Hearing Bells

A good place to start would be to admit right up front that I do not believe in the paranormal, psychic ability, or anything close to the supernatural.  I don’t believe in anything that cannot be measured and explained by science.  

Recently, I read an article about people making split second decisions, guided only by a “gut feeling” that resulted in the people avoiding a disaster.  Events such as not boarding a plane that subsequently crashed or leaving a party moments before a catastrophic fire or an earthquake.  Almost all the stories could be explained by either random chance, human nature, or the veracity of the tale in question.

Some of the stories, and the ones that I am about to relate, just show that given enough contact with people, it is possible to develop the ability to interpret human nature, to be able to detect a pattern in the way people interact with you and make a prediction, perhaps subconsciously, on what is about to happen.

For many years, during college and for several years afterwards, I worked in the hotel business.  Over the years, I think I did just about every job imaginable in a hotel, from boiler mechanic to manager, bartender to short order cook.  It was a hell of an education in human nature since it is a sad fact that people behave their worst while on vacation.  I remember a sign in the basement of the old Shamrock Hilton that said, “Vacation is 2 weeks where people are 2 tired and 2 sick 2 go home but 2 broke not 2.”  

More than once, while working in my office behind the front desk, I would notice someone checking into the hotel and without alerting the desk clerk, picked up the phone and called security to send someone to watch the room the new guest had been assigned.  Sure enough, within minutes, someone would be caught trying to sneak the television out of the room while the new ‘guest’ was calling the front desk to report that the television was missing from his room.  The good news is that over the years, the hotel stopped over a dozen people from stealing televisions.  The bad news is that every single time, the person trashed the television by throwing it to the ground before attempting to flee.

I wasn’t the only person in the hotel that could somehow just know that someone checking in was about to do something stupid.  After working with people, sometimes it just seemed like you knew in advance.  Collectively, my staff and I called this “hearing bells”.  

A perfect example of ‘hearing bells’ came one night at the old Flagship Hotel in Galveston.  I was the resident manager, generally responsible for the hotel's operation from dusk to dawn, at which time the general manager would take over.  The Flagship had a very nice night club that featured live music and was very popular with the locals.

Note.  The poor old Flagship is now long gone.  The Flagship was an unfortunate victim to multiple storms and was finished off by Hurricane Ike.  The photo at right shows the hotel and some of the hurricane damage.

One Saturday night, the bar was very busy, but I happened to notice one very attractive young woman with extremely long black hair sitting alone in the bar, and not seeming to have a very good time.  I stopped at her table and asked her if she was okay.  She assured me she was, so I continued my way through the bar and back to the front desk.  A few minutes later, she came out to the desk and asked us to call her a cab.

Resisting the urge to scream “Cab!” at her—a frequent temptation—I called the local taxi company and asked for Tony.  The hotel had a special relationship with Tony, we threw a lot of business his way and in return he took special care of our guests.  Not coincidentally, he drove the only cab that my wife, The Doc, used to go back and forth from our house to the hospital, making sure that she reached her door safely.  The hotel gave Tony a lot of business.  

Tony arrived and picked up his passenger.  I gave him the signal to take special care of her and he nodded before he drove off.

Hotels do most of their accounting work at night, and that night the books were a little off and I spent some time helping the night auditor finish her work.  About an hour after Tony had left with the mysterious young woman, a desk clerk brought me an envelope and said Tony had brought back a message for me.  I opened it and the letter inside was a suicide note from the mysterious woman with the long black hair!

After calling Tony and getting the address of the young woman, I called the police and left the hotel myself, driving to the young woman’s house, arriving at roughly the same time as both the police and Tony.  Knocking on the front door got no response, but all three of us could smell gas.  As the police officer called both the fire department and the gas company, Tony and I forced the front door.

Like many of the houses in picturesque Galveston, this was an old wooden building with wooden sash windows and old open flame gas heaters.  The gas had been turned on in the stove and the heaters, but none of the appliances were lit.  As Tony and I raced around the single-story home opening windows and doors, the policeman carried the unconscious woman outside.  An ambulance crew was successful in reviving her and transported her to the hospital where I later learned she spent a week in the psych ward under observation.  

When Tony asked me why I had singled her out for him to transport and watch, all I could answer was that something about her made me hear bells.  

About a month later, there was another similar event.

The Flagship was built over a long pier stretching out from the shore over the Gulf of Mexico.  At the end of the pier was a small wooden dock for fisherman and a small shop that sold snacks and bait throughout the night to the fishermen.  While technically part of the pier, it was a separate business and had no ties to the hotel.  

About four in the morning, I was at the front desk helping the desk clerk block out rooms for the incoming reservations.  The lobby elevator opened and a well-dressed man in his fifties, obviously a guest of the hotel, stepped out and came to the desk asking where he could get a cup of coffee.

Right around the corner from the front desk was a small table with a pot of coffee and cups for guest use that was prepared each night as the bars closed at two in the morning.  Before the desk clerk could direct the guest to the waiting coffee, I told him that the nearest coffee was at the bait shack on the end of the pier.

The guest smiled, thanked me, and walked out the front doors heading towards the end of the pier.  Ignoring the bewildered desk clerk, I called the security shack at the entrance to the pier and directed the guard to follow the guest.  Then, I called the police.

I didn’t see any of what followed as I remained inside the hotel, and the police arrived too late.  According to the security guard and the poor clerk running the bait shop, the man bought a cup of coffee, pleasantly discussed fishing for a couple of minutes, said goodbye, and walked towards the exit.  Then he sat down in the doorway, pulled a revolver from inside his jacket and shot himself in the head, dying instantly.

We later learned that the man had left no suicide note and had not awoken his wife as he quietly left the room.  She had no idea why her husband had committed suicide and as far as I know, they never did discover what had driven the man to kill himself in such a bizarre fashion.  According to his wife, it had been his idea to come and spend the weekend at the beach.  Though people committing suicide in hotels occurs fairly frequently, this case was unique.

As for me, well, I spent half the day explaining to openly skeptical police over and over again why I had phoned them before he pulled the gun from his jacket.  Though I was later frequently wary about the behavior of other hotel guests, I never again told anyone, particularly the police, that I “heard bells”.