Bartlesville Radio: The area’s best source for news, weather and sports!

City Hall has been added to Downtown Bartlesville's "Ghost Walk" tour, set for this Wednesday and Thursday. The tour will begin both nights at 6, at the Hilton Garden Inn, 205 S.W. Frank Phillips Blvd.

City Hall has been added to the tour list this year, along with several other new destinations. According to a recent Downtown Bartlesville newsletter, this year's Ghost Walk "features new locations and new stories based on real life incidents that took place in and around Washington County."

At City Hall, actors will tell the story Erastus Maples, a Bartlesville man who went "beserk," killing his brother and wounding two others in the Union Bank lobby on May 13, 1959. According to Examiner-Enterprise reports at the time, Maples was committed to a hospital in Vinita as a result of the shooting spree, where he died a year later following "a lengthy illness." Maples reportedly suffered from mild dementia but had previously been diagnosed with "persecution complex." Reports indicate Maples, who was "well known to law enforcement," believed his brother and the other men shot were following him. He confessed to the crime and said he would "do it again."

City Hall was built in 1909 as the Maire Hotel and opened for business in 1913. The hotel later became the Burlingame Hotel and the Phillips Building Annex and was purchased to house City offices following approval from voters in a 1998 General Obligation bond election.