Cimarron, New Mexico earned its name — wild and unruly in Spanish — during the frontier era, when the Santa Fe Trail made this small New Mexico town a waypoint for cattlemen, gamblers, outlaws, and lawmen. At 617 South Collison Street, Henri Lambert, a French chef who had cooked for President Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant, built the hotel that became the social center of a town where evenings regularly ended in gunfire. Look up at the dining room ceiling and you can still see the evidence: bullet holes in the tin overhead, too many to count at a glance.
Twenty-six men were killed inside the St. James during the Wild West era. The most charged account centers on T.J. Wright, who won the hotel in a poker game and was shot before he could claim it. The room associated with his story — Room 18 — is kept permanently locked; the activity there has proven incompatible with hospitality. Elsewhere, staff and guests report doors moving in empty rooms, displaced objects, temperature drops localized enough to walk through, and voices in corridors that should be empty. A presence on the upper floors is described as specifically hostile, while another — associated with Henri Lambert’s wife Mary — is reported as protective.
The St. James Hotel operates today as a hotel and restaurant, offering ghost tours and the original rooms. The bullet holes are still in the ceiling. Room 18 is still locked. For the adventure traveler, this is the Wild West not as theme but as residue — the unedited version, still present in the walls.
Story Source: www.exstjames.com
Address: 617 S Collison St, Cimarron, NM 87714
Accessibility Rating: Open to All — Freely accessible to the public with no advance requirement. Includes hotels, restaurants, bars, and public historic sites where visitors may walk in without prior booking.
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What Others Have Experienced
Room 18 of the St. James Hotel is kept permanently locked because the entity believed to inhabit it is considered too malevolent for guest occupancy. A collection of offerings has accumulated on the mantle inside — cigarettes, dollar bills, playing cards, chewing tobacco, bullets, and letters left by visitors for the spirit believed to be a man who was shot in the back inside that room. The door stays closed, the room stays empty, and the hotel makes no apologies for the policy.
— from Legends of America
The smell of cigar smoke drifting through the second floor is one of the most commonly reported phenomena at the St. James, despite smoking being prohibited throughout the building. Staff and guests describe the scent appearing suddenly in empty hallways with no identifiable source, and former managers describe cold spots that follow no pattern of drafts or air conditioning. The hotel’s second floor is consistently described as the most active area for unexplained sensory experiences.
— from Legends of America
A former owner of the St. James described walking into the dining room and seeing a pleasant-looking cowboy standing behind her in the mirror on the front of the bar, who was not there when she turned around. A hotel manager added that you never see the presences directly but you feel and hear them throughout the building, particularly at night when the saloon is empty. Both described the encounters as entirely matter-of-fact rather than frightening.
— from Legends of America
EVP recordings at the St. James have captured gruff voices, fragments of what sound like barroom arguments, and sounds resembling gunshots echoing in empty rooms. Shadow figures have been repeatedly reported moving across hallways or standing silently in doorways before vanishing, and investigators note that the building’s layered history — at least 26 known murders during its frontier era — gives every corner of it a documented reason to be active.
— from Paranormal Traveler
Room 17, by contrast to the locked Room 18, is open to guests and is said to be inhabited by the protective spirit of Mary Elizabeth, the second wife of the hotel’s founder Henri Lambert, who is described as a benevolent presence rather than a threatening one. Some guests staying in Room 17 have reported a comforting warmth in the room and describe feeling watched in a way that did not feel threatening, which they attributed to the named spirit after learning the hotel’s history from staff.
— from Paranormal Traveler
