Real Ghost Stories Chapter 10 - The Lemp Family Mansion, a supernatural fanfic

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The Supernatural characters belong to Kripke Enterprises and the CW, not me. No money is being made from this story. It is for entertainment only.

Real Ghost Stories

Chapter 10

The Lemp Family Mansion

Cold, damp, dark corridors of chiseled stone, smelling of river water and age; I have been here forever and I will be here forever, watching the living, holding the dead, sipping at their souls like fine wine. Each taste brings them lower, nearer to extinction, closer to me and the permanent dark.

Eventually I exhaust them, their light finally consumed and replacements need to be found. So I pass through the caves, under the noisy commerce of the busy city, hunting the living from one end to the other. None see me, none hear me; they know nothing until they are dead. Then they can feel me, and then they fear me, nibbling at their light

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A ghost stands in the doorway of the Lemp family mansion, his long dead eyes piercing the walls of the Italianate structure. He cannot easily move but he can see the mild glows of his family scattered throughout the rooms. They are frozen here, trapped and suffering. Memories of their sorrows fade now against the terror of what comes in the dark.

His name is William, he can remember that. The family he watches are his own children and brother and others. He grieves. He grieves for all of them. It started with him. It was all his fault. Their souls are mildly glowing flames that year by year become weaker and weaker. There are other souls here in his house but they are alive and they come and go. No one stays in the house on a permanent basis. They arrive and dash away and return in a cycle of days or hours.

Occasionally one of the dead will awaken and fight against their fate. His brother Charles is quick to anger, the dog that he killed trails at his heels. Sometimes they move, kicking at doors, flicking at electric light switches in wonder, tossing glasses across the room. After a while Charles grows weary again and returns to his contemplation of the dark.

Once every so often the darkness rises up from the cave under the house. It invades the upper floors, where it does not belong and goes searching. It slowly chases the moving souls of the living but they don't hold still long enough for the darkness to do more than touch them lightly. They shake it off and leave. The darkness goes to one of the dead and covers the light. When it leaves again the light is less than it was.

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There are rooms in the upper floors where the living sometime stay. William watches those souls with interest. The darkness craves the living but they are too quick. They don't stay long enough to be eaten, unlike his family who, trapped in these walls, fell prey to the darkness. He weeps. It was his fault; if he had taken them away when he had first felt the darkness whisper, they might have lived. Now they are all trapped here where the darkness grazes, a garden of souls.

One day William sees the arrival of two very different souls. Souls of living men, to be sure, but different in some essential way from those that come and go so often. One soul is pure, white light and so strong it casts its own shadow on the spirit plain where William and his family wait. The other soul flickers and rises and falls, calling down through the corridors to the dead and the lost. That soul spirals with colors and touches of its own darkness and William is disturbed by the sight.

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In 1836 Adam Lemp arrived in St. Louis, Missouri and established himself as a grocer. He brewed a German lager beer that became very popular. His business grew and prospered and when he needed more storage space a cave in south St. Louis was used as it provided natural refrigeration. By 1860 there were 40 breweries in St. Louis taking advantage of the caves along the Mississippi with Lemp's Western Brewery as one of the most successful.

When Adam died in 1862, of natural causes, the brewery passed to his son William who grew the business to become not only the largest brewery in St. Louis but also the largest outside of New York with a single owner. Later in the century William installed the first refrigeration machine in an American brewery and then invented refrigerated railway cars and his beer become the first beer in the United States with a national, then international reach. America's love of cold beer may possibly be due to William's inventiveness.

Those were the good days, before the deaths started.

Williams' fourth son, Frederick was groomed to take over the business but he died young at 43, of heart failure, in 1901. In February 1904, William Lemp committed suicide by gunshot. In 1920 William's daughter Elsa Lemp Wright died of a gunshot that may have been murder but was officially declared suicide. Prohibition wrecked the Brewery and in December 1922 William's son William J. "Billy" Lemp Jr. shot himself in his office, a room that today is the front left dining room in the Lemp Mansion. This was the same room that his father had died in.

