The Lemp Family Mansion

It’s hard to imagine that a upscale restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri is widely considered to be one of America’s most haunted places. The first of the Lemp family to arrive in America was a German immigrant by the name of Johann Adam Lemp. In 1838, Johann opened a modest grocery store and featured his own brand of home brewed beer. Being a light golden lager, it was a huge change from the dark brewed beers of the time, Johann Lemp’s beer became a huge success. His hobby became his life’s work and his dreams of a great new life in America became a reality. In 1840, the Lemp Brewery was built and his beer was sold in an attached pub. It wasn’t long before the business outgrew the brewery and a limestone cave beyond the city limits was put to use. It was the perfect place to store and brew Lemp’s fantastic product.

After Johann’s death in 1862, his son William took over Lemp’s Western Brewing Company and started immediate expansion. These expansions eventually took up five city blocks. The mansion that would later be known as the Lemp mansion was also built during this time. It was constructed in 1868 by William Lemp’s own father-in-law. Due to it’s prime location near the limestone caves that were still used for brewing, William deemed it the perfect place to live a life of luxury while having the convenience of being close to his work. In 1876, William purchased the house from his father-in-law and, like he did with the brewery, started immediate expansion on the already impressive house. Some of these expansions included an underground tunnel to the limestone caves, an auditorium, a bowling alley, and a swimming pool.

William’s success was legendary at the time and his family became the model of luxury. They were the envy of even the most wealthy tycoons of the time. Seeing the end to the family’s success, William began to designate many of the brewery’s responsibilities to his son Frederick. In 1901, the first of the Lemp family’s tragedies took place. Frederick died an untimely death at the age of 28. William was reported as never being the same after the tragedy. This painful period of William’s life was amplified by the 1904 death of his dearest friend, Frederick Pabst, whom his son was named after. The same year, William locked himself in the marble office of his mansion and put a .38 caliber to his head. This would be the first of many suicides to plague this wealthy family.

After William Senior‘s tragic suicide, his son William Jr. took over the brewery. Unfortunately, William Jr. didn’t have the shrewd business mind of his father. He and his wife Lillian ran the business into the ground. Lillian. In 1920, one of William Junior’s sisters committed suicide by inflicting a lethal gunshot to her head. Two years later, William Jr. himself took a gun to his head in the same office his father perished. By this time, William Junior’s two surviving brothers had no interest in running the brewery as they had careers of their own. Edwin Lemp lived a solitary life away from the family while the last brother Charles moved into the once lavish Lemp mansion. He lived there until 1949 when, at the age of seventy-seven, he took the family dog into the basement and shot it dead before doing the same to himself.

After this final death, the mansion was turned into a boarding house. Time was not kind to this once grand mansion and by 1975, it laid in ruins. In 1977, it was brought to live one last time as the restaurant and inn that still stands today. Sadly, the Lemp family’s bloodlines have died out, but their spirits have not.

The renovation of the Lemp mansion has stirred up a lot of paranormal activity. Slamming doors, strange murmurs, the sensation of being watched, and lights turning on and off are just some of the happenings that, to this day, send workers running out of the restaurant in fear. Despite the oppressive feeling surrounding the mansion that are reported by both workers and customers, the business thrives. Customers can’t get enough of the worker’s ghost stories. Come for the food, stay for the piano that plays by itself, phantom dog barking, and ghostly voices that so many customers report.

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