The Most Interesting Man In Texas Opens A Haunted B&B
Walking up the steps to the 134-year-old RavenWolf Manor, I start thinking about Anne Rice’s The Witching Hour. One of the protagonists, Michael Curry, would stare through the fence every day at a New Orleans mansion rumored to be the home of witches. If I had to pick one person in all of Texas that might be a sorcerer, it would be Lawyer Douglas.
The 53-year-old descendant of curanderas and voodoo witch doctors doesn’t dispel this feeling when he welcomes me into the parlor of his new hotel in Navasota. As always, he is dressed immaculately in a tailored suit with his mustach waxed and curled up at the edges. He serves cucumber lemonade out of an ancient pitcher while we sit in his parlor full of taxidermy and oddities. I once asked his advice on buying a human skull for Christmas, and several watch us from the corners of the room. Every inch of the space is covered in elegance and strangeness.
“When we brought all the stuff in, and I was sitting outside when a school bus passed by,” says Douglas. “A kid stuck his head out of the window and yelled, ‘Your house is haunted!’”
In this, the house matches its owner. Douglas was previously the co-owner of The Wilde Collection in the Houston Heights. When it opened in 2015, it quickly became a tourist attraction and the gold standard for the growing Texas oddities scene. It sold original artwork by Douglas himself, Victorian mourning jewelry, rogue taxidermy, antique medical equipment, real human skeletons, and anything else the discerning weirdo could want.
Douglas became famous for hosting social gatherings and creations. He held Krampus nights around Christmas so children could take pictures with the famed beast of winter instead of Santa. Along with former business partner Tyler Zottarelle and artist Joshua Hammond, he made a skeletal version of the famous Laocoön and His Sons sculpture for the Houston Museum of Natural Science’s Death by Natural Causes exhibit. Things were good.
Then on November 1, 2019, the Wilde Collection was torched by local musician Jonathan Jindra with people still inside it. Before setting the fire, Jindra had made various anti-queer statements online and claimed that God wished him to strike the Wilde Collection down. He had also previously dated an employee of the shop and was apparently angry about the end of the relationship.
No one was injured in the fire, though Douglas lost several pets housed in the building. Jindra pled guilty to arson and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He was denied parole for the first time in August 2021.
Despite a rallying of support for the Wilde Collection, Douglas never rebuilt the store. The loss left him despondent and sad.
“I was like, well, I am the Wilde Collection,” he says. “It's my name. It's my vision. It's everything I am.”
Then, his husband David found a listing for the house in Navasota, and Douglas finally found his desire to create returning.
“I got all dressed up because I wanted to treat this like if I was about to go on a blind date with the Victorian lady,” he says. “Then I walked in and as soon as I did, my wheels just started turning about how I would decorate what I would do. And it was just like an overflow of creativity that I hadn't felt for a really long time because I was so stifled with not being able to open the store. I started feeling like the house didn't want me to leave. Like that it needed me and I needed it.”
RavenWolf Manor will open to the public this autumn after Douglas finishes the final touches. The brief tour of the grounds left me spellbound. Each guest room is patterned off of a famous gothic story or author. The Poe Room naturally sports a bust of Pallus about the door with a raven on her head. The Dorian Gray room features a gruesome portrait. Fans of Dracula get to sleep in a vampire-themed room that overlooks Douglas’s pet cemetery and the place he holds his goats, Lucifer and Morningstar.
Nothing about the space is kitschy. You won’t find cheap jump scare animatronics or “broom parking” signs. Instead, Lawyer has hand-sewn the various draperies and wall coverings, carefully catalogued ghostly portraits and medical specimens, and just overall created a sense of deliciously disturbing morbid wonder.
One person who has attended a small open house is Luke Hales of Houston. He and Douglas were acquainted during The Wilde Collection days when Hales donated some oddities that had come into his possession. Like most people, he was heartbroken to see the Wilde Collection fail to rise. Visiting RavenWolf was a breath of fresh air.
“It’s the perfect place for an overindulging goth,” says Hales. “Lawyer finally had a chance to do his thing completely. It’s luxurious and decadent. I can honestly say I’ve never been anywhere like it. The man is so knowledgeable about romanticism. It was good to see him let off the leash and given free reign over a whole house.”
Like everyone who watched Jenny Nicholson’s four-hour video on the death of the Star Wars hotel, I am leery of using the term “immersive experience,” but that is what RavenWolf is.
“I want people to feel they are about to be transported to another realm and as soon as they walk in, like a lead actor or actress in a Gothic romance novel that may have ghosts,” says Douglas.
Is the space haunted? I couldn’t tell you. I’m a pathologically jumpy person, but apparently a poor receiver for the supernatural. Douglas says a previous owner claimed a ghost pushed her down the stairs once, and he often feels like there are other people in the room with him. That said, he has no interest in turning the space into a stop for the various ghost hunter shows.
“A haunting for one person, is not a hunting for everybody,” he says. “Hauntings are about energy, and if the energy doesn't match your energy, it's going to try to get you out like you would people who you don’t like. I feel that [ghost hunters] could be disruptive in the house in shifting the energies. I keep on thinking that if I was a ghost here and somebody wanted me to rehash how I died or why I'm still here, I would get really annoyed.”
One big question is: why vacation in Navasota, even in such an amazing haunted bed and breakfast? Douglas sees the hotel as a chance to slow down and appreciate things. His rooms are comfortable as well as creepy and are designed for people to lounge in them soaking up the ambiance. There are multiple parlors where guests can take tea, read, or talk. It’s a home, first and foremost.
If guests do want to explore the area, Navasota is home to at least twenty cemeteries, some going back to the founding of the area by German settlers. Main Street has some charming places to eat, including a classic rock café where you can buy a ukulele in the back, as well as a classic independent bookstore. You go to Navasota to relax. RavenWold just lets you do it in style.
“When I was raising my son and he was a teenager, we would go on vacation,” says Douglas. “After getting home, I felt I needed a vacation from the vacation because it was just doing way too much.”
Hales certainly had a good time. He can’t wait to return. “We’ve already tried to figure out when it’s possible for a weekend or more,” he says. “We definitely want to go back. It’s such a unique environment to be in. You’re not going to find another B&B like it, especially not in the country.”
After our talk, Douglas led me out of the house. Happy as he was to show me around, I could see him quivering with energy to get back to the house and do some more. It was good to see one of the state’s greatest artists back on his feet again, eager with the drive to create. I remarked how much fun it would probably be to have Halloween there, and he smiled brightly.
“I want to give these little kids Halloween memories,” he said. “And then when they grow up, they will be like, ‘In that house, on the corner, there used to be this guy. He would dress up and he handed the best candy to us.’ Won’t that be wonderful?”
More information about RavenWolf’s eventual opening date can be found on the official Instagram.
