The Buckrail “Spooky Season” series is meant to entertain readers during the Halloween season. In no way are these stories rooted in fact or proven to be true.
JACKSON, Wyo. — Some ghosts are terrifying. Some are friendly. Very few could be described as “helpful.”
But that’s exactly the sort of ghost who supposedly resides at Jackson’s historic Wort Hotel. Robert “Bob” Tomingas worked at the Wort for 45 years as a maintenance engineer, and employees report that his spirit can still be felt in the hotel’s basement.
Danielle Hunter, the Wort’s marketing manager, told Buckrail that Tomingas’ spirit helped the current maintenance team figure out an issue that was stumping them. When an engineer was unable to pinpoint the location of a damaged water pipe in the hotel’s walls, a mysteriously placed pipe wrench leaning against a wall pointed him in the right direction.
“Bob just kind of hints to where things are wrong,” Hunter said. “They hear tinkerings and weird noises down in the basement. They believe Bob is still fine-tuning things. He’s still taking care of the hotel.”
Sometimes Bob will even tidy up the workspace in the engineering office.
“When it gets super busy and they don’t keep the office clean, he moves the tools around,” Hunter said. “They’ll put tools in one place the night before and they’ll come in and they’ll find them across the room, out of the way.”
While some “haunted” hotels draw ghost-seekers to book reservations in hopes of a supernatural encounter, the Wort doesn’t fall into that category. Tomingas’ presence is confined to the employee corridors of the hotel, and no one has reported seeing anything spooky. Instead, his warm spirit is felt by the staff.
“He worked at the hotel for so long and was so passionate about it that his energy is still in the hotel,” Hunter said. Tomingas, who worked at the Wort from 1950 through the mid 1990s, was known to spend cold nights sleeping next to the hotel’s boiler systems in case they needed tending. He rebuilt the hotel’s heating, water and electrical systems during his tenure.
“Everyone says it’s a good energy to be around,” Hunter said. “He was just beloved here.”
