locked in for the night with Catrett or some other volunteer guide. 

They usually turn their lights off so that they can get the best shots in eight hours of total darkness, using only light from video cameras. 

One night, ghost hunters smelled two distinctive scents, found cold spots, detected voices on two floors and photographed hundreds of orbs floating throughout the Baker. 

Cody Polston, Southwest Ghost Hunters Association president, and investigator Jessica Irwin, like most other professional scientists, were armed with proper ghost-hunting equipment: infrared thermometers, electromagnetic field detectors and nightscopes. However, they saw no shapely apparitions. 

"I’ve been doing this 21 years," Polston said. "Aside from orbs, we heard a woman’s voice in the [12th-floor] Baker Suite. 

It was just me and [coordinator] Jessica there. It wasn’t her voice. 

We’ll be back soon with a large crew to investigate this." 

On another tour, maintenance man and occasional tour guide Ron Walker took a group of young college students — a regular draw for the ghost tours — down another long hallway and stopped. 

He pointed and warned, "Look down here and tell me that this doesn’t remind you of [the movie] ‘The Shining.’ 

This place gets that scary at night." 

Catrett refuses to be afraid, however. 

"If anything is here," she said. "It has not harmed me. Yet." 

Catrett said she allows responsible college students and other groups to take her affordable ghost tours and anyone is welcome to take the regular tours, which do not include a visit to the basement and roof. 

She can be reached at (940) 328-6069.