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Many well-known people stayed there over the years.
Wyatt Earp,
his brother Morgan, and their wives spent three nights at the St. James
on their way to
Tombstone ,
Arizona. Jesse
James stayed there several times, always in room 14, signing the
registry with his alias, R.H. Howard.
Jesse James’
nemesis and would be killer, Bob Ford, also stayed at the St. James.
Buffalo Bill
Cody, who was a goat ranch manager for
Lucien Maxwell for a short time, met Annie Oakley at the hotel and
began to plan and rehearse their Wild West Show. When Henry’s son
Fred
was born,
Buffalo Bill nicknamed him “Cyclone Dick” because he was born during a
blustery snow storm, and he was soon asked to be Fred’s godfather.
As Fred
Lambert grew older,
Buffalo Bill
would be one of the first to give him instruction in the use of guns.
Fred Lambert
would spend his entire life upholding the law as a
Cimarron
Sheriff, a member of the tribal police and a territorial marshal.
When Buffalo
Bill and Annie Oakley left
Cimarron
to take their show on the road, they took an entire village of Indians
from the
Cimarron area with them.
Other notables who have stayed at the historic inn include Bat Masterson,
train robber
Black Jack Tom Ketchum,
General Sheridan,
Kit Carson,
Doc Holliday,
Billy the Kid,
Clay Allison,
Pat Garret,
artist Fredrick Remington, Governor Lew Wallace, and writer Zane Grey.
The Hotel was later renamed the St. James and continues to cater to travelers today.
When the railroads came through, the
Santa Fe
Trail died, and soon after, the gold in the area began to play out.
Cimarron's
population began to dwindle and the elegant St. James
Hotel fell into disrepair.
When Henry Lambert's sons,
Fred and
Gene, replaced the roof of the
Lambert Inn in 1901, they found more than 400 bullet holes in the
ceiling above the bar. A double layer of heavy wood prevented anyone from
sleeping upstairs from being killed. Today, the ceiling of the
dining room still holds 22 bullet holes.
Henri Lambert died in 1913. His wife, Mary E. Lambert died in 1926.
Through the years, the old hotel was at many times, uninhabited and passed
from owner to owner. However, in 1985 the St. James
Hotel was restored to its former luxury.
The St. James
Hotel is said to remain host to several restless
spirits. Both the owners and the guests of the hotel will tell
you that it is haunted with many unexplained events. Several psychics
have visited the hotel and specifically identified three
spirits, as well as many others who just pass through to relive their
experiences.
The second floor of the hotel is the most active, with stories of cold
spots and the smell of cigar smoke lingering in the halls (smoking is not
allowed in the hotel.) A prior manager said that "you never see
them, but you do feel and hear them." Another report from a
former owner, states that she walked into the dining room and saw a
pleasant-looking
cowboy
standing behind her in the mirror on the front of the bar. The
spiritual activity of the hotel has been featured on the popular
television shows Unsolved Mysteries and A Current Affair.
 Room
18 at the hotel is kept locked because it houses the
ghost of an ill-tempered Thomas James Wright, who was killed at his
door just after winning the rights to the hotel in a
poker game. Having been shot from behind, Wright continued on into the room and slowly
bled to death.
Wright’s angry, malevolent ghost continues to haunt the room and he does
not like company. One former owner said she was
pushed down while in the room and, on another occasion, saw a ball of
angry orange light floating in the upper corner. The room
holds only a bed frame without a mattress, a coat rack, a rocking chair
and bureau which has been made a shrine to the
Old West.
Sitting atop the bureau is a Jack Daniels bottle, a basin and pitcher, a
hand of cards, an Ace Copenhagen tin, and several shot glasses. On
the wall is a bad painting of a half-naked woman.
This room is considered by the staff to be the most haunted and people are
rarely allowed to enter the room, much less sleep in it. Rumors
abound that when the room was rented, a number of mysterious deaths
occurred there.
 Room
17 is the epicenter of sightings of Henry's second wife Mary Elizabeth,
who is said to remain at the hotel as a protector. Mary gave birth to her
children in the hotel and died there herself in December, 1926.
Allegedly, Mary’s rose-scented perfume can often be smelled in her old
room. Sometimes, an insistent tapping is heard when the window is
open and will not stop until the window is closed. On other
occasions, a milky transparent woman can be seen in the hallways.
Another “dwarf-like” old man has also been seen at the hotel.
Nicknamed the “Little Imp” by hotel staff, the spirit is said to be very
mischievous, constantly playing tricks and laughing at the staff. On
one occasion, he was said to have stuck a knife into the floor between two
owners of the old inn. Most often, however, he is blamed for objects
that mysteriously disappear, only to be found later in locations that they
absolutely don’t belong.
Other, unknown entities are also said to roam the hotel, creating a host
of paranormal activities. Staff report that items constantly fall
off walls and shelves and electrical equipment at the front desk behaves
unpredictably. Others have reported cold spots throughout the
historic inn, lights that seemingly turn on by themselves, feelings of
being watched by unseen eyes, and cameras that
cease to work inside the hotel,
strangely return to normal after leaving the St. James.
Kody Mutz, a college student, who has worked summers at the hotel,
reported that in 2002, as he was working at the front desk, he heard a
high pitched shriek coming from the far corner of the lobby. Looking
up abruptly from his work, he was dumbfounded to see absolutely no one on
that side of the room. Quickly looking around, his eyes rested on
three other quests mingling at the other side of the lobby, apparently
having not heard the loud scream, they were completely unphased.
The hotel is open year around, with 13
historic rooms, named for the famous and infamous people who once stayed
there. An annex was also added to the hotel that houses an
additional 10 rooms. The hotel retains its historic ambiance with
antique chandeliers, velvet drapes, thick carpets covering its old wooden
floors, brocade wallpapering, and many of the original furnishings of the
hotel.
There are no phones, radios, or televisions
in the 14 rooms of the main hotel; however, the 10 room annex has all the
amenities of a modern hotel. The old
saloon, which is now used as the hotel's dining room, still holds the
original antique bar, as well as twenty-two bullet holes in the
pressed-tin ceiling. In the hallway of the hotel is a plaque that
commemorates
Clay Allison and the roster of 19 men he was said to have killed, as
well as photographs of the many famous guests that have stayed at the
historic inn. Also in the hallway is the original headstone of
Parson Franklin J. Tolby, the beloved minister of
Cimarron,
who was killed during the Colfax County War.
Checking into this historic place will make
you feel as if you have stepped back in time, as mounted deer and
buffalo
stare down at you from the lobby walls, you view the old hotel ledgers
signed by the its many famous guests, and imagine the sound of tinny music
coming from the antique piano in the corner. Perhaps you too, will be
lucky or unlucky enough, depending upon your point of view, to run into
one of the hotel’s many unearthly guests.
Kathy Weiser/Legends
of America, © July, 2006
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