The Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, Missouri:
The full story of the Lemp Mansion is featured in an episode of House Beautiful’s haunted house podcast, Dark House. Subscribe here.
Starting strong with a very scary house: The Lemp Mansion in St. Louis, which is known to be one of the most haunted places in America due to its tragic history and links to a wealthy beer baron.
Adam Johann Lemp, a German immigrant, was the first person to produce and sell lager-style beer in the U.S. He stored the barrels in an underground cave system beneath the city to keep them cool pre-modern refrigeration. It was successful, but his son, William Lemp, is the one who really brought it to the next level.
In the 1860s, William Lemp wanted to live closer to the industrial plant and start a family with his wife Julia, so they built the foreboding home in the historic Benton Park neighborhood right over the cave system (we smell a haunting!). Everything seemed to take a turn for the worse in the new millennium, and William Lemp died by suicide in 1904 after his favorite of five sons, Frederick, died tragically due to complications of tuberculosis.
A few years later, his wife also died of cancer in the house. In 1920, the youngest daughter, Elsa Lemp, mysteriously died in her home (not the Lemp Mansion) Then, in 1922, after running the company for years and seeing it flounder during the Prohibition era, William Lemp Jr., shot himself in the same room William Sr. died in.
One of William Jr.'s brothers, Charles Lemp, lived in the home from the 1930s until 1949 when he shot his own dog in the basement of the home before dying by suicide in his room. That same year, the youngest surviving Lemp child, Edwin, sold the house and transformed it into a boarding house, where reports of hauntings began. According to Destination America, witnesses have experienced burning sensations, slamming doors, disembodied moaning and crying, amongst other things.
Today, the Lemp Mansion is a restaurant and inn that also holds events, including weddings, Murder Mystery Dinners, and even ghost-hunting experiences.