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famous Lemp brewery. It once covered ten city blocks, but is now derelict. The mansion was once a fabulous place. In its underground caves it boasted an auditorium, a ballroom and a swimming pool built in a natural cavern. A tunnel led from the brewery to the house, inside which visitors would have been delighted by beautiful, expensive furniture, hand-painted ceilings, Italian marble, carved wood detailing and an art collection to die for.
    Much of the house is now empty or sealed up, but there are many who believe the Lemps never left, even when they died, usually by their own hand. Reports of gunshot sounds, screams, laughing, crying and voices calling out names have served to make the Lemp mansion one of America’s most haunted houses. And it is no wonder, because the Lemps were a family cursed with a uniquely tragic history.
    The 33-roomed Lemp mansion was built in 1868 by a St. Louis inhabitant, Jacob Fleickert and, in 1876, William J Lemp and his wife, Julia moved in. 78 years previously, Johann ‘Adam’ Lemp was born, in Gruningen, in Germany. Moving to the US, he had become a naturalized citizen in 1841. He was a grocer who also made beer but, by 1840, he had given up the grocery side of his affairs and focused on brewing and selling beer at his Western Brewery in St. Louis. There were around 40 breweries in the city at the time and Lemp’s was one of the most successful. So successful, in fact, that, by the time of his death, he was a millionaire.
    Adam’s son, William J Lemp, took over the brewery on his father’s death, initiating the construction, in 1864, of a larger brewery that would become one of the biggest in the country. He installed the first refrigeration machine in an American brewery and introduced the idea of refrigerated railway carriages so that his beer could be the first to be sold nationally. Soon, it was being exported and sold all over the world.
    In 1892, the Western Brewery changed its name to the William J Lemp Brewing Company, of which William became president and his son, William Jr, vice-president. William Jr, known as Billy, had gone to St. Louis University, like his father, but William Sr wanted to pass the business on to his fourth son, Frederick. However, when Frederick died in 1901, aged only 28, it was a devastating blow to William Sr, who slowly began to fall apart. At 9.30 am on 13 February 1904, he shot himself in the head in one of the mansion’s upstairs bedrooms. He died 45 minutes later, leaving Billy to take over.
    Billy had married the beautiful Lillian Hanlan, a wealthy woman in her own right, four years earlier. Lillian became known as the ‘Lavender Lady’, because of her fondness for dressing in clothes of that colour. Even her carriage horses’ harnesses were dyed lavender. Unfortunately, Billy was something of a playboy and threw lavish parties in the storage caves beneath the mansion, to which he invited prostitutes to entertain his numerous, wastrel friends. It has been reported that Billy had an illegitimate son by one of these prostitutes. This child was said to suffer from Down’s syndrome and was kept locked out of sight in the attic of the great house.
    Eventually, Lillian grew weary of Billy’s philandering. She divorced him, retaining custody of their son, William Lemp III. For once, on the final day of the divorce proceedings, Lillian did not wear lavender. She appeared in front of the judge clad in black, from head to foot.
    The brewery began to go into decline. Competition was fierce and Billy neglected his duties, allowing equipment to deteriorate and failing to keep up with new developments in brewing technology. He married for a second time and, by 1915, had retreated to a mansion he had built on the Merrimac River.
    When Prohibition arrived in 1919, the brewery closed, the workers only learning about the closure when they turned up for work one day to find the gates locked. The buildings were sold for $588,000 (£294,000). Prior to