There are hotels where people come for the accommodations.

There are hotels where people come for the history.

And then there are places like the St. James Hotel in Cimarron, New Mexico, where some visitors arrive hoping the previous guests never completely checked out.

The old hotel has stood since the days when Cimarron was part of the rough and frequently violent American frontier.

Outlaws slept there.

Lawmen drank there.

Gunfighters passed through.

Men were killed there.

And according to generations of visitors and employees, some of them may still be there.

The second floor has developed a particularly active reputation.

People report cold spots.

The smell of cigar smoke appears where nobody is smoking.

Objects supposedly move or fall without explanation.

Electrical equipment behaves strangely.

And then there are the rooms.

Especially Room 18.

Nobody sleeps there anymore.

Henry Lambert Goes West

The story begins with Henry Lambert, a French-born chef who has traditionally been described as having cooked for President Abraham Lincoln.

After Lincoln’s assassination, Lambert headed west.

Like countless other men during the nineteenth century, he hoped to make his fortune in gold.

Gold apparently had other ideas.

Lambert eventually settled in New Mexico and returned to the occupation he already knew well.

Cooking.

He worked in Elizabethtown and later for the powerful landowner Lucien Maxwell in the Cimarron area.

Then Lambert realized that perhaps he didn’t need to find gold.

He could make money feeding the people who were looking for it.

Lambert’s Saloon

In 1872, Lambert opened his own establishment in Cimarron.

It became known as Lambert’s Saloon.

And this time, Henry Lambert found his fortune.

The saloon occupied an excellent position for travelers, cowboys, miners and the assorted collection of characters moving through the New Mexico Territory.

Business flourished.

Eventually Lambert expanded the establishment, adding approximately thirty guest rooms. By around 1880, the property had developed into the hotel remembered as the St. James.

It became one of the finest hotels in the region.

It also became a remarkably dangerous place to have a drink.

A Violent Hotel

The St. James operated during an era when disagreements were sometimes settled considerably faster than the courts could manage them.

Gunfights erupted.

Men were shot.

The hotel’s ceiling still bears bullet holes associated with its violent frontier years.

Tradition places the number of people killed at the establishment at more than twenty-five, with 26 becoming the figure most commonly repeated in histories of the hotel.

One old saying supposedly asked:

Who was killed at Lambert’s last night?

Another joked that Lambert had acquired another man for breakfast.

Dark humor, perhaps.

But this was a place where death apparently became sufficiently commonplace to inspire jokes about it.

Famous Guests

The guest list reads almost like someone emptied an encyclopedia of the Old West into a single hotel.

Your original article lists Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, Morgan Earp, Doc Holliday, Billy the Kid, Buffalo Bill Cody, Annie Oakley and Kit Carson among the famous characters associated with the St. James.

Some of those individual associations deserve closer documentation if we ever do a full historical research pass, but the hotel’s connection with prominent frontier personalities is well established.

Jesse James, for example, is traditionally associated with the hotel under his alias R. H. Howard, while Wyatt and Morgan Earp are also said to have stayed there.

For decades, travelers arrived.

They ate.

They drank.

They gambled.

Some apparently shot at one another.

And eventually, the glory days ended.

The Hotel Declines

From approximately 1926 until 1985, the St. James passed through a succession of owners.

The building deteriorated.

For a structure that had once been among the grand hotels of the frontier, the future looked increasingly bleak.

Then, in 1985, the property was restored.

The old St. James had survived.

And once people began spending substantial amounts of time inside the restored hotel, stories about its other occupants flourished.

The Haunted St. James

The second floor acquired a reputation as the center of much of the hotel’s unexplained activity.

Visitors have reported sudden cold spots.

Cigar smoke has supposedly drifted through hallways despite the absence of a smoker.

Objects have fallen from walls.

Electrical equipment has reportedly malfunctioned.

Given the history of the building, it wasn’t difficult for people to imagine who might be responsible.

