Skirvin Hilton Hotel

The story

William Balser Skirvin, usually called Bill, had made his money in oil exploration in Texas and Oklahoma before he put it into a hotel in downtown Oklahoma City. Built in 1910-11 to plans by Solomon Andrew Layton, the leading architect of the city's early statehood years, the Skirvin opened on September 26, 1911. It started as a ten-story tower with two wings and 224 rooms according to Wikipedia (the nomination says 250), and according to its 1979 National Register nomination it was the most expensive building in the city at the time, at about $1.8 million.

Location helped. The Rock Island depot stood just across the street, with the Santa Fe and Frisco stations a few blocks away. Oil figures including Robert Galbreath, William Skelly and Walter Ramsey made it their headquarters, and the nomination pictures ranchers (among them the 101 Ranch's Miller Brothers), politicians of both parties, entertainers and well-known outlaw figures mixing in its dining rooms. It ran almost self-sufficiently, with its own well, power plant, gas line and laundry.

The building kept growing. A Venetian-style summer roof garden opened in 1921 and brought in dance bands such as Ted Weems and The Seven Aces. A third wing came in 1925, and a 1929-30 campaign lifted every wing to 13 floors and 525 rooms, according to Wikipedia (the nomination gives 14 stories and more than 450 rooms). On September 24, 1912, Theodore Roosevelt, then campaigning as the Bull Moose candidate, addressed a crowd from one of the hotel's balconies. Skirvin's family lived in the hotel, and his eldest daughter Pearl held her first party there. As Perle Mesta she later became a famous Washington hostess, and Harry Truman named her minister to Luxembourg (1949-1954). In 1936 Skirvin opened a second hotel, the Skirvin Tower, across Broadway, and connected the two by tunnels that later became part of the city's underground walkways.

Skirvin died in 1944, and the following year both hotels were sold to local hotelier Dan James. Even so, the National Register text says the hotel slowly lost its shine after the founder's death. By the 1970s it had money problems and was placed in receivership. An $8 million renovation in 1973-74 removed the sidewalk columns along Broadway and added a drive-in entrance on the north side. Low occupancy closed the hotel in 1988, and it sat empty for 19 years.

Rescuing it took a long time. Mayor Kirk Humphreys set up a Skirvin Solutions Committee in 1999. The city bought the building in 2002 for $2.875 million, picked a developer in 2004 and sold the building to him in 2005. A renovation costing about $51 million, paid for partly with tax credits and public funds, reopened it in 2007 as the Skirvin Hilton, now with 225 larger rooms. A further $22 million renovation was completed in 2025.

The legend

The Skirvin's ghost story centers on a woman known only as "Effie." In the version told today, she was a maid who had an affair with Bill Skirvin and became pregnant. To avoid a scandal, he supposedly locked her in a room on the 10th floor, usually said to be Room 1015, and she eventually jumped from the window holding her baby. One retelling adds that the death was passed off as the suicide of a different woman, a saleswoman. Legends of America says the name "Effie" came from former employees, and the tale is usually placed in the Prohibition years, when the hotel doubled as a busy speakeasy.

People who tell the story say Effie has never left. Staff have described objects moving on their own, including a maid's cart rolling down an empty hallway, and noises in the night. Guests have complained of a baby crying and keeping them awake. Legends of America also collects stranger claims from male guests: a woman's voice making suggestive offers, a naked woman appearing while a man was in the shower, and one account of being touched by something invisible. Most of these reports come from the 10th floor.

The legend reached a national audience through professional basketball. In January 2010, after a Knicks loss to the Thunder, several New York players blamed a bad night at the hotel. That same month ESPN reported that Chicago Bulls players heard doors slamming by themselves and strange noises outside their rooms. The story came back in June 2012, when the Miami Heat stayed at the Skirvin during the NBA Finals. KFOR reported in 2016 that the Los Angeles Lakers were talking about it too. In 2013 the defending NCAA women's champions, Baylor, stayed at the hotel and then lost 82-81 to Louisville in one of the biggest upsets in the tournament's history, a loss now often told alongside the hotel's legend. ESPN included the Skirvin in a 2020 list of the most haunted venues in sports, and in January 2019 Kyrie Irving said he would produce a movie about the hotel's alleged hauntings; no release has been found. No televised ghost-hunting investigation of the Skirvin has been found.

Historians have looked for Effie and found nothing. Steve Lackmeyer, a reporter at The Oklahoman who co-wrote a book on the hotel, and his colleague Jason Kersey found no record of any such maid or death. They did describe Skirvin as "a notorious womanizer and drinker" and noted that the 10th floor had a reputation for gambling and other vices. The Skirvin family believed the founder's actual lover was a woman who kept his books and worked as his assistant, and she outlived him. Oklahoma Magazine reached the same conclusion in 2014. That article does mention real deaths at the hotel that may have fed the legend, including a guest who killed himself by jumping and the disputed death of the first manager, but this comes from a single source. In short, Effie is best treated as folklore built on the founder's reputation, and the sports stories as part of how it spread. Neither is evidence that she existed.

What remains today

The Skirvin is still a working hotel. It operates under the Hilton brand and belongs to Historic Hotels of America, the National Trust for Historic Preservation's program. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 (reference 79002010), when its architecture, its role in commerce and its political history were all cited as reasons. The nomination describes a main body of brown brick laid in Flemish bond above a marble and limestone base, with Corinthian pilasters on the upper floors, a cornice topped by a limestone balustrade, and rounded bays separating the towers. The bays were designed so that every room would have an outside window. The 2007 restoration brought back the original exterior finish and historically accurate windows. Inside, the guest rooms were reconfigured into fewer, larger rooms, and a lobby and meeting spaces now total about 22,000 square feet.

Visiting

Because the Skirvin is an operating hotel, guests can book a room, including on the 10th floor. No official ghost tour is known, and the hotel does not appear to promote the Effie story, so treat staff and other guests with courtesy, and do not knock on doors or linger outside rooms looking for "Room 1015." The hotel stands in downtown Oklahoma City, and its 1911 facade can be admired from the street.

Sources

1. National Register nomination #79002010 (texte intégral) — U.S. National Park Service · Public record
2. National Register of Historic Places file (NRHP #79002010) — U.S. National Park Service · Public domain (U.S. government)
3. Wikimedia Commons category : Skirvin Hilton Hotel — Wikimedia Commons
4. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Oklahoma City, OK 1957 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1957 · Public domain (USGS)
5. USGS 1:62500-scale Quadrangle for Oklahoma City, OK 1893 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1893 · Public domain (USGS)
6. article on the Skirvin legend (Tara Malone, 23 Sept 2014) — Oklahoma Magazine — Oklahoma Magazine
7. "Haunted Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City" — Legends of America — Legends of America
8. Official website
9. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
10. "You'll Never Forget Your Stay At The Most Haunted Hotel In Oklahoma" — Only In Your State — Only In Your State (seen in search only, weak source

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.