This past weekend me and my two best girlfriends went to St. Louis for a girls weekend. It was a last minute trip and we were having trouble booking a hotel or B&B. In the crazy mix of emails I got my wires crossed and booked us at the Lemp Mansion.
I did not know it was a haunted mansion.
The Lemp Family Legacy started in St. Louis in 1838 when Johann Adam Lemp moved to STL from Germany. Their fortune was built on beer. While they had luck building their fortune times changed and events took a turn.
Suicide #1- William J. Lemp Sr. shot himself in the head after the death of his favorite son.
Suicide #2 – Elsa Lemp shot herself in the heart after having some issues in her marriage.
Suicide #3 – William Lemp Jr. shot himself in the heart after the brewery fell on hard times.
Suicide #4 – Charles Lemp shot himself.
All four suicides were committed in the mansion. There are also a handful of natural deaths that also occurred in the mansion. All these events seem to be why The Lemp Mansion is one of the Top Ten Most Haunted Places in America.
Night One: We arrived late about 9:30pm. Dinner theater was in full swing on the first floor, restaurant level. The mansion was beautiful, old and elegant. They checked us in and lead us to the second floor where our room was. The second floor was much more eerie. It was strangely quiet compared to the boisterous cacophony in the restaurant. Our room was The William Suite which shared a Bathroom with The Charles Suite. The second floor was full of paintings and mirrors as was our bed room. It was very comfortable and spacious. There was a mood about the place however and we had to go to the bathroom in pairs. We all got ready for bed together and all slept in the King bed. As soon as the lights were off. It all got a bit creepier. It was an old house so some noises were expected but that doesn’t mean it didn’t put our senses on alert. I fell asleep easily though. Only later did a realize that, though the mansion was sold out, we had not seen or heard another guest.
When I woke up the next morning my immediate thought was to not open my eyes. I was super nervous something would be looking back at me. I could hear the other two girls still sleeping. Keeping my eyes closed lulled me back to sleep and I woke up later when Kelsey got out of bed. I walked to the bathroom and found the house unnaturally still. I ended up having another girl go with me. Showering was a disturbing experience, though my clothes were just cotton fabric they felt like protection in the old house. We left by the light of the sun, wary of shadowy corners as we made our way back out the back door.
Night Two: We were out all day. When we returned for the evening we arrived after hours and had to enter from the back. At first the key would not turn. We were nervous and creeped out but as we continued to struggle with the key we all just lost patience. Entering the dark building it was again eerily quiet. We arrived at the Charles Suite our bedroom for the evening excited that it was closer to the bathroom. This room had a door that opened across a hall from the bathroom, another door to the nursery, which is not a rentable room but a maintenance closet of sorts and a third door that opened onto the hall with the main stairs. As I curled up on the couch with a door near my feet and my head made me a bit edgy, but again I fell asleep.
I slept until the light shone through our windows. I showered all by myself, though I kept sneaking glances out of the shower curtain to make sure I was really alone. And we left in the morning with out incident.
We did look on the third floor as well as basement but renovations have changed the mansion in the last 10 years. Kelsey had been on a tour in the Lemp mansion once before and remembered a drop stairs to the attic. We were unable to find this. There are articles that mention tunnels to the brewery in the basement. The basement was all kitchen and dinning space there was one server station that was rounded that might possible be “tunnel-esque” but it was blocked.
All in all nothing terribly frightening happened, but it is undeniable that there was a temperature and ambiance about the place.
Cures for Curiosity 