The Lemp Family Curse

On December 29, 1922, 55-year-old William J. Lemp Jr. held a revolver to his chest and fired two shots in his office (and family home) of the Lemp Brewery in St. Louis, Missouri. He had been recently in ill health and was in the process of slowly liquidating his family's brewery business after prohibition had been instituted. Billy was not the first member of the family to die tragically, nor was he the first to take his own life.

Prior to Billy's suicide, the family had already suffered the loss of a son who had died from health issues, as well as two additional suicides in the forms of Billy's father and sister. In fact, after his sister's suicide at a property elsewhere in St. Louis, Billy was said to have commented, "That's the Lemp family for you." Tragically, the deaths did not end with Billy. In the 1940s, his only son (though there are unsubstantiated rumors that Billy had also sired an illegitimate child) died of a heart attack and another brother also took his own life.

Today, the Lemp Mansion operates as a bed and breakfast/restaurant in the city of St. Louis. While not all of the deaths occurred inside its walls, the building saw its fair share of death over the years. In fact, the room that Billy shot himself is the front dining room (see photo above), while the site of his father's suicide is now the William Lemp Suite. If you believe the tales, the Lemp family left their mark on the site, which is often regarded as one of the most haunted sites in America with countless tales of ghostly activity.

Pay a visit to the reportedly haunted Lemp Mansion of St. Louis.

-Casey H.