Halloween-St.James Hotel-Lucy

The Saint James now has the reputation of being an elegant, friendly hotel with fine food and service. The unseen clients expect it as well. Psychics have identified 3 of these restless ones.

1) Mary Lambert (wife of Henn Lambert). Her presence is marked by her strong perfume, which waifs through the hallway by the upstairs guest rooms. If the living want to sleep in her old room, the window must be kept shut completely as Mary wants it to be safe for everyone. She will tap and beat on the window if left open, waking up the hotel patrons sleeping in that room, and won't stop until the window is shut. She perhaps is still looking after her hotel and her guests.

2) A mischievous "gnome-like" old man, named Little Imp by the owners, plays tricks on the living, annoying many, especially new employees. He once appeared on a bar stool, and laughed at the young man hired to clean up the dining room. He is also the one who took a steak knife from the holder in the kitchen and stuck it in the floor between the two owners of the hotel. More evidence points to him as well, when lamp shades and glasses crack all by themselves, and objects disappear and reappear in other places.

3) Card player - T. James Wright. Because he was killed before he could collect his huge card winnings, he haunts hotel room # 18. He is unfriendly, very angry, wants to be left alone and gives off evil vibes. He has been known to knock over unwanted people who come into room #18, and has spun his chandelier, which is hanging in room #18, around and around to let the living know that he is still there. So, the owners give this spirit what he wants. Room #18 is locked and not rented to guests. It hasn't been renovated or fixed up. Inside, there is a table, playing cards, a shot glass and a bottle of Jack Daniels. A vase of flowers stands outside his door.

4) Other ghosts who live there have appeared to the living. Early one morning, when the owner's wife had walked into the dining room, she saw in the mirror, on the front of the bar, an apparition of a pleasant-looking cowboy in a big hat, standing behind her.

Psychics have identified the 3 above mentioned spirits and have discovered that the many ghosts who haunt the hotel are happily reliving all the great experiences that they had at the hotel, which makes sense to the current owners, who currently strive to offer service pleasing to their living clients.

In the beginning, the hotel was a place of violence. 26 men were killed within the two-foot-thick adobe walls. The notorious gunman Clay Allison is said to have danced on the bar, once part of the present elegant dining room, which still has bullet holes in the pressed tin ceiling. Other notables who stayed at the St. James include train robber Blackjack Ketchum and Buffalo Bill Cody, who met here with Annie Oakly to plan his Wild West Show. Zane Grey ("Fighting Caravans") and governor Lew Wallace ("Ben Hur") wrote at the hotel and Frederic Remington sketched the nearby hills. Today the hotel is a place of quiet elegance, fine food and drink, expert and friendly service and unsurpassed hospitality. The St. James Hotel offers 12 restored rooms beautifully decorated with priceless antiques, the famous dining room, a modern ten room hotel annex and a cafe. The hotel is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Room 17, so the story goes, is haunted by a man that was killed after winning rights to the hotel in a poker game. The hotel is also haunted by a strange, short man w/ pockmarks called "the Imp and a female ghost in what is now called "Mary's Room." In that particular room there is a strong odor of perfume. Numerous events have occured in the hotel and "Unsolved Mysteries" had a special about the St. James. St. James Hotel Route 1, Box 2 Cimarron, NM 87714 505-376-2664 Lucy xxx