Patty, Rose and the Ghosts of Langston’s Western Wear

Reviewed by Josh N · Updated August 27, 2026 · How we verify

Walk into Langston’s Western Wear in Oklahoma City and you are shopping inside a building that spent its first years as a saloon, a dance hall and a hotel. The address sits in Stockyards City, the district built around one of the largest cattle markets in the world, and the store’s story reaches back to 1919. The boots and hats are the reason most people come through the door. The two sisters said to still be looking for each other on the upper floor are the reason some people linger.

Quick Orientation for Visitors

• Where: Stockyards City, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on NW 7th Street.
• Built: The building’s history dates to 1919.
• Original use: Saloon, dance hall and hotel serving farmers, ranchers and cowboys.
• Now: The flagship store for Langston’s Western Wear, renovated to keep much of its original character.
• Access: Free. It is a working retail store, open during business hours.
• The legend: Two sisters, Patty and Rose, said to have died here in the 1920s.

From Cattle Money to Dime Dances: The Building’s First Life

Stockyards City grew up around the business of moving livestock, and the men who worked that trade needed somewhere to spend a night and a paycheck. The building that now holds Langston’s answered all three needs at once. Downstairs there was drink and music. Upstairs there were hotel rooms. In between there was a dance floor, and for a district full of men a long way from home, that floor was the main attraction.

Dance halls of the period commonly operated on the ticket system: a customer bought tickets, usually a dime apiece, and handed one over for each dance. The women who worked those floors were known as taxi dancers, hired by the hour and paid by the ticket. It was ordinary work in the 1920s and it is the world the Langston’s ghost story comes out of.

The retail chapter came later. The building was converted into the flagship store for Langston’s Western Wear, a name long associated with western clothing in Oklahoma, and the renovation deliberately preserved a good deal of the original interior and the early twentieth century exterior. That decision is part of why the ghost story has stuck. Customers are not standing in a modern shell with a plaque on the wall. They are standing in the room.

Patty and Rose, the Saloon Spirit Sisters

The story told about the building runs like this. In the 1920s two sisters, Patty and Rose, worked the dance floor as taxi dancers. Patty was killed inside the building by a jealous lover. The spot is usually pointed out as the area now occupied by the women’s boots and children’s clothing sections. Rose, unable to carry the grief, took her own life in one of the hotel rooms upstairs. Since then, the pair are said to move through the building still searching for one another.

It is worth being clear about what this is. The tale of the Saloon Spirit Sisters is local lore, passed along by staff, customers and ghost tour retellings rather than documented by any record cited alongside it. No surnames, no dates and no court or coroner’s paperwork travel with the story. That does not make it untrue, but a reader deciding whether to visit should treat Patty and Rose as legend attached to a real building rather than as established history. The building’s use as a saloon, dance hall and hotel is the verified part. The murder and the suicide are the retold part.

What Shoppers and Staff Report Inside the Store

The reported activity is quieter than the legend behind it. Lights that flicker without an obvious cause are the most commonly mentioned event. The second floor is where people describe the stronger sensation: a feeling of presence, of not being the only person in the room, sometimes strong enough that visitors say they preferred to head back downstairs. Occasional accounts describe glimpses of a figure and attribute them to one or other of the sisters, though the sightings are far less consistent than the general unease people report upstairs.

None of this has been independently verified, and a century old building with old wiring, uneven floors and a lot of foot traffic offers plenty of mundane explanations. What survives the scepticism is the atmosphere itself, which the renovation did nothing to dilute.

Visiting Langston’s Western Wear in Stockyards City

This is one of the easiest haunted locations in Oklahoma City to see, because there is no tour to book and no fee to pay. Langston’s is an operating western wear store, and anyone can walk in during trading hours, browse the boots and go upstairs. That also sets the ground rules: the staff are working, other customers are shopping, and this is not a place for equipment sweeps or after hours access. Ask politely and you will usually hear the Patty and Rose story from someone who works there, which is the best version anyway.

Pair the visit with the rest of Stockyards City. The district’s cattle market context is what explains the building’s original mix of drink, dancing and beds upstairs, and seeing the neighbourhood makes the 1919 building read as something other than a curiosity. Come for the boots, stay for the second floor, and make up your own mind about whether the sisters are still looking.

Sources

• College Navigator – Oklahoma City Community College (Ed (official))
• College History
• History
• Education Best Prize, Says OCCC Enrollee
• OCCC Master Plan – Triad Design Group
• Wikipedia: Oklahoma City Community College

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