Most innkeepers don't want their guests to be scared. Michael and Elise Lakey of Jefferson promise theirs will be.

Eight months ago, when the couple bought the 136-year-old Jefferson Hotel, they heard rumors that the place was haunted. Now they're believers. A smoky haze often appears in the hallway of the 24-room hotel, they swear, and then disappears. Lights turn on doors close by themselves. Says Ms. Lakey "It's been a riot."

It's been a great marketing hook, too." This Halloween weekend, the Texas chapter of the Travelers Protection Association is putting up most of its 60 attendees at the Jefferson while it holds its annual meeting in town. Carole Barbee, an officer with the Hurst based charity says she picked the Jefferson Hotel -precisely because of its reputation. And she claims to have first-hand knowledge. Seven years ago, she says, she was awakened there at 3 a.m. by what sounded like someone passing her door. "You- couldn't see a soul in the hall, but you could hear somebody walking like it was hardwood floors," she recalls. "And it was carpeted."

Yeah, right, say the owners of the only other hotel in town, Excelsior House, which is hosting the rest of the meeting guests and has heard, enough haunting hoo-ha. (Ms. Barbee says the ghost of robber baron Jay Gould stalks the Excelsior's halls) Reservations clerk Mary Jo Brantley says the Excelsior doesn't need or want any business from so-called -polterguests," said wishes the silly scuttlebutt would stop. "I think it's just that people's imaginations run away," Ms. Brantley says.

-Jonathan Weil