Bill Simmons Haunted by Skirvin Hotel Ghost Effie in Oklahoma City

We’ve heard many stories about sports teams staying at hotels on the road that they deem to be haunted. The Pfister hotel in Milwaukee has inspired stories from Marlins players, Giants players, and Carlos Gomez of the Twins last year. Apparently another one of these hotels is the Skirvin Hotel in Oklahoma City, which was responsible for haunting the Knicks a year ago.

I’ve never been to Oklahoma City and I’ve never stayed in a haunted house or haunted hotel, so I’m not exactly a believer. But The Sports Guy Bill Simmons seems like a pretty honest guy, and in his recent column giving NFL picks for week 17, he wrote about his experience at the Skirvin as a sidebar story. Simmons says he asked to stay on one of the haunted floors, not believing in the story. Then he says he woke up at 4:30am because he was spooked:

“At first, I heard a baby crying and realized that was why I woke up. … Suddenly, it dawned on me that I wasn’t alone. I had an overpowering sensation that someone else was in the room.”

Simmons says he spent the next three and a half hours in the room with the lights and TV on, too spooked to go back to sleep. Most of us probably don’t believe in ghosts and have a hard time buying this story. Honestly, I think this might be a story perpetuated as a marketing ploy to get people to visit and stay at the hotel. Until now, I had no desire to ever go to Oklahoma City. Now I do, just to see if that hotel really is spooked. It’s like a theme park attraction — good business move.