The Most Haunted House in Minnesota

 

                                               A dining area in Forepaugh's before it closed.

We're coming up on October, and it's time to resume telling ghost stories. A couple of weeks ago a story was circulating online naming Forepaugh's Restaurant in St. Paul as the "most haunted" house in Minnesota.  The story was out of date, Forepaugh's having been permanently closed in 2019 after the tragic death of their executive chef from the flu at the age of 32.

                                                  The exterior of the 1870 Forepaugh House

Nevertheless, I will not quibble with the assessment that Forepaugh's is haunted. The architectural researcher who wrote up the history of the house for the owners when it opened in 1976, told me of a weird experience he had in the upper room allegedly haunted by a maid: the smell of perfume, guttering candles. When he gave me a tour of the place, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but I admit parts of the place felt uncomfortable to be in.

Plenty of ghost stories have circulated about the restaurant, which was named after the first owner of the 1870 mansion. (You can google them if you like.) However, if we are to judge how haunted a house is by the number of stories told about it, one house immediately stands out: the 1883 Chauncey Griggs House at 476 Summit Avenue in St. Paul. Tenants were telling about ghostly experiences back from the time it was an art school. But one owner, Carl Weschke, publisher of books on the paranormal, put the house on the "most haunted" map.

                      The literally spooky Chauncey Griggs House (Photo: Marriot-Bonvoy Tours)

During the winter of 1969, Weschke invited three skeptics from the St. Paul Pioneer Press to spend a night in the house to investigate the rumors that the place was haunted. They didn't last the night.

The newsmen, two reporters and a cameraman, set up two cameras and a tape recorder at the top of the stairs and fourth floor hall, where a lovelorn maid had hanged herself decades before. When the men each went out into the well-lighted hall, they became inexplicably overcome with fear and quickly retreated to their room. From there, they heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs. The bravest of them crept down the hallway and looked down the stairwell. Although he could see nothing, he was overcome with the sense of a strong presence. Even though they had several hours to go with their vigil, the newsmen decided they'd seen (or not seen) enough and beat a hasty retreat down the stairs with their equipment. 

                                The lower part of the infamous staircase in the Griggs House.

As with Forepaugh's, stories about the house are legion. The Chauncey Griggs House (not to be confused with the 1874 Burbank-Livingston-Griggs House further down Summit Avenue) is always included on the haunted house tours of Summit Avenue. Apparently, there were many ghostly shenanigans in the 1950s when it was a art school. Students reported hearing footsteps, doors opening and closing, lights going off and on. 

The stories I heard firsthand were at a gathering at the Weyerhaeuser Theater in St. Paul in the 1990s. People were invited to tell ghost stories to assist playwright Lance Belville, who was writing a play about a haunted old house. Architectural researcher Jim Sazevich and I warmed up the group of 25 or so gathered on the stage by telling some of our stories, and then the audience was invited to tell their tales.

Three people told accounts of incidents at the Chauncey-Griggs House. One person told of what felt like a gloved hand being pressed against her throat in the middle of the night when she lived there as a student. Another said that his uncle, who lived in a basement unit, told of many nocturnal disturbances, such as whispering and the sound of footsteps.

The firsthand account by a man who lived in the neighborhood in the 1960s was the most memorable. One day he and two friends, twelve-year-olds eager for adventure, decided to explore the Griggs House carriage house. Although it was daylight, when the boys entered the barn, they immediately felt gloom surround them. They crept along, peering into the darkness. When he reached the end of the passage, the boy turned around. To his horror, he saw a tall black figure in a cape blocking out the sunlight from the entrance. His friends were behind the figure, and they fled the way they had come in. He, however, was trapped between the apparition and the hay mow door behind him. There was a single-story drop to the ground from the hay mow. Should he try to get by the towering dark figure or jump? He jumped. Fortunately, he was not seriously injured in the fall, but after that, he and his friends stayed well clear of the Chauncey Griggs House.