William Sr.'s third son, Charles, was the last Lemp to live in the mansion. On May 10, 1949 he shot his dog, then himself in the head leaving the oddest suicide note: "St. Louis Mo/May 9, 1949, In case I am found dead blame it on no one but me. Ch. A. Lemp". The only Lemp child to escape was Edwin Lemp, but he left the mansion in 1913 and never returned.

All of these souls plus Billy's wife Lillian, the "Lavender Lady" are believed to haunt the Lemp Family Mansion. The old Life Magazine once ran an article naming the Lemp Mansion as one of the ten most haunted places in America.

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William stayed awake, in spite of his increasing weakness, watching the two strange souls settle in a room on the upper floor. With an exertion of all of his remaining strength he managed to move close enough to hear the two men, he assumed they were men, discussing him and his family.

"Dean, stick with the shotgun," the flickering soul said.

"I know, Sammy. But it never hurts to carry something extra," the bright soul responded.

William had no idea why these men would walked around his house armed. Charles seemed to be listening too. A door slammed loudly down stairs. The one called "Dean" turned briskly to the door and ran down the hallway.

Downstairs the lights began to turn on and off; William wished that Charles would calm down. So often his antics would call the darkness. It was if Charles' energy attracted the beast.

The soul named "Sam" now followed Dean and the pair descended to the darkened lower floors. Flash light beams danced on the walls and the sound of shotguns being prepared to fire echoed through the empty rooms.

Sam returned to the upper floor and joined with another light, a soft, warm light. In his current state William had no idea what that light was but it appeared not to be a living creature. It appealed to him. It seemed to offer warmth and peace. William had not been truly warm forever. Always there was the feeling of damp cold throughout the house.

William pushed and strained to follow that light but Sam moved away too fast. Damn the living, so careless of their energy. Even so, William managed to reach the stairs and could watch as Sam placed the warm light on the floor. Soon there arose a humming , a sweet sound as of bees dreaming, from below and there was a feeling in the air of a solemn bell sounding far away.

Suddenly his daughter Eliza ran past him, her arms spread, calling her own dead little girl, "Patricia, Patricia, I'm coming Patricia". She flew down the stairs and joined with the warm light that Sam was nurturing. Beneath his feet William could feel the house rocking. It was a sensation that warned of the imminent arrival of the darkness.

"Dean, seal the cellar door," Sam called out. "Put sigils under the rugs. Move it"

The bright soul, Dean, rushed around the rooms, following Sam's orders. The rocking of the house increased and now a low growl, like distant thunder, rattled the doors and windows. William assumed the escape of his daughter Eliza, had triggered a reaction.

As Dean completed his work, the rumbling and the thunder both passed away. The morning sun breaking through the windows may also have had something to do with the peace that descended on the old mansion. Finally William thought he might be able to stand down.

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Sam and Dean Winchester loaded up the Impala and sat parked in front of the Lemp Mansion.

Dean paused with his hands resting on the steering wheel. "Do you think we did any good, Sam?"

"Yes, I think at least one of the souls has gone to rest." Sam answered. "I really don't know what the beast under the house was all about. I know there are limestone caves that connect the house to the old brewery but what the Lemps stirred up, I have no idea."

"The job's not done, Sam." Dean stared out at the house. "We need to do something about those caves."

Sam responded. "I know, but give me some time. I need to figure out what would come from a cave and capture souls. I don't know why it would do that or how to stop it."

"There must be some kind of binding spell you can come up with, geek-boy. Put the brain in overdrive."

"It wouldn't hurt for you to put some brain power into the job too, jerk" Sam shot back.

"Hey, not my job," Dean sneered. "Remember me, I'm the muscle and the driver and the pretty one. My plate's full."

Sam snorted then pulled his jacket up higher on his neck, folded the car blanket under his head and promptly closed his eyes and fell asleep against the passenger window.

"That's right. Run away and hide." Dean laughed and put the car in gear.

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References:

The Haunting of Lemp Mansion: website "Hauntings"

Wikipedia : "Lemp Mansion"