Several historic homes report ghosts at work

Grapevine's authentic historic homes and Main Street buildings make the city unique among its northeast Tarrant County neighbors but beneath that quaint charm lies something, perhaps, slightly sinister: bumps, rattles and an array of mysterious occurrences.

With a collection of 100-year-old structures, it is not surprising that some might be haunted. And a few are legendary enough to have captured the attention of paranormal investigation groups.

Whether real or legend, these tales of hauntings make for spine-tingling fun at this spooky time of the year.

The odd events began shortly after Sherry Jaquess bought the Dorris House, a Victorian-style clapboard home built in 1896 for physician Thomas Brock, and turned it into a day spa.

The back doorbell would ring intermittently when no one was there. Employees would come to work to find upstairs rugs rolled up. Most disturbing of all: The red nail polish often found splattered all over the floor.

"We would arrive in the morning and it looked like someone threw bottles of red polish, always red, on the floor, where they shattered on the tile," said Jaquess, the owner of Renata Salon & Day Spa for 10 years. "It made such a nasty mess that I had to replace the floor because we couldn't get the color out of the grout."

With no evidence of a break-in, Jaquess and her crew were convinced the house had a ghost. They named it "Mrs. Dorris," believing it might be the spirit of Eliza Dorris, the physician's wife, who died in the house in 1995 at age 99.

The house at 224 College St. was also known to have strange occurrences before Jaquess bought it—when it was a funeral home—she said.

A paranormal investigation group spent one night, but no ghostly activity was detected, she said.

At Cross Timbers Winery, 805 Main St., four different paranormal groups have investigated and found evidence of multiple ghosts in the barn and house.

The winery occupies the old Dorris/Brock homestead, built by one of Grapevine's pioneer families in 1874. Dr. Dorris' father, W.E. Dorris, built the home, now one of the oldest in Grapevine.

John Word Brock, a grist mill operator, bought the house in 1908 and his family lived in it until 1947. But it is the ghost of Patti T. Weatherman, who bought the property in 1990 and lived there until her death in 1995, that is believed to haunt the house.

Shortly after her death, Don Bigby bought the property for the winery.

Patti's daughters showed up one day to go through the house but fled after 25 minutes, said Aimee Ybarra, event manager for Cross Timbers.

"They told Don, 'Mom's still in the house—we can feel her patting our hair, brushing up against our cheeks and we can smell her perfume,' " Ybarra said.

The Palace Theatre, a performing arts venue that was built in 1940 as a movie house, was thought to be haunted by the aunt of Chisai Childs, who bought the then-decrepit theater in 1973.

"Chisai Child's aunt, Suzy Slaughter, invested in the property and it was her ghost that kept turning lights on in the theater," said Sallie Andrews, historic preservation consultant for Grapevine.