1880s Mineola hotel where a 1944 killing, a gambling-hall gambler, and the spirit of Elizabeth still work the stairs
115 E Commerce St, Mineola, TX 75773
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$
Overnight room rates vary; check beckhamhotel.com for current pricing
Access
Limited Access
Three-story historic brick building; stairs between floors
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1888 · East Texas railroad-era commercial lodging · Prohibition-era speakeasy · Music history — Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves
The Beckham Hotel at 115 E Commerce Street was built in the late 1880s as a commercial lodging in what was then a busy railroad-junction town. Mineola sat at the crossing of two significant Texas rail lines, and the hotel served the transient population that came with that traffic — salesmen, laborers, and people who moved through the region's timber and agricultural economy.
Ownership passed to a man named Beckham in the 1920s, who enlarged the operation with a ballroom and a coffee shop and appears to have overseen the property through its Prohibition-era incarnation, when the building reportedly served as a speakeasy alongside its lodging functions. The 1930s and 1940s brought the kinds of violence common to establishments operating at the margins: local oral tradition and paranormal investigators both reference a 1944 incident in which a Black employee named Litrisse Jackson fatally cut the throat of white patron J.B. Christie in a confrontation over an unpaid debt of $50. The circumstances of the confrontation — whether it constituted self-defense or murder — were disputed at the time. A third spirit associated with the upper hallways is described as a male gambler who may have died in the 1930s or 1940s; accounts vary between a poker-game killing and a suicide.
In 1993, guitar teacher John DeFoore took the building over and ran it as a music school. Several of his students became nationally known artists, including Miranda Lambert, Kacey Musgraves, and Michelle Shocked. Connie and Ron Meissner purchased the property in 2012 and have steadily restored both the commercial ground floor and the upper guest rooms.
Sources
Paranormal accounts at the Beckham center on three recurring figures who have been reported by guests and investigators over several decades.
The most frequently cited is Elizabeth, a woman in a long dress who carries a parasol and is associated with the hotel's main staircase. Local tradition holds that she died after falling on those stairs. She is said to appear most reliably on Monday mornings around 3 a.m., though sightings have been reported at other times. Guests have described both visual apparitions and the sound of someone descending stairs when no one is present.
A second figure — a girl estimated at about ten years old — is seen near the restaurant at street level, looking through the glass doors from the outside before vanishing when a witness moves closer. Investigators have not connected her to any specific documented death at the property.
The third is a male figure associated with the upper floor. Some accounts tie him to gambling activity in the 1930s and 1940s — either a man killed in a card game dispute or a gambler who died by suicide. His presence is reported as a moving shape in the second- and third-floor corridors.
Notable Entities
Book a room in the restored hotel and spend the night in a building where guests have reported apparitions on the main staircase, a girl peering through the restaurant windows, and unexplained smoke-like smells near the former kitchen. The hotel does not run a formal paranormal event program — guests investigate informally during their stay.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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