Prt 1. Digging into the Birth of An American Haunt

Part 1: Seeking the truth behind the Lemp Mansion legends

One of my favorite pastimes is to do a historic ghost tour. I have never really experienced anything significant on this type of tour, but I love the history and the chance to get into places normally off-limits. Fortunately, the Lemp Mansion is one of the easier venues to tour because it has been open to the public as a family restaurant since 1977. The owners continued to renovate the mansion over the years, expanding its capacity, hosting dinner mysteries, and eventually, making it an overnight Inn. To understand why ghosts may be hanging out requires a look back at the mansion’s tragic history. Grab a blanket, cozy up to a fire, and let’s talk about what’s behind the Lemp Mansion legends.

The William J. Lemp Brewery was one of the largest breweries in America in the pre-prohibition era. They were bigger than Anheuser-Busch, gave the world Falstaff beer, and arguably, the wealthiest family in St. Louis in the late 1800s to the early 1900s. But since the late 1970s, the Lemp’s family mansion has taken center stage as their legacy. It has been rated as one of America’s most haunted locations, and ghost hunters from all over the country head to the venue to spend the night, investigate, and hope to leave with something that lives up to the spooky legends.

Search online and it is easy to find former employees and visitors sharing their stories and evidence of strange experiences. And there is also information that is flat-out wrong but often repeated and perpetuated as fact. Having toured the place about a decade ago I still can’t say I walked away with proof of it being haunted. But I left with strange tales that seemed more legend than reality. The only way to figure out what could be true, false, and something in between, was to dig into the past and look to documented history, and sometimes, simply using common sense.

William Lemp wed Julia Feickert in 1861, the year before the brewery’s founder, Adam Lemp died. William’s stepmother, Louise Lemp, lived across the street from the current mansion, at the corner closer to the brewery (at the corner of Cherokee and DeMenil Pl). William lived with Louise in 1860, per the Federal Census. According to a St. Louis 1865 business directory, William resided at the same address as Louise, so we can assume he and Julia, lived with Louise until the mansion was completed. At the same time, Julia’s parents, Jacob and Elizabeth Feickert resided at the corner of 2nd Street, a saloon, and the original location of Adam Lemp’s brewery establishment. Adam Lemp and Jacob Feickert were close, so the marriage of their two children was likely a welcome event for both families.

According to the 1870 Federal Census, William, Julia, and three Lemp children resided at the new mansion, along with Julia’s parents (Jacob and Elizabeth) and two young siblings, Mary (5) and Matilda (2). The 1870 lists the Lemps and Feickerts as two families in the same residence. The records gives us a better timeline of when the original bones of the mansion were completed, between 1865 and 1870, hence c. 1868 is probably the most accurate date reported.

The newly-built mansion is listed on the 1876 Compton & Dry Map. This fascinating map uses perspective drawings of the streets, businesses, and homes with horse-drawn buggies and people traveling the roads. A clear figure of a three-story, L-shaped building is marked with Jacob Feickert’s name, not Lemp's. I am not exactly sure if Feickert built it for William and Julia, as a gift, or the reverse. It is not quite the glamorous structure of today, but it is impressive for the period. By 1880, William was the head of the household for the expanding family at the same address. Though Julia’s parents are listed, Mary and Matilda Feickert are no longer listed. It’s possible they died young, perhaps during the a Cholera outbreak.

William made impressive expansions to the mansion in the years that followed. The realtor database shows the construction as 1890, but that likely reflects major renovation. Comparing the original drawing on the 1876 Compton & Dry map and the mansion photos from the early 1900s, the expansion was large and ornate, demonstrating the family’s wealth and opulent taste.

Lemp Mansion. Source: Missouri Historical Society, c. 1983

William and Julia had eight children, the first dying at birth in 1862. From the oldest to the youngest, Anna, William Jr. (aka Billy), Louis, Charles, Frederick, Hilda, Edwin, and Elsa were all born between 1865 and 1883 and all were raised at 3322 DeMenil Pl. However, its original street address for the mansion was Second Carondelet Avenue until 1883, then it became 3322 Thirteenth Street. The unlucky Thirteen.

Frederick, reportedly William’s favorite, was slated to one day run the brewery. But this would never come to pass. Fred died of a heart condition on December 12, 1901, at 28, during his stay at a health facility in Pasadena California. He left behind a young wife, a three-year-old daughter, and a devastated Lemp family. Thereafter, the Lemp family would begin to spiral downwards.

Fred’s death was considered a contributing factor to William’s Sr. weakened state of mind in the years to follow.  On the morning of February 13, 1904, after other family members had left the mansion, William Sr. remained in his bedroom where he shot himself in the right temple. He had reportedly suffered from nervousness and illness in the weeks leading up to his death. He left his estate to Julia. His sons continued to run the brewery, and Billy Lemp took over as president.  

