When Margie Myers was growing up in North Carolina, her family would sit around at night and tell ghost stories.
“That’s how we entertained ourselves,” she said.
But, that love of the supernatural is going more than a step forward this upcoming Halloween.
The published author and resident of San Benito has been working on a special project and she hopes to have a real ghost story to tell.
She and her assistant, Angela Araiza, will stay at the infamous and haunted Hotel Galvez in Galveston on Halloween night. There, they will stay in room 501 — Audra’s room.
Legend has it the ghost in the hotel could be a bride-to-be, named Audra. She was about 25 years old when she stayed in room 501 before tragedy struck.
In the mid-1950s, Audra was engaged to a mariner who sailed in and out of the port. So the story goes, whenever his ship was due in port, she would leave her room and take the elevator to the eighth floor where she climbed a ladder that opened into one of the four hexagonal turrets that sit at each corner of the roof. She would wait inside the turret until her lover’s ship arrived.
One time, there was a huge storm, and for days there was no information about the lover’s ship. Word was, it went down and all on board were lost. But, she continued to climb to the roof each day hoping for his return. She sighted no ship.
According to legend, soon after, she hanged herself in the west turret. The tragedy continued.
Just days after her death, her lover appeared at the hotel alive and looking forward to a marriage that would never happen.
Now, after three weeks and dozens of calls to book this special room on Halloween, Margie is ready for her own ghost story and mystery.
“There are differing accounts and other details,” Margie said. “The fact remains the same, Audra haunts the hotel to this very day and frequently.”
She’s hoping to experience something surreal at the hotel. She has good reason to believe she will because of all the problems she had just trying to book the room, which isn’t just given to anybody.
Phone calls have gone dead, while others have had static to the point of being unable to hear the person on the end of the line.
Myers, who first came to the Valley area as a Winter Texan before moving here full time a few years ago, said the hotel is one of the most haunted in the world and stories range from an energetic presence, cold air, noises and one guest even reported watching a mattress depress as if someone was laying down on it.
“Guests have fled the hotel in the middle of the night,” Myers said.
A local author, Myers actually was published for the first time when she was 14. She will be writing essays about her experience in the Hotel Galvez, room 501.
She wrote one of her books, called “Unsuspecting Prey,” more than 50 years ago, on a steno pad with pencil.
Actually, all of her works sat on a shelf. Some she even threw away.
That was until she was at a fundraiser and someone asked her what she did in her free time.
“I told her I write mysteries,” Myers said. “She asked if I had anything to read. She insisted I have it published.”
Success has followed. In 1999, she wrote “Mirror Mirror,” another mystery psychological drama.
She currently is in the midst of working on two other novels — one, called “You Whispered my Name?” and the other, “Don’t Look Back.”
When her books are published, Margie calls the experience “surreal.”
“Like it couldn’t have been me who wrote it,” she said. “It’s like someone else is published.”
But, writing is who she is.
“I just feel like I came into this world wired to write,” she said. “I was writing before I was 10 years old. It is just who I am. My sister is an artist. She paints with a brush and she says that I paint with a pen. I paint a picture with a pen.”
Want to know more about Margie?
margiemyersauthor.com
Don’t miss Margie’s stories about the Hotel Galvez, special in the Valley Morning Star Sundays in October.
Her latest project
Margie Myers’ passion is writing mystery and psychological dramas.
But, her most recent work is far removed from that genre.
Called “Marissa’s Christmas,” the story is Margie’s first children’s book. She wrote it to provide a message of empathy to young people, something she feels is lacking in today’s society.
In the story, Marissa is from a wealthy family. Her father’s driver makes a wrong turn and ends up in the “ghetto.” Marissa sees the poor people and how they live.
Later, when it’s time to open her Christmas gifts, her mind goes back to those kids in the ghetto.
“That’s where the empathy comes, when she begins to put herself in other people’s shoes,” Myers said.
