At El Paso Water’s Hawkins Administrative Building, things often go bump in the night – and some workdays.
Judging by the many spooky stories told by EPWater employees, the Hawkins building may be home to otherworldly spirits. Almost everyone has a story about the building, which was once a banking institution.
Children in the building
Longtime employee Thelma Dominguez, Utility Capital Improvement Program Specialist, experienced several unsettling events involving children. Dominguez has spotted the ghostly apparition of a little girl in a white dress, confirmed by a security guard. Dominguez also remembered when customers, accompanied by children, often came to pay for services.
“My first supervisor was sitting at my desk, and we heard some kids giggling,” Dominguez said. “We got up, but there was no one there. We talked with security who said no one was in the building with children. But we both heard kids giggling loud and clear.”
Ghostly experiences keep other employees in the Accounting Department on edge.
For the longest time, Accounting/Payroll Specialist Karla Garcia felt like she was being pranked. She felt the continuous tapping on her office chair of someone trying to get her attention, but when she turned no one was there.
Garcia also shared a recent run-in with an office ghost while working late with Accounting/Payroll Specialist Samantha Duran.
“We heard someone walking around our area,” said Garcia, whose search for co-workers turned up empty. “Then we heard typing on a keyboard coming from another area where we weren’t sitting. We both stopped typing and realized it wasn’t us.”
Utility Purchasing and Contracts Manager Rose Guevara also heard children’s laughter, just as Dominguez did. Guevara often arrives first at work from her department.
“I couldn’t remember where the light switch was,” Guevara said. “I was feeling my way around and I could hear laughing and voices. The moment I turned on the lights everything stopped.”
Upstairs hijinks
Facilities Maintenance Lead Worker Joe Leyva told of an overnight experience that left him shook.
“The alarms weren’t working properly,” Leyva said. “I was on the couch about 1:30 a.m. in the third-floor break room when I heard a loud crash in the hallway. I didn’t want to go out there. The middle picture frame had fallen, but the nail was still in the wall. That scared the hell out of me.”
Engineering employees reported their fair share of ghostly encounters.
“I was in the third-floor restroom and went into the middle stall,” said Mayra Villalobos, Engineering Senior Technician. “Someone else come in. Then I hear a third person come into the last stall and shut the door. I come out to wash my hands, and out comes Customer Relations Clerk Norma Luna. Norma asks, ‘Didn’t someone else come in?’ We looked under the stall door, but there was no one there.”
Frequent targets of ghostly activity are security guards, who patrol the Hawkins building at night.
Many security guards have told employees about lights on the fourth floor that flip back on during the night, after they have locked the building down. Guards also reported seeing faces, as well as unexplained shadows and blurs on security cameras.
“The scariest experience was when I went upstairs to the fourth floor, and it sounded like someone was whispering my name loudly,” said a security guard who asked to remain anonymous. “The second time I passed by, it happened again. It was over by the elevators near the boardroom, like somebody was behind that door or standing right next to it.”