For our fourth installment of Adolphus hotel elevator ghosts, we take a look at one of our most tragic haunt-inducing deaths.
The day after Christmas, 1917, the Muse family lost their 16 year old son in an elevator shaft of the new Adolphus Annex in Dallas.
Dallas Morning News
“James A Muse Jr, elevator boy at the Adolphus Annex, was instantly killed shortly before 5’oclock yesterday afternoon when he stepped into an open elevator shaft and fell from the 6th floor of the hotel to the basement, a distance of nearly 100 feet. His skull was shattered and both legs were broken. He was 16 years old and had been employed at the hotel for some time.
Young Muse was on the 6th floor when one of the elevator cars came up from below. It had stopped at the 6th floor to discharge a passenger and had started up again when he made an attempt to enter while it was ascending. The operator had not succeeded in closing the doors of the shaft tightly before the boy missed his step on the floor of the car and fell to his death.”
The holiday season was already a bleak one, owing to the fact that the US was 9 months deep in to World War I.
Image: owing to rationing, train lines were limiting their runs.