I've heard other stories about the house besides the ones told at the Weyerhaeuser. One of the most chilling stories I've heard, period, comes secondhand from a former owner of the Griggs House. One night she decided to stay up reading in the library while the rest of family was upstairs in bed. It was a winter night, very still. She was puzzled when her reading was interrupted by what sounded like someone breathing softly. As she sat curled in her chair, the sound of breathing grew louder. She tried to ignore it, but it swelled until within a minute or so, it sounded like the house itself was breathing. Terrified, she threw down her book and ran up the stairs to her bedroom without stopping to turn out the lights.

The Haunted Hallway

Just for fun, on Halloween I used to tell ghost stories to my students at Normandale College, where I taught English. Inevitably, every year a student or two would share their stories with me. One of the most dramatic was from a young woman who had a very unsettling experience while waiting for her father at his office in St. Paul, Minnesota.

                                      An old photo of houses on St. Paul's Summit Avenue

The office was on the first floor of a Victorian house on historic Summit Avenue. The entire ground floor was office space; the second floor was an apartment inhabited at the time of the incident by a young couple. Emily, the student, had arrived at the office in late afternoon on a cold winter's day. Emily and her father had planned to meet there to go out to dinner together.

The last vestiges of daylight were fading as Emily let herself into the office. She sat at her father's desk in the front room and began to read. She had been reading only a few minutes when out of the corner of her eye she sensed something moving by the door to the hallway. She glanced over at the door just in time to see it swinging shut. Emily's first thought as she rose from the chair was that her father or some other tenant had entered the building and was waiting in the hallway.

Curious, Emily crossed the room, opened the door, and leaned into the hallway. To her surprise, she could hear muffled voices coming from a room down the hall. It sounded like several people were talking and laughing in the room. Yet when she opened the door to that room, it was completely still, dark--and vacant.

Emily stood by the door for a moment, puzzling over the source of the voices. But she didn't have long to ponder, for from the front end of the long hallway she heard heavy, deliberate footsteps coming toward her. Emily stared in the direction of the sound, but could see no one, just an empty hallway. The sound of the footsteps kept coming nearer--slowly, and as it seemed to her, menacingly.

Emily began to beat a hasty retreat toward the back end of the hallway. As she hotfooted it to the door at the end, she kept glancing over her shoulder. The hallway appeared to be empty, yet the footsteps continued ever closer. When she reached the rear door (which led to the basement), the terrifying episode reached a climax. The instant before she reached for the door knob, she could feel the oak floorboards underneath her feet sag slightly, as if someone's weight were pressing down on the boards right behind her.

Close to panicking, Emily pushed open the basement door, hurtled over the threshold, and slammed the door closed behind her. Fearing that the invisible visitor might pursue her, she half-tumbled down the stairs into the basement. With trembling hands she dialed her grandmother's number on the extension phone down there. She was greatly relieved to hear her grandmother's voice on the other end. Looking anxiously up the staircase, she recounted to her grandmother the series of incidents that had just occurred. Her grandmother was very reassuring and sympathetic, and Emily felt calmer simply hearing her voice. While they talked, Emily could still hear the deliberate, ominous footsteps on the wooden floor overhead, slowly crossing and recrossing the hallway and office areas. 

Emily knew that her father was due to arrive any minute, and her coat and backpack were upstairs in his office. Needless to say, under the circumstances, she was not going to venture up the stairs to retrieve them. Finally, after talking to her grandmother for about ten minutes, Emily heard the front door open upstairs and father's quick tread as he entered his office.

Emily hung up the phone and dashed up the stairs and down the hallway. Breathlessly, she poured out to her father the story of the unseen pursuer. However, unlike her grandmother, her father was not impressed. To her dismay, he just laughed and replied, "Well, the next time you run into this guy, please collect rent from him. We can't have anyone hanging around rent-free."

Like many ghost stories, this one has an epilogue. Shortly after this incident, the couple who lived upstairs in the house told Emily that during the few months they had lived there, they occasionally heard footsteps. And on one very scary night, they were awakened to find a tall shadowy figure at the foot of their bed. It vanished when they turned on the lights. 

Emily was crestfallen that her dad made light of her story, but she was heartened that her grandma and the tenants believed her. Since that day, Emily has never ventured back into that old house by herself, nor has she had the slightest inclination of trying to collect rent from the heavy-footed invisible tenant.