January 19th, 2013

So, I've been away with the day-job all week on a business trip to see Thomson Reuters at Eagan, which is near the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul in Minnesota. Now before I went there, I thought the Twin Cities were best known for the singer, songwriter and rock guitarist Prince – and for the Mall of America, a shopping mall so enormous you can apparently window-shop from the International Space Station. What I didn't count on were ghosts.

Ghosts of the New World

Living near Norwich in East Anglia where – if the latest UK census figures are to be believed – there are more Mediaeval churches than regular church-goers, you take it for granted that in such an ancient, history-redolent setting there will be ghosts (or alleged hauntings for the skeptics) but in the New World?

Anyway there we were getting a lift along Saint Paul's Summit and Grand Avenues and I was intrigued by how many of the turreted, domed, stone or timber-clad mansions – all classic examples of Victorian-era, Gothic-revival architecture – looked like sets for a haunted house movie or the original version of Psycho. One house that particularly caught my eye was a red-stone edifice, complete with a large north-facing studio window that would be perfect for an artist.

The next day, over coffee at the business meeting, I happened to comment on the spookiness of the architecture and was told there were so many "unquiet spirits" in Saint Paul that the local Roman Catholic archdiocese (the spectacular Cathedral of St Paul sits at one end of Summit Avenue) employed a full-time exorcist. First chance I had, I Googled "ghosts in Saint Paul, Minn" and discovered just how strong the supernatural connection is in Saint Paul. Forepaughs Restaurant, the Wabasha Street Caves and... the Griggs Mansion – the very building that had caught my eye on the previous day's drive-by.

The Griggs Mansion

Built by wholesale grocery businessman Chauncey Griggs in 1883, the house has the reputation for being the most haunted house in Saint Paul, if not the whole of Minnesota and possibly the entire United States with a total of six – or possibly seven – separate ghosts haunting the building.

Chauncey Griggs only lived in the house for 4 years before moving to the West Coast to expand his business operations and since then the house has been a private residence, divided into separate appartments and, for 25 years, was the home of an art school (hence the studio window). Most recently it was put on the market for $1.8 million in 2009 and eventually sold (despite having the potential to generate a sizeable rental income from self-contained appartments) for $1 million in late 2012.

So who are the ghosts?

There is a American Civil War officer – possibly Chauncey Griggs himself; a teenager called Amy – possibly a student from the building's art school days; a thin man dressed in a black suit and a top hat; a child; a young maid, who in 1915 hung herself off the 4th floor landing while suffering from depression over a failed romance; and a gardener called Charles Wade, apparently a workaholic who would often refer to books in the mansion's library. Various people have reported hearing his unseen presence in the library flipping the pages of books. The seventh and final manifestation is that of an blurred, indistinct man's head.

In the circumstances, perhaps $1 million was a good price after all!