Bad Chi?–March 28, 2013
A while back I wrote about the Jim West Mansion, which sets on the north shore of Clear Lake, and its new owner Akeem Olajawon, the former basketball star. Olajawon turned the 1927 mansion into a retail store for his new fashion line, which seems an odd use for the old mansion, but an interesting one. It will be interesting to see where it leads. 
The basketball star sunk a huge chunk of change (millions?) into fixing the place that had been vacant for decades.
Catty corner to the mansion is the Nassau Bay Hilton hotel, which has its own intriguing story. The 14-floor Hilton was the first tall building on the lake. At the time it was completed in 1983 an old Chinese woman confided in a close friend of mine that the hotel blocked the flow of the lake’s good energy (chi)–nothing good would come of it, she said. Whether the old woman was right or whether the chi was bad long before the Hilton, there’s definitely something amiss with the energy in the area surrounding the hotel.
The Hilton hotel was the scene of the sensational 2002 murder committed by Clara Harris against her orthodontist husband, David Harris. Clara discovered her husband with his lover at the hotel. After a confrontation and physical fight with the girlfriend in the lobby, Clara was escorted out to her Mercedes Benz by the hotel staff. 
In an ongoing fit of rage Clara proceeded to run over her husband three times in the parking lot with her car. Her 12-year old step-daughter was in the car as well, and of course, witnessed her father’s dreadful death.Very strange and tragic.
The hotel sets on the corner of NASA Parkway (originally called NASA Road One) and Space Center Boulevard. East of the hotel on NASA Parkway is a bridge. The roadway, and the bridge especially, was narrow sharp curves. There have been several accidents, including fatalities. One I remember vividly involved an interpreter at NASA. It was very tragic.
In recent years they have widened the roadway and straightened out the curves somewhat to alleviate the danger. Interestingly though, a bit further down the road, a woman was recently killed when the car she was in was speeding in the direction of the Hilton. The driver lost control, the car flew through the air, crashed through a brick fence, and ended up inside the residence. It seems the curse continues.
Space Center dead ends at NASA Parkway, but some how many people have failed to realize that fact, and have soared off the end of the road directly into the lake. I am told there was at least one fatality long ago, though some question as to whether it was an accident or suicide.
In another instance a small, wooden lounge was built over the water immediately east of the Hilton. Apparently, a week before the lounge’s official opening an inebriated individual fell off the pier into the water, and drowned. The lounge never thrived. After Hurricane Ike did its damage, the building was torn down, but the pier it was built on is still there.
Another sad event that occurred in recent years happened in the water just east of the Hilton, as well. A young doctor who had only recently moved to the area and taken up the sport of kayaking, fell out of his craft one early morning and drowned.
Are these things coincidences, or is it bad chi? I really don’t know but I think the chi might have been screwed up long before the Hilton. Remember the story of the West Mansion? Well, reportedly written in the last will and testament of Jim West was a clause forbidding the mansion to be used as a residence after his death. Does that seem odd to you?
We’ll come back to the subject of the Clear Lake chi on another day, in the meantime life is good down at the waterhole, while the pigeons are courting over by the boat ramp. Good chi, bad chi–life goes on.
