It’s not Halloween, but some humiliated New York Knicks players are blaming ghosts for their trashing Monday by the Oklahoma City Thunder.
It was inevitable, really, that the legend of the Skirvin Hilton Hotel’s 10th floor being haunted would become a national story. Now, it appears, the tale is at least getting around in the sports world.
But is there any truth to the legend of a housekeeper named Effie being impregnated by hotelier W.B. Skirvin and then jumping to her death, baby in arms, from a 10th floor window?
That was one of the big mysteries Jack Money and I delved into as we researched our book "Skirvin” (released in December). Yes, a lot of wicked things occurred on that 10th floor. And yes, W.B. Skirvin was a notorious womanizer and drinker.
Understand first that the 10th floor originally was the top of the hotel before a third tower and three more stories were added between World War I and 1930. Rooms on the floor consisted of salesman’s suites, built extra large to accommodate temporary displays set up by traveling salesmen.
But were they also used for gambling and vice? Newspaper archives show the suites being raided by authorities on multiple occasions. On one visit, police seized fixed roulette wheels; in another incident, authorities discovered "loose” women, beer, a bullet hole in the ceiling and a trail of blood in the bedroom and bathroom.
Hotel employees insisted they saw nothing and only heard the sound of a gunshot.
The Skirvin had its share of mysterious deaths. The shooting death of the hotel’s first manager was investigated as a homicide, and Skirvin and his staff gave conflicting stories that would encourage one to doubt their insistence the manager committed suicide. And Skirvin’s own death — the result of a hit-and-run crash — is itself a mystery, considering it immediately followed a court ruling that restored his control of the hotel after a five-year battle with his family that placed it in receivership.
But these deaths did not occur on the 10th floor.
So the final question is: Was there an Effie?
Newspaper accounts record a suicide, but it was a salesman jumping from his room window, not a housekeeper. If there was an Effie, she does not show up in any news accounts, hotel documents or any other research we conducted over two years.
And if there were an Effie, one must wonder how she might have survived the attention of Mabel Luty, who was W.B. Skirvin’s longtime bookkeeper and assistant. Skirvin’s family believed Skirvin and Luty were romantically involved, and court records show their legal battle with Skirvin over control of the hotel in the 1930s was at least partially motivated by fears that he was going to will over his assets to Luty.
But Luty never jumped from a hotel window. Newspaper archives indicated she lived a long life and was still around in the late 1950s — long after Skirvin’s death in 1945.
If it’s of any comfort to visiting NBA players who do believe in ghosts, guests in the past have told hotel employees that "Effie” is an amorous ghost that has appeared to male guests as they’re going to bed or taking a shower.
Boo!
Official Skirvin Hilton response:
"We’re happy to have been able to host the New York Knicks, and certainly from my perspective nothing in or around the hotel affected their stay. The superstitions of some of their players perhaps got the best of them. We’re glad they stayed with us, and we’re proud to be an NBA city.”
John Williams,
general manager
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