Summit Avenue in St. Paul is one of the best-preserved Victorian residential boulevards in the United States — a ridge road lined with the stone and brick monuments that Minnesota’s nineteenth-century merchant class built to announce their success. The Griggs Mansion at 476 Summit Avenue is a Romanesque Revival brownstone built in 1883 for wholesale grocery merchant Chauncey W. Griggs, and it sits among these grand neighbors with the settled authority of a building that has absorbed 140 years of occupation. That occupation has not been quiet.
The reputation that attaches to the Griggs Mansion is defined by a persistent pattern: the house changes owners, each new family eventually encounters something they cannot dismiss, and the property returns to the market. The accounts span multiple eras and draw from different types of witnesses — longtime residents, visitors, and people who arrived with no prior knowledge of the house’s history. What they describe follows a consistent geography: a figure descending the staircase during empty hours, cold presences in the basement, a young girl visible in the upper windows from the street. A caretaker who died on the property is frequently named as the figure associated with the lower floors — a specific human history that gives the abstract phenomenon a face.
The house has continued to be occupied and sold across 140 years, and the accounts have continued regardless of who held the deed. For the adventure traveler walking Summit Avenue, the Griggs Mansion is where the boulevard’s architectural grandeur acquires an edge. Minnesota’s most haunted Victorian home is still standing, still changing hands, and still providing reasons to leave.
Story Source: saintpaulhistorical.com
Address: 476 Summit Ave, St. Paul, MN 55102
Accessibility Rating: No Public Access — Private property, active restricted site, or location no longer physically accessible to visitors.
Google Map
What Others Have Experienced
The Chauncey Griggs Mansion at 476 Summit Avenue is a privately owned Victorian residence not open to the public, but is widely considered the most haunted house in Minnesota. Its most frequently reported spirit is that of a maid who hanged herself on the fourth-floor landing in 1915 — she is said to be seen near the upper stairwell and heard in the floors above by those who have lived or worked in the building.
— from American Ghost Walks
Former residents have reported the gardener Charles Wade, who died on the property, searching through the library after dark — identified by the sounds of books being moved and the sense of a presence in the room despite it being empty. A figure described as a skinny man in a top hat and black suit has also been seen in multiple locations throughout the house, and a child has been reported floating above a bed in one of the upper rooms.
— from American Ghost Walks
In 1969, journalists from the Pioneer Press were invited by a former owner to spend the night in the mansion and document whatever they experienced. The reporters left before morning after hearing footsteps approaching their room in the night — heavy, deliberate sounds coming down an empty corridor that grew louder and did not stop until the group fled the building. The incident became one of the most-cited documented accounts associated with the Griggs Mansion.
— from True Hauntings of America
Ghost tours of St. Paul’s Summit Avenue walk past the Griggs Mansion as the centerpiece of the route, describing reported phenomena including windows and doors opening on their own, coughs and footsteps audible from outside, and light bulbs that shatter without cause. As the building is entirely private and its current owners do not welcome contact, it can only be seen from the street — which visitors on the ghost tours describe as sufficient, noting the mansion’s imposing Victorian presence gives the accounts an immediate plausibility.
— from US Ghost Adventures
