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HAUNTED MISSOURI
19:44 Aug 11 2006
Times Read: 624

In 1998 a beautiful book about the Governor’s Mansion was published in Jefferson City. Naturally, the house is believed to have some ghosts. How could it not, having stood so long and seen so much drama? In IF WALLS COULD TALK, Missouri’s First Lady Jean Carnahan acknowledged this even as she assembled, in a scholarly way, hundreds of illustrations and the essence of uncountable state documents to tell the story of each governor’s family preceding hers in this lovely 1871 home.

At Halloween time in 1997, television station KRCG in Jefferson City carried a series of ghost tales set in central Missouri. Once concerned a little girl encountered in the attic of the governor’s mansion. As the story was related, cameras shifted to the lawn where there is a fountain ornamented by the bronze figure of a child happily dancing in the spray. The statue was said to have been cast in memory of that girl in the attic.

She was thought to be nine-year-old Carrie who died in 1883. Her father, Governor Thomas Crittenden, is remembered partly for taking a successful stand against bandit and guerilla activity in the state and is believed to have set in motion events resulting in the death of Jesse James and the surrender of his brother, Frank.

During Crittenden’s most stringent efforts, Mrs. Carnahan tells us, his life was threatened as was the kidnapping of his daughter. Thereafter, he kept bodyguards with the lively, golden-haired Carrie at all times. Like other powerful people of his era though, he was helpless against disease. Diptheria took Carrie just as it took thousands of other Missouri children. He expressed his grief in a song “My Child”, that he wrote and published after her death.

Mrs. Carnahan’s book says that during the tenure of Governor Christopher Bond, exactly 100 years after Carrie’s death, a repairman came down from the attic at the end of a day’s work and said to a member of Mrs. Bond’s staff, “You might want to mention to them that their little girl is playing around up there. She spent most of the day with me.”

When told that the Bonds had no little girl, he insisted, “Well, then it must be some neighbor’s, because she hung around me for hours. She was eight years old or so, wearing a white dress.”

A search of the attic and the staircases disclosed no child. Some sources say that particular worker did not return to finish his project!

So far as is recorded, Carrie (the first person to die in the current mansion) has not appeared since that day. Neither of the other two people who died in the mansion seems to have returned in ghostly form. One was Governor John Sappington Marmeduke, who served from 1885 to 1887. He had served in the Confederate Army and reportedly told his fellow officers, camped across the river and in view of the mansion, that he would someday live there.

The other person who died in the mansion was Mrs. Alexander Dockery, the former Mary Elizabeth Bird. She had been a semi-invalid when she came to the mansion but still managed to be an active and admire first lady. Her death came on January 1, 1903. By interesting coincidence, each of these three people died during the holiday season and lay in state among festive decorations.

According to KRCG, other haunts inhabit the mansion, but none seem connected to any particular events in the history of the pace. Objects do move around at times, the documentary said, and other inexplicable things happen. For instance, candles put out fresh for some event were found only a few minutes later melted down from use. Sounds reported, mainly by guards who are on duty at night, are of quite merriment, like guests assembling for one of the many parties the mansion has seen. Sometimes, barely audible voices and ripples of laughter seem to move up the stairs or through the hallways, as if groups were making their way to the ballroom or dining room.

Only once has anything alarming enough happened that a guard has resigned. He was on duty alone, the book says, when the mansion’s elevator began moving about erratically. He suspected vandals at once, and was alarmed at what this could mean to the building’s priceless historic contents. Although he most like called immediately for reinforcements, he also sprinted downstairs with his gun drawn, trying to intercept the elevator. It remained unresponsive to calls and continued to zip about, stopping here and there. No vandals were ever found and no signs of forced entry. There have been no reports of the elevator misbehaving since that time.

Undoubtedly, it was thoroughly examined and service to reassure everyone that it could be used again without fear. And undoubtedly, such an occurrence makes everyone in the mansion happy to accept such unthreatening little mysteries as footsteps heard in carpeted areas... where actual footfalls would be silent!

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SUTTON HOUSE
19:41 Aug 11 2006
Times Read: 625

SUTTON HOUSE

Columbia, Missouri

While this haunted house was destroyed by a training exercise fire for the local fire department in 1983, the concrete ruins and foundation still remain along a street in Columbia. The house may be gone... but the memories linger!

