Haunted Places in St Paul, MN

The history

St. Paul is Minnesota's capital and its second-most populous city, with 311,527 residents at the 2020 census. Its haunted geography sits in two places, and both are documented ground: a mansion avenue on the hill above downtown, and a set of manmade caves in the bluff across the river.

Summit Avenue is the avenue. It runs four and a half miles west from just outside downtown to the Mississippi River and is known, in Wikipedia's summary, as the longest avenue of Victorian homes in the country — large, distinctive houses built mostly between 1890 and 1920, in two National Historic Districts. Its largest and best-known house is the James J. Hill House at 240 Summit Avenue, completed in 1891 for railroad magnate James J. Hill: 36,000 square feet of Richardsonian Romanesque red sandstone, built at a cost of about $931,000, and at its completion the largest private home in the state. Its second-oldest house is the Burbank–Livingston–Griggs House, built in Italianate style from 1862 to 1863 — the Griggs Mansion of the ghost stories below.

The caves are the other pole. The Wabasha Street Caves are a series of manmade caves dug into the St. Peter sandstone cliffs on the west bank of the Mississippi, in St. Paul's West Side neighbourhood, just across the river from downtown. They date to the 1840s and have been used, across their history, for storage, growing mushrooms, as a mobster hideout, as speakeasies, and as an entertainment and tourist venue. Josie and William Lehmann opened the Castle Royal nightclub into the side of the caves on October 26, 1933; it closed in the late 1930s, the caves went back largely to mushrooms, and a Castle Royal 2 reopened in the 1970s as a disco venue.

The legend

This section is folklore — reported by tour operators and local coverage, and never asserted as fact here. Wikipedia itself draws the line on St. Paul's most famous legend: in the 1920s the caves were used as a restaurant and nightclub known as the Wabasha Street Speakeasy, and the speakeasy was said to have been frequented by gangsters such as John Dillinger and Ma Barker — however, Wikipedia notes, there is no evidence that these visits occurred, and the stories are therefore considered legend.

Tour lore goes further, and it is told as tour lore. Local coverage of the caves repeats the rumour that three gangsters were gunned down in the caves during Prohibition and buried under the floors; the bodies have never been found, and the same coverage presents the haunting that follows from it — figures in 1920s dress, a ghostly bartender — as belief, not record. This page keeps that status.

Summit Avenue's legends are mansion legends, and the fullest of them is told by a tour operator on its own page, retelling a documented newspaper visit. In February 1969, reporters from the St. Paul Pioneer Press attended a séance in the Griggs Mansion at the behest of its owner, Carl Weschcke, who said he himself had seen apparitions wandering its halls. The operator's account quotes the reporters hearing footsteps on the stairs when no one was there, and thumps and knocks they could not explain, and finishing their article by saying no prize on earth could get them to spend a single night alone in the house. That is a 1969 newspaper story as retold by the tour that now walks past the house — reported activity, attributed, and not asserted here. The same operator tells the tragic tale of Joseph Forepaugh, whose ghost people say they have seen at his Summit Avenue house, and of Molly, a former maid at Forepaugh's Mansion, whose story has fuelled rumours of hauntings for decades. Its itinerary likewise describes the James J. Hill House as rumoured to be haunted by several spirits. Rumoured is the operative word in every case.

One harder note belongs in the record, and it is not folklore. The wider cave complex beyond the modern venue has been dangerous ground in fact: Wikipedia records that multiple people have died in the caves from suspected carbon monoxide poisoning from fires lit inside, including two teenagers in 1992 and three in 2004, with at least three other deaths since 1988, and that the city has blocked entrances and posted warnings. The venue's tours work the restored, commercial section; the unworked caves are closed for documented reasons.

Haunted today

Hountix lists 5 places in St Paul, MN. Seasonal attractions keep their own open dates, so check each business's own site before you go.

• Fitzgerald Theater — haunted place, 10 E Exchange St, Saint Paul, MN 55101
• Forepaugh's Restaurant — haunted place, 276 Exchange St S, Saint Paul, MN 55102
• Landmark Center — haunted place, 75 W 5th St, Saint Paul, MN 55102
• Mounds Theatre — haunted place, 1029 Hudson Rd, Saint Paul, MN 55106
• Wabasha Street Caves — haunted place, 215 Wabasha St S, Saint Paul, MN 55107

Attraction stories

Wabasha Street Caves

The Wabasha Street Caves, at 215 Wabasha Street South, describe themselves in their listings as a historic 12,000-square-foot event facility and tourist destination — and the history under that description is documented in their Wikipedia article, summarised in the city story above: manmade sandstone caves from the 1840s, used for storage and mushroom growing, then as the Wabasha Street Speakeasy in the 1920s, then, from October 26, 1933, as the Castle Royal nightclub built into the cave side, then back to mushrooms, then a disco-era Castle Royal 2 in the 1970s, with flood debris still stored in parts of the complex today.

What the venue does now is also documented there: for the past 30 years it has hosted Swing Night every Thursday, with professional big bands playing the music of the Dorsey, Miller, Basie, and Ellington bands, drawing crowds in the hundreds — and it provides historical tours and Murder Mystery Tours. Its listings add seasonal themed tours across the year, including gangster tours and haunted Halloween and ghosts-and-graves editions, and note that tour guides point out bullet holes in the cave walls.

The haunting attached to the caves is the legend in the section above, and this page assigns it no more weight than its sources do. The gangster visits are legend with no evidence behind them, in Wikipedia's own assessment. The three murdered gangsters said to be buried under the floors are a rumour repeated in local coverage, with no bodies ever found. Figures in period dress and a spectral bartender are what visitors and staff are reported to believe they have seen. The caves need none of it to be interesting: they are a real 1840s mine complex that really was a Prohibition-era nightclub, and you can still dance in them on a Thursday.

*Website: http://www.wabashacaves.com/*

Sources

• Wikipedia, Saint Paul, Minnesota (anchor for the city) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul,_Minnesota
• Wikipedia, Wabasha Street Caves (anchor for the caves' history, the speakeasy legend's status, and the venue today) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wabasha_Street_Caves
• Wikipedia, Summit Avenue (St. Paul) (anchor for the avenue, the Hill House, and the Griggs House) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summit_Avenue_ (St._Paul)
• Wikipedia, James J. Hill House (anchor for the Hill House) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_J._Hill_House
• Wikipedia, Burbank–Livingston–Griggs House (anchor for the Griggs Mansion's dates) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burbank%E2%80%93Livingston%E2%80%93Griggs_House
• Wikipedia, Saint Paul Union Depot (anchor for the Union Depot) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Paul_Union_Depot
• Wabasha Street Caves — http://www.wabashacaves.com/
• American Ghost Walks, St. Paul Ghost Tour — https://www.americanghostwalks.com/minnesota/st-paul/st-paul-summit-avenue
• CynCity Tours — http://cyncitytours.com/ and https://www.cyncitytours.com/our-tours
• KROC, CNN names Minnesota's creepiest attraction (the three-gangsters rumour as local coverage reports it) — https://kroc.com/cnn-says-this-is-the-creepiest-attraction-in-minnesota/