Legend has it that these boot prints raised from wet concrete after multiple attempts at pouring a smooth surface during renovations in 2003. The prints make a path straight into a wall at Old Oak Square on Main Street Marble Falls. Those who have worked in the old building blame a spirit named ‘Stretch’ for odd happenings inside. Staff photo by Jared Fields
Boot prints beat a path frozen in concrete inside one business in Old Oak Square located at 305 Main Street in Marble Falls.
They begin near the north side of the room and walk straight into the opposite wall.
The thing is, no one knows who put them there.
Legend has it that during remodeling of the square about 10 years ago, those pouring the concrete couldn’t make a smooth slab — because someone kept leaving footprints.
Not once or twice but three times the concrete was smoothed over, only to have the footprints reappear.
“Anytime anything happened, nobody could explain. We blamed it on ‘Stretch,’ our resident ghost,” said Malta Seaton, a former longtime employee of the Foxworth-Galbraith lumber yard, which once was on Main Street.
No one knows who Stretch was. Many reference the huge old oak tree in the square and call it the “hanging tree.” They say Stretch was hanged from that tree a long time ago, and the footprints and unexplained happenings in the building are from him.
There’s only one problem with that part of the story.
The city of Marble Falls never had any hangings, according to Fran McSpadden of The Falls on the Colorado Museum.
Photos from 80 to 100 years ago do show a tree in what is now Old Oak Square — just smaller than what is there now. A larger tree from that time grew in the middle of the street. However, no record can be found of a hanging in Marble Falls.
So maybe Stretch’s neck was never stretched out.
The large building on Old Oak Square has held many businesses inside its walls.
From 1928 until 1984, it was WF & JF Barnes Inc., a lumber company. At points before, it was a bank and a hardware store. It also, near the back, had a business that sold coffins and stored a hearse on a ramp on the second floor.
According to Seaton, that might be why the old building gives off an eerie vibe.
“The office I used upstairs was an embalming room,” she said. “What would have been the third floor of it, the very top, was spooky up there. You would hear all kinds of things, probably just the building rambling.”
Seaton worked upstairs and had two desks. Items would fall off of them unexpectedly. Other things happened.
“I had an electric stapler, and it would go off,” she said. “I could be working at one (desk), and (the other stapler) would go off by itself at the other desk.”
Other downtown tenants have their own stories.
“I know (the ‘ghost’) wears a nice cologne,” said Michele Parson, owner of Choccolatte’s on Third Street inside the building. “I have bad allergies, so I pick up on Stetson.”
Parson said the store sells candles and fragrances, but this smell stands out to her.
“Every once in awhile, when I come in and open this door or something, it’s right over there by that vault. I’ve never smelled it anywhere else,” she said.
Teffany Mathes, manager of a business that once occupied the space, never noticed a smell surrounding Stretch, but she said he liked to make his presence known in a more obvious way.
“I was helping a customer, and the frame holders (on a rack), seriously, just flew off and landed out there,” Mathes said.
But not underneath the hanging frame holders — several feet out on the floor.
“I said, ‘that was Stretch.’”