The house was known for many years as the Sutton House. It was a two-story frame house and named for the family who resided there. The house had been built before the Civil War and was lived in by several generations of descendants. It seems that two women of the Sutton family killed themselves in the house and some believe they may be responsible for the female ghost who has been seen and heard here. One of the women hanged herself in the barn in 1858, while the other followed suit, hanging herself from a tree in the year in 1940.

Later residents believe, however, that the ghost here may be that of a woman named Lucy Calvin. She had once lived in the house and loved the place. She also had a fondness for singing.... something which the ghost here did quite often. In fact, witnesses claim that the sound of a woman singing would sometimes fill the entire house.

Dr. Fred Nolen was a later tenant of the house and he lived in it for six years before he encountered the ghost. She appeared in his bed room and seemed to glide across the floor one morning. He became aware of a presence in the house, something which visitors to the house often noticed. The sound of the singing never stopped others often saw the apparition too. He also wondered if the ghosts of children might also be present for it was not uncommon for him to hear what sounded like a child's marbles rolling across the floor.

One day, Nolen's landlord passed away and his widow did not want to sell the house. It was destined to be destroyed by a subdivision that was planned for the area. Nolen was about to leave the house when a strong wind blew through the structure. He heard a sound like someone was dragging something across the floor and then it stopped. There was no wind that day.... it seems as if the ghost was simply saying goodbye to the home's final living occupant.

Columbia, Missouri is located in the central part of the state and is about two hours west of St. Louis. The Sutton house once stood at 4933 Lake Valley Lane.

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THE LEMP MANSION
19:36 Aug 11 2006
Times Read: 627

THE LEMP MANSION

One of America's Most Haunted Houses

There is no place in the city of St. Louis with a reputation that is quite as ghostly as the Lemp Mansion. It has served as many things over the years from stately home to boarding house to restaurant...but it has never lost the fame of being the most haunted place in the city. In fact, in 1980, Life Magazine called the Lemp Mansion "one of the ten most haunted places in America".

The Haunted History of the Lemp Family

The story of the Lemp brewing empire began with the arrival of Johann Adam Lemp in 1838 in St. Louis. He opened a small mercantile store at what is now Delmar and Sixth Streets and in addition to common household items, he also sold vinegar and beer that he made himself. Apparently, Lemp began to see that he did better business with these items than with anything else and he soon established a small factory to make them at 112 South Second Street, between Walnut and Elm. This would be approximately where the Gateway Arch now stands along the St. Louis riverfront.

The new plant produced both vinegar and beer and for the first few years, Lemp sold his beer in a pub that was attached to the brewery. It is believed that during this period, Lemp introduced St. Louis to the first lager beer. This new beer was a great change from the English-type ales that had previously been popular and the lighter beer soon became a regional favorite. Business prospered and by 1845, the popularity of the beer was enough to allow him to discontinue vinegar production and concentrate on beer alone.

The Lemp Mansion as it Looks Today.

The company expanded rapidly, thanks to a demand for the beer, but Lemp soon found that the brewery was too small to handle the production of the beer and the storage needed for the lagering process as well. He found a solution to his problem in a limestone cave that had been discovered just south of the city limits of the time. The cave, which was located at the present-day corner of Cherokee and De Menil Place, could be kept cool by chopping ice from the nearby Mississippi River and depositing it inside. This would keep the cavern cool enough for the lagering process to run its course.

The Lemp’s Western Brewing Co. continued to grow during the 1840’s and by the 1850’s was one of the largest in the city. Demand for the beer continued to increase too, as it was highly regarded by almost everyone. In 1858, the beer even captured first place at the annual St. Louis fair.

Adam Lemp died on August 25, 1862 and his son, William, began a major expansion of the brewery. He purchased a five-block area around the storage house on Cherokee, which was located above the lagering caves.

By the middle 1890’s, the Lemp brewery was becoming known all over America. They had already introduced the popular "Falstaff" beer, which is still brewed by another company today although the familiar logo once had the name "Lemp" emblazoned across it. This beer became a favorite across the country, something that had never really been done by a regional brewer before. Lemp was also the first brewery to establish coast-to-coast distribution of its beer.

Construction of new buildings, and renovations of the current ones, continued on a daily basis at the Lemp brewery. The entire complex was designed in an Italian Renaissance style with arched windows, brick cornices and added Lemp shields and eventually grew to cover a five city blocks.

