Samantha Houston and Love Letters
Historians have found no evidence for the story of Samantha Houston, a girl said to have died at the Driskill hotel in Austin, Texas, Austin Monthly reports. A painting there, Love Letters, is said to be haunted by her.
Austin Monthly wrote in 2021 that historians have searched for years for proof of the Samantha Houston story and found none, and judged the tale most likely apocryphal. The legend, it said, concerns a girl rumoured to have that name, who died in a fall on the Driskill's main staircase and who can still be heard laughing and playing with a ball on the steps.
CultureMap Austin wrote in 2019 that a fifth-floor painting, Love Letters, has a ghostly reputation. Its version makes the girl a daughter of Temple Lea Houston, aged four, killed in 1887 while running after a ball on the stairs, and says she now haunts the painting. Wikipedia's list of reportedly haunted paintings credits Love Letters to Richard King, around 1990.
According to Wikipedia, people say the painted girl's expression shifts when viewers look away, and guests have reported dizziness, nausea, and a feeling of floating or falling in front of it. It also notes that nobody has confirmed a Samantha Houston ever lived, or died in a fall.
"Richard King's painting Love Letters (painted circa 1990) is said to be haunted by Samantha Houston, a four-year-old girl who fell to her death in the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas, where the painting hangs. As a result, the expression of the girl in the painting is said to change[17] whenever one looks away. Guests have also reported dizziness, nausea, and feeling like they are floating or falling while viewing the painting. Despite the legend, no Samantha Houston has been confirmed to have existed or died by falling."
- Driskill Hotel's Haunted History: Fact vs. Fiction, Austin Monthly (2021)
- Artful past of Austin's oldest hotel ranges from the presidential to the supernatural, CultureMap Austin (2019)