Skirvin Hotel

William Balser “Bill” Skirvin, an oilman and land speculator, opened his hotel on September 26, 1911, four years after Oklahoma statehood: two ten-story wings with 224 rooms, iced-air cooling, chandeliers and a ballroom. A third wing followed in 1925, and in 1929–30 all three were raised to 13 floors. It was the social heart of the young city. Theodore Roosevelt spoke from a balcony in 1912, Prohibition-era guests drank in its speakeasy, and Skirvin’s daughter Perle Mesta became a famous Washington hostess and U.S. ambassador to Luxembourg. The hotel was also segregated: for many years Black Oklahomans could not stay or dine there.

Skirvin himself died in 1945, shortly after winning back control of the hotel from his children in court. Under later owners the hotel declined, closed in 1988 and stood empty for 19 years until the city bought it and partnered with developers on a roughly $50 million restoration. It reopened as the Skirvin Hilton in 2007.

Its ghost story concerns a maid known as Effie. According to the legend, Skirvin had an affair with her during Prohibition, locked her in a room on the tenth floor – usually given as Room 1015 – when she became pregnant, and kept her there after the baby was born, until she ended her life and her child’s. Guests have reported a baby crying, a woman’s voice whispering to men sleeping alone, a woman glimpsed in the bathroom or at a window, and housekeeping carts moving by themselves.

There is no record of any such woman. Oklahoman reporters Steve Lackmeyer and Jack Money, who wrote a history of the hotel, and later Lackmeyer with Jason Kersey, found no evidence for Effie; Skirvin was known as a drinker and womanizer, the tenth floor had a reputation for gambling and other vices, and the family’s suspicion of a mistress centred on his assistant Mabel Luty, who outlived him. The legend went national anyway in 2010, when New York Knicks players blamed a loss to the Thunder on a sleepless night in the “haunted” hotel, and visiting teams have joked about it ever since.

A crying baby, a woman’s voice propositioning male guests, a female figure in bathrooms or at a tenth-floor window, doors slamming and carts moving on their own – reported by guests, housekeeping staff and visiting NBA players.

The tenth floor, especially Room 1015, and the upper corridors; most stories come from overnight guests.

The Skirvin ghost is a favorite of sports media, and in 2019 Kyrie Irving announced he was producing a film about it. Jack Money and Steve Lackmeyer’s book Skirvin (2009) tells the hotel’s real history.