The Lemp's Western Brewery was the Most Successful in St. Louis for Many Years

During the time of the Lemp Brewery’s greatest success, William Lemp also purchased a home for his family a short distance away from the brewery complex. The house was built by Jacob Feickert, Julia Lemp’s father, in 1868 and was likely financed by William. In 1876, Lemp purchased it outright for use as a residence and as an auxiliary brewery office. Although already an impressive house before, Lemp immediately began renovating and expanding it and turning it into a showplace of the period.

And the mansion was as impressive underground as it was above. A tunnel exited the basement of the house and entered into a portion of the cave that Adam Lemp had discovered for his beer lagering years before. Traveling along a quarried shaft, the Lemp’s could journey beneath the street, all the way to the brewery. The advent of mechanical refrigeration also made it possible to use parts of the cave for things other than business. One large chamber was converted into a natural auditorium and a theater with constructed scenery of plaster and wire. Crude floodlights were used to illuminate the scene and the Lemp’s were believed to have hired actors on the theater and vaudeville circuits of the day to come into the cave for private performances. This section of the cave was accessible by way of a spiral staircase that once ascended to Cherokee Street. This entrance is sealed today and the spiral stairs were cut away to prevent anyone from entering the cave.

About 22 feet east of the theater was another innovation of the Lemp family. Just below the intersection of Cherokee and De Menil was a large, concrete-lined pool that had been a reservoir back in the days of underground lagering. In the years that followed, the Lemp’s converted it into a swimming pool by using hot water that was piped in from the brewery’s boiler house, which was located only a short distance away. After Prohibition, the caves were abandoned and the entrances sealed shut. In the 1940's, portions of the caves would be re-opened and turned into Cherokee Cave for several years.

Ironically, in the midst of all of this happiness and success, the Lemp family’s troubles truly began. The first death in the family was that of Frederick Lemp, William Sr.'s favorite son and the heir apparent to the Lemp empire. He had been groomed for years to take over the family business and was known as the most ambitious and hard working of the Lemp children. It is possible that he may have literally worked himself to death. In 1901, Frederick’s health began to fail and he died at the age of only 28. His death was brought about by heart failure, due to a complication of other diseases. Frederick’s death was devastating to his parents, especially to his father.

Lemp’s friends and co-workers said that he was never the same again after Frederick’s death. It was obvious to all of them that he was not coping well and he began to slowly withdraw from the world. He was rarely seen in public and chose to walk to the brewery each day by using the cave system beneath the house.

On January 1, 1904, William Lemp suffered another crushing blow with the death of his closest friend, Frederick Pabst. This tragedy changed Lemp even more and soon he became indifferent to the details of running the brewery. Although he still came to the office each day, he paid little attention to the work and those who knew him said that he now seemed nervous and unsettled and his physical and mental health were both beginning to decline. On February 13, 1904, his suffering became unbearable.

William Lemp

When Lemp awoke that morning, he ate breakfast and mentioned to one of the servants that he was not feeling well. He finished eating, excused himself and went back upstairs to his bedroom. Around 9:30, he took a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson revolver and shot himself in the head with it.

In November 1904, William Lemp Jr. took over as the new president of the William J. Lemp Brewing Company. He inherited the family business and with it, a great fortune. He filled the house with servants, built country houses and spent huge sums on carriages, clothing and art.

In 1899, Will had married Lillian Handlan, the daughter of a wealthy manufacturer. Together, the two of them had one child, William J. Lemp III. Lillian was nicknamed the "Lavender Lady" because of her fondness for dressing in that color. She was soon spending the Lemp fortune as quickly as her husband was. While Will enjoyed showing off his trophy wife, he eventually grew tired of her and decided to divorce her. Their divorce, and the court proceedings around it, created a scandal that all of St. Louis talked about. When it was all over, the "Lavender Lady" went into seclusion and retired from the public eye.

William Lemp, Jr.

But Will’s troubles were just beginning that year. The Lemp brewery was also facing a much-altered St. Louis beer market in 1906 when nine of the large area breweries combined to form the Independent Breweries Company. The year 1906 also marked the death of Will’s mother. It was discovered that she had cancer in 1905 and by March 1906, her condition had deteriorated to the point that she was in constant pain and suffering. She died in her home a short time later.

In 1911, the last major improvements were made to the Lemp brewery when giant grain elevators were erected on the south side of the complex.