Two years later, Julia died of cancer at the mansion, leaving her estate to be equally divided among her children, with specific instructions for when they could receive their inheritance. Each child was estimated to get as much as $1 Million, the equivalent purchasing power of about $34 Million in 2024! The youngest daughter, Elsa, was just 23 and would not receive her full inheritance until she was 30. But, because Elsa married Thomas Wright when she was 27, she received $100,000 per the conditions of Julia’s will.

The Wrights had one child who died at birth in 1914. Elsa separated from Thomas in late 1918, then divorced him in early 1919. Elsa complained to the court that Thomas had grown cold towards her. Her doctor attested to this claim. He told the judge that Elsa had suffered from a nervous breakdown and depression over the previous three years due to her husband’s coldness. She was granted a divorce in just one hour. It was unusual to grant a divorce that quickly. Compared to the other two divorces (Billy in 1909 and Anna in 1893), it was a quiet event, lacking drama and dirty accusations that marked the other separations.

Despite Elsa’s claim that Thomas no longer loved her, she remarried him a year later. Twelve days after they tied the knot, she committed suicide at her home, which coincidentally, was Thirteen Hortense Place.  The husband, who was the first to her side, provides conflicting statements to authorities, specifically about the gun.  Elsa had written a second will after her divorce that cut Thomas out of the picture. But her remarriage to Thomas voided the second will, placed him as the major benefactor to the estate. The final inquest issued a verdict of suicide. (The suspicious death warrants its own story.)

With Prohibition looming, Billy closed the Brewery in 1919, with no notice to employees. He announced plans to liquidate the business. The facility was up for sale in 1921, with valued assets of about $7,000,000. After receiving just pennies on the dollar on the sale, he too would go into a depression and illness over its slow liquidation. On December 29, 1922, Billy shoots himself at his office, located at the Lemp Mansion. Like Elsa, he aims for his heart.  (Not to be morbid, but I specifically call out rooms and wound locations since some online content doesn’t match the death certificates or the earliest news reports.)

An often-repeated story is that when Billy went to Elsa’s home on the day of her suicide, he remarked, “This is the Lemp family for you.” I would have expected to see this statement in the news coverage of Elsa’s death in 1920. But the first published record of it, at least that I could find, was in 1922, in a story about Billy’s suicide. Consequently, there is no way to verify if Billy ever said those words at the time of Elsa’s death. It could have been hearsay, or even a reporter’s way of adding drama to the third family suicide. Personally, it seems an over-the-top statement for Billy to make having just witnessed his youngest sister’s body, and only the second suicide. If he did say it, perhaps he subconsciously was expressing his suicide contemplations. After all, he was liquidating his family’s legacy, and most of his brothers left the business years earlier.

The last of the Lemps to live at the mansion was Charles, who was also the last brother to remain active in the Brewery’s operation during Billy’s tenure. A bachelor all his life, he moved back into the mansion after the sale of the brewery. He lived there until May 10, 1949, when he put a gun to his temple, like his father, and shot himself in his bedroom. He was 77. Like the other Lemp suicides, the news reported he suffered from nervousness just weeks before his suicide. Though I couldn’t find a source for this, Charles allegedly shot his dog before taking his own life. If true, then perhaps Charles believed the act of leaving his companion behind was crueler than killing it. Charles would be the only Lemp to leave a note, which stated he was to be blamed for his actions.

The total count for mansion suicides is three: two in bedrooms, and one in the office. A fourth in a bedroom and separate home. Two in the heart, two in the head, but all in the morning with guns.

It seems the members of the Lemp family that got away early lived a happier life. Anna moved to New York after her second marriage. Hilda moved to Milwaukee when she married Gustav Pabst, of the Pabst family. Louis got out of the family business and moved to New York in 1906. Even Edwin, the youngest boy, left the beer business behind in 1910 and moved to Kirkwood where he tended to his animals and exotic plants, and entertained friends. A bachelor like Charles, Edwin insisted on not staying alone as he might suffer the same fate as his siblings. At 90, he died of natural causes, closing the local chapter on the Lemp family in 1971.

After Charles's estate was settled, the mansion was put up for sale, and a February 1952 newspaper advertisement confirmed the property's availability. It became a boarding house catering to middle-class couples, but by the 1960s, it had operated closer to a flop house for the poor and neighborhood vagrants. Dick and Pat Pointer purchased the dilapidated property in 1976 with the intent to renovate it and open the Lemp Mansion Restaurant.

Hauntings are often associated with properties that have had tragic deaths, and so this mansion would be a prime spot for ghosts to hang out. The earliest reports of ghosts may have sprouted from the neighborhood and former tenants, but the first published account appears in 1979. While the Pointer family had direct experiences, like feeling they were being watched, or hearing noises, they also were aware of the neighborhood rumors that already existed—William, Billy, and Charles were already said to be haunting the Lemp Mansion. [Source St. Louis Post Dispatch, Sept 2, 1979].

