The Lemp family arrived in St. Louis in 1838 with a German lager recipe and built one of the city’s most powerful brewing dynasties. The mansion at 3322 DeMenil Place was their seat—ornate, substantial, designed for a family that expected to endure. By the time the last Lemp left it, four members of the dynasty had died inside by their own hand.
The collapse began with Frederick Lemp, the most promising heir, who died of unexpected heart failure in December 1901 at twenty-eight. His father, William Sr., never recovered. On the morning of February 13, 1904, William Sr. sat at his office desk and shot himself with a .38-caliber revolver. He left no note. His son Billy inherited the brewery, kept it alive for nearly two decades, then lost everything when Prohibition arrived in 1919. On December 29, 1922, Billy returned to the same room where his father had died and shot himself. His sister Elsa had done the same two years earlier, at her own home. Years later, a brother named Charles—seventy-seven, the last of the line—followed. His note read: “blame it on no one but me.” Four Lemps. Four suicides. Three of them in the same house.
The mansion fell into disrepair, changed hands several times, and was converted into a restaurant and inn in 1975. Life magazine had already named it one of the ten most haunted houses in the United States. Guests report knocking with no traceable source. Cold spots move through the second-floor hallway. In the room where William Sr. died, more than one overnight visitor has packed their bags before dawn. The most commonly reported apparition is a woman—pale, still, seen near the upper windows.
Story Source: www.lempmansion.com
Address: 3322 DeMenil Place, St. Louis, MO 63118
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