It was also in 1911 that the Lemp mansion was converted and remodeled into the new offices of the brewing company. A number of changes were made to the structure, including the addition of the immense bay window directly atop the atrium on the south side of the house. Inside, the front part of the house was converted into private offices, lobbies and rooms for clerks. Even with these changes though, the park-like settings of the grounds and the carriage houses were retained.

Like most of its competitors, the Lemp brewery limped along through the years of World War I. According to numerous accounts though, Lemp was in far worse shape that many of the other companies. Will had allowed the company’s equipment to deteriorate and by not keeping abreast of industry innovations, much of the brewing facilities had become outmoded. And to make matters worse, Prohibition was coming.

This seemed to signal the real death of the company. As the individual family members were quite wealthy aside from the profits from the company, there was little incentive to keep the brewery afloat. Will gave up on the idea that Congress would suddenly repeal Prohibition and he closed the Lemp plant down without notice. The workers learned of the closing when they came to work one day and found the doors shut and the gates locked.

Will decided to simply liquidate the assets of the plant and auction off the buildings. He sold the famous Lemp "Falstaff" logo to brewer Joseph Griesedieck for the sum of $25,000 and in 1922, he saw the brewery sold off to the International Shoe Co. for just $588,000, a small fraction of its estimated worth of $7 million in the years before Prohibition.

With Prohibition finally destroying the brewery, the 1920’s looked to be a dismal decade for the Lemp family. As bad as it first seemed though, things almost immediately became worse with the suicide of Elsa Lemp Wright in 1920. She and her husband had gone through a rocky marriage but had reconciled in 1920, just a short time before her death.

Her husband was on his way to take a bath on the morning of March 20 when he heard a loud cracking sound in the bedroom. Like her father, she had shot herself.

The servants quickly summoned Dr. M.B. Clopton and Samuel Fordyce, a family friend. Strangely, the police were not notified of Elsa’s death for more than two hours and even then, the news came indirectly through Samuel Fordyce. Wright became "highly agitated" under the scrutiny of the police investigation that followed and his only excuse for not contacting the authorities was that he was bewildered and did not know what to do.

And while the mysterious circumstances around Elsa’s death have had some suggesting there was more to the story than was told, her brothers seemed to find little out of the ordinary about her demise. Will and Edwin rushed to the house as soon as they heard about the shooting. When Will arrived and was told what had happened, he only had one comment to make.

"That’s the Lemp family for you", he said.

Will was soon to face depression and death himself. He had already slipped into a dark state of mind following the end of the Lemp’s brewing dynasty, but he took an even sharper turn for the worse after the sale of the plant to the International Shoe Co. He was downcast and bitter and Will soon began to follow in the footsteps of his father and he became increasingly nervous and erratic. He shunned public life and kept to himself, complaining often of ill health and headaches. By December 29, 1922, he had reached the limit of his madness.

After speaking to his wife on the phone from his office, Lemp had shot himself in the heart with a .38 caliber revolver. He had unbuttoned his vest and then fired the gun through his shirt. He left no note behind and although his son told detectives that he feared something like this was coming, Lemp seemed to have no intention of suicide, even a short time before. After the sale of the brewery, he had discussed selling off the rest of the assets, like land parcels and saloon locations, and planned to then just "take it easy". Not long after that announcement, he had even put his estate in Webster Groves up for sale, stating that he planned to travel to Europe for awhile.

The funeral of William Lemp Jr. was held on December 31 at the Lemp mansion. The offices were used as the setting for the services for sentimental reasons, staff members said. He was interred in the family mausoleum at Bellefontaine Cemetery, in the crypt just above his sister Elsa.

With William Jr. gone and his brothers involved with their own endeavors, it seemed that the days of the Lemp empire had come to an end at last. The two brothers still in St. Louis had left the family enterprise long before it had closed down. Charles worked in banking and finance and Edwin had entered a life in seclusion at his estate in Kirkwood in 1911. The great fortune they had amassed was more than enough to keep the surviving members of the family comfortable through the Great Depression and beyond.

But the days of Lemp tragedy were not yet over.

By the late 1920’s, only Charles and Edwin Lemp remained from the immediate family. Throughout his life, Charles was never much involved with the Lemp Brewery, and instead worked in the banking and real estate fields.

