In a recent news article on Southcoasttoday.com, a story reveals how some of the team members of the Knicks were disturbed, not by the team they were playing against, but by some paranormal activity they experienced during their stay at the Skirvin Hilton in Oklahoma City. The game between the Knicks and the Oklahoma City Thunders ended with the Knicks losing to OKT 88 to 106.
The news article reports how several team members were affected by paranormal activity and how some of them didn’t get enough sleep at night because they became convinced that the hotel they were staying in was haunted. Jared Jeffries, signed by the Knicks in 2006, is cited as saying that he definitely believes the location is haunted and the hotel was scary to stay in. The news report also tells how Eddy Curry, a center for the Knicks, only managed to get a total of two hours of sleep Sunday evening, the night before the game, because he couldn’t stop obsessing about the possibility of unseen entities roaming around in the halls of the Skirvin Hilton. Curry was so disturbed that he ended up spending the majority of his time in Nate Robinson’s hotel room, and Curry sincerely believes that the hotel halls are haunted.
These reports are not new reports for the Skirvin Hilton since guests have commonly reported having strange experiences, sightings, and hearing unexplained noises in the hotel. According to some tales, it is believed that a woman committed suicide at the hotel in the 1930s and that she jumped from the tenth floor of the hotel with her baby in her arms. In contrast, some stories suggest that the woman jumped off the 14th floor after being kept hostage in the upper levels of the hotel by the owner of the hotel who got her pregnant and wanted to avoid a scandal. Common reports by guests include hearing screams of a female, items being moved by something unseen, the sighting of female apparitions, and males staying in the hotel have reported hearing the voice of a woman propositioning them. Some reports include seeing a woman in the bathroom, and one guest once reported seeing a female apparition in his bed when he awoke. The female that committed suicide along with her child are also reported apparitions seen at the hotel.
Herb Williams, the assistant coach for the Knicks, teased Curry and Jeffries about believing in ghosts and believing that the hotel was haunted, but Curry didn’t find the situation something to laugh about. The team ended up blaming the game loss on the lack of sleep they had the night before and the uncomfortable two days that they spent at the hotel. It should be duly noted however, that Curry, as well as Robinson, have both been benched by the Knicks coach, Mike D’Antoni until this point. So was it a lack of sleep, paranormal disturbances, and ghostly activity or a lack of time out on the court that is responsible for the lost game played against the Oklahoma City Thunders?
According to Dan Gordon, one of the authors of Haunted Baseball: Ghosts, Curses, Legends and Eerie Events, published in 2007 by The Lyons Press, it is not uncommon for athletes on the road to complain about experiencing paranormal activity. Gordon co-authored the book with Mickey Bradley, and the authors explain that there are a number of hotels across the nation where professional athletes stay that have reports of ongoing paranormal activity. Gordon explains that for a professional athlete that is on the road, tired, exhausted, and away for home for months at a time, the thoughts of dealing with paranormal activity are doubly disturbing.
The Skirvin Hotel has been mentioned in books like the book Ghostlahoma written by Tammy Wilson and Tonya Hacker. The two authors conducted research on the hotel for a period of two months before writing about it. The research revealed a number of unexplainable events that were not necessarily frightening but that could suggest ongoing paranormal activity in the location.
The Skirvin Hotel was originally opened in the early 1900s, and the building was later renovated in 1925 when a new wing consisting of 12 storeys was added to the establishment. More renovations were conducted in 1930 when the three wings of the building were leveled with an add on to each wing giving the three building wings 14 floors each. The hotel is located at 1 Park Avenue, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma in downtown Oklahoma city on the corner of North Broadway and Park Avenue nearby the Cox Convention Center. In the 1970s the hotel was listed in the National Register of Historic Places. Additional renovations occurred in 2004, and after several years of being closed, the hotel was reopened to the public in mid-2007.