The same 1979 feature story shared another neighborhood tale that has grown over the years about William Sr. who allegedly sired a “retarded” boy he kept in the attic. While some 19th-century parents may have shunned their mentally challenged children to attic spaces, the Lemps were wealthy enough to hire special caretakers and private facilities, so this already doesn’t past the common sense test. Proof cited of the secret child was the multiple record discrepancies that sometimes listed seven or eight children. William and Julia indeed had eight children, but their firstborn, a male, died in infancy in 1862, with the other seven surviving. Hence, the discrepancy is not at all about a diabolical dad. The story of the Lemps hiding their Down Syndrome child from the public is more than likely, completely false.

Compounding the tale was a story an elderly neighborhood woman told Mr. Pointer, who then gave to the reporter. She said long ago she saw a face that looked like a gorilla peeking out the attic window. This article compounded the myth of  “monkey-boy”, the unfortunate nickname given to the child (imaginary or not) with Down syndrome. The Lemps' many servants lived in the attic, so if there was a child with Down syndrome, he was likely the son of a staff member. And it’s plausible that William preferred his staff to keep their children out of his hair and relegated to the servant’s space. At best, I think the story could be a half-truth based on the possibility that one of the servants who occupied the attic space had a mentally impaired child, though there is no evidence to support any child existed other than old witness accounts which are not reliable.

Since the 1979 article, the story of the boy in the attic continued to morph. In one account floating on the Internet, the boy's father was Billy Lemp and his mother was a prostitute. During Billy’s 1909 divorce, he definitely was accused of stepping out on his wife Lillian on numerous occasions, with women of ill repute. But Billy didn’t live in the Lemp Mansion after he married, and it was converted to an office after his mother died. So, it’s unlikely he had an impaired child roaming in the attic which became the business office during his time as president. In yet another iteration, Charles took care of the child when he lived at the mansion and the boy only lived into his teens. I can’t see how any of the math adds up. Ironically, during the rise of “political correctness” the “retarded” boy now prefers to be called Zeke.

In 2002, a local afternoon radio show (The Dave Glover Show) recorded a Halloween special at the Lemp for listeners. A recorded video clip featured the mansion tour guide explaining she had interacted in the past with a tall figure, who was unhappy about being referred to by a derogatory name (likely, monkey-boy).  She said he wanted to be called by his name, Zeke. The name came to her through a psychic message. Other resources for Zeke have been credited to The Steve and DC (another local radio show) with the discovery cited as 1983, which makes no sense since they were on the air between 1991 – 2008. In any case, it’s hard to prove Zeke exists or ever existed, but at least he is no longer disability-shamed. (BTW, Zeke, short for Ezekiel, is not a German first name commonly used from that era, like Fredrick, Louis, William, or Edwin. I might of been swayed if it were Heinrich (aka Henry) or Johann (aka John) or Franz (Frank). If Zeke exists, he is more likely to be a guest ghost of Jewish decent.)

Since the 1979 story revealed the ghostly experiences, the number of spirits residing at the mansion has grown to double-digits. Perhaps, what is going on is the phenomenon best described in the Philip experiment. The Philip Experiment was a parapsychological experiment conducted in the 1970s to test the hypothesis that human thought could create paranormal phenomena. The experiment was led by Canadian psychiatrist Dr. A.R.G. Owen and his wife, Iris Owen.

The participants created a fictional character named "Philip Aylesford" and developed a detailed backstory for him. They then attempted to communicate with this fictional entity through séances and other paranormal practices. The idea was to see if their collective thoughts and concentration could bring about paranormal phenomena associated with the character.

During the sessions, participants would sit around a table, focus on the imagined Philip, and try to make contact with him. They hoped for paranormal occurrences such as table movements, raps, or other unexplained phenomena. The experiment reportedly produced some intriguing results, including purported communication with the fictional Philip through knocks and movements.

Critics argue that the Philip Experiment's outcomes can be attributed to psychological factors such as ideomotor responses, where subtle movements are unconsciously made by participants. The experiment is often cited in discussions about the power of belief, suggestion, and the potential influence of the human mind on paranormal experiences.

Like the Philip Experiment, I consider the ghostly evidence caught on digital recorders a potential manifestation created from the stories and seances held within the manse walls for nearly fifty years. Yet, it makes perfect sense that family members who killed themselves in the mansion could be haunting the place. Because of that, I keep an open mind about people’s personal experiences on the property.  I analyzed the property nearly two decades ago using the principles of feng shui, and the results were equally strange.  But that is for the next Rabbit Hole Journey when I dig into how the environment could have impacted the Lemp family and what could make it a paranormal hotspot.