Despite his very visible business and political life though, Charles remained a mysterious figure who became even odder and more reclusive with age. He eventually remodeled the Lemp Mansion back into a residences and lived alone in his old rambling house with only his two servants. Legend has it that he was deathly afraid of germs and wore gloves to avoid any contact with bacteria. He had grown quite bitter and eccentric and had developed a morbid attachment to the Lemp family home. Thanks to the history of the place, his brother Edwin often encouraged him to move out, but Charles refused. Finally, when he could stand no more of life, he became the fourth member of the Lemp family to commit suicide.

On May 10, 1949, Charles was discovered dead by one of his staff and the police were summoned. When they arrived, they found Lemp still in bed and lightly holding a .38 caliber Army Colt revolver in his right hand. He was the only one of the family who had left a suicide note behind. He had dated the letter May 9 and had written "In case I am found dead blame it on no one but me" and had signed it at the bottom.

Oddly, Charles had made detailed funeral arrangements for himself long before his death. He would be the only member of the family not interred at the mausoleum at Bellefontaine Cemetery and while this might be unusual, it was nearly as strange as the rest of the instructions that he left behind. In a letter that was received at a south St. Louis funeral home in 1941, Lemp ordered that upon his death his body should be immediately taken to the Missouri Crematory. His ashes were then to be placed in a wicker box and buried on his farm.

He also ordered that his body not be bathed, changed or clothed and that no services were to be held for him and no death notice published, no matter what any surviving members of his family might want.

On May 11, 1949, Edwin Lemp picked up his brother’s remains at the funeral home and took them to the farm to be buried. And while these instructions were certainly odd, they were not the most enduring mystery to the situation. You see, even after all of these years, there is no indication as to where Charles Lemp’s farm was located!

The Lemp family, which had once been so large and prosperous, had now been almost utterly destroyed in a span of less than a century. Only Edwin Lemp remained and he had long avoided the life that had turned so tragic for the rest of his family. He was known as a quiet, reclusive man who had walked away from the Lemp Brewery in 1913 to live a peaceful life on his secluded estate in Kirkwood.

Edwin managed to escape from the family "curse" but as he grew older, he did become more eccentric and developed a terrible fear of being alone. He never spoke about his family or their tragic lives, but it must have preyed on him all the same. His fears caused him to simply entertain more and to keep a companion with him at his estate almost all the time.

Edwin passed away quietly of natural causes at age 90 in 1970. According to Edwin’s wishes, he burned all of the paintings that Lemp had collected throughout his life, as well as priceless Lemp family papers and artifacts. These irreplaceable pieces of history vanished in the smoke of a blazing bonfire.

And like the Lemp empire... lost forever.

The Lemp family line died out with him and the family's resting place can now be found in beautiful Bellefontaine Cemetery. But while no one remains in the Lemp family today, it certainly doesn't mean that some of them are not still around.

After the death of Charles Lemp, the mansion was sold and turned into a boarding house. Shortly after that, it fell on hard times and began to deteriorate, along with the nearby neighborhood. In later years, stories began to emerge that residents of the boarding house often complained of ghostly knocks and phantom footsteps in the house. As these tales spread, it became increasingly hard to find tenants to occupy the rooms and because of this, the old Lemp Mansion was rarely filled.

The decline of the house continued until 1975, when Dick Pointer and his family purchased it. The Pointer's began remodeling and renovating the place, working for many years to turn it into a restaurant and an inn. But the Pointer's were soon to find out that they were not alone in the house...

The bulk of the remodeling was done in the 1970's and during this time, workers reported strange things happening in the house, leading many to believe the place was haunted. Reports often varied between feelings of being watched, vanishing tools and strange sounds. Many of the workers actually left the job site and never came back.

Since the restaurant has opened, staff members also have had their own odd experiences. Glasses have been seen to lift off the bar and fly through the air; sounds are often heard that do not have explanation and some have even glimpsed actual apparitions who appear and vanish at will. In addition, many customers and visitors to the house report some pretty weird incidents. It is said that doors lock and unlock on their own; the piano in the bar plays by itself; voices and sounds come from nowhere; and even the spirit of the "Lavender Lady" has been spotted on occasion.

The house has also attracted ghost hunters from around the country, who have come partly due to a November 1980 LIFE magazine article, which named the Lemp Mansion as "one of the most haunted houses in America". It remains a popular place for dinner and spirits today.

The current owner of the house, Paul Pointer, maintains the place as a wonderful eating and lodging establishment and takes the ghosts as just another part of the strange mansion. "People come here expecting to experience weird things," he said, " and fortunately for us, they are rarely disappointed."

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