Perhaps some of the gamblers never left their tables.

Perhaps a cowboy still walks the corridor.

Perhaps one of those men killed inside Lambert’s saloon simply hasn’t realized that the nineteenth century ended.

But among the hotel’s many supposed spirits, two rooms became particularly famous.

Room 17

Room 17 is associated with Mary Lambert, Henry Lambert’s wife.

Guests can actually stay there.

According to the legend, Mary remains attached to the hotel and is regarded as something of a protective presence.

Other accounts of the haunting describe the scent of rose perfume in the room and a female apparition in the surrounding hallway.

Whatever one makes of those reports, Room 17 is very different from the room next door.

Mary Lambert may welcome visitors.

The occupant of Room 18 apparently does not.

Room 18

Room 18 is traditionally associated with a man named Thomas James Wright.

According to the story, Wright won ownership of the hotel during a poker game.

His victory didn’t last long.

He was shot from behind and supposedly staggered into Room 18, where he eventually died from his wounds.

If the story ended there, it would already provide perfectly good material for a ghost legend.

Instead, Wright supposedly remained.

And he wasn’t happy about it.

The Angry Man in Room 18

The spirit associated with Room 18 has been described as malevolent.

People have reported disturbing experiences inside.

One former owner reportedly claimed to have been physically pushed while in the room.

An unusual orange light has also supposedly been observed there.

Your original article preserves an even darker rumor.

According to stories surrounding the St. James, mysterious deaths occurred when guests were allowed to stay in Room 18.

That is precisely how I would leave it.

As a rumor.

I wouldn’t turn those supposed deaths into historical fact without identifying the victims.

Whatever happened there, hotel management eventually stopped renting Room 18.

The room was kept locked.

Visitors could ask about it.

They shouldn’t expect to spend the night.

A Room Nobody Uses

There is something wonderfully effective about a haunted hotel room that isn’t available.

You can rent the other rooms.

You can sleep where famous frontier personalities supposedly stayed.

You can walk the corridors.

You can visit the hotel.

But there is one door that remains closed.

Room 18 contains little more than period furnishings and objects associated with its Old West atmosphere.

No guest waits inside.

At least, no living one.

And naturally, keeping the room closed has only strengthened the legend.

Tell people that a room is haunted and some will laugh.

Tell them the ghost is so hostile that the hotel won’t let anyone sleep there, and suddenly everybody wants to know what’s behind the door.

Ghosts in the Hallway

Not every haunting at the St. James has a name.

Visitors have reported the sensation of unseen presences.

Others claim to hear unexplained sounds.

Cigar smoke appears without an obvious source.

Cold spots form in otherwise comfortable areas.

These are simple ghost stories compared with the violent tale of Thomas Wright.

But in an old hotel, simple hauntings can be the most effective.

A corridor at night is already a peculiar place.

Every door is closed.

People are sleeping on either side.

Then footsteps begin somewhere behind you.

You keep walking.

So do they.

You stop.

They stop.

Perhaps another guest is coming down the hallway.

Perhaps.

The Spirits of the St. James Hotel

It would be difficult to design a better setting for a haunted hotel.

The St. James was born during the closing decades of the American frontier.

Its saloon attracted travelers, miners, cowboys, gamblers, lawmen and outlaws.

Gunfire was real enough that bullet holes remain associated with the building today. The National Park Service recognizes the St. James as a historic hotel along the Santa Fe Trail and notes its reputation as an outlaw hangout.

People really died there.

That doesn’t prove they remained there.

But it gave later ghost stories extraordinarily fertile ground in which to grow.

Perhaps Mary Lambert still watches over the hotel.

Perhaps Thomas Wright remains furious about a poker game that ended with a bullet in his back.

Perhaps the cigar smoke has an entirely ordinary explanation.

Perhaps cold spots are simply cold spots.

But old hotels possess something modern buildings cannot manufacture.

Memory.

Thousands of people pass through the same rooms.

They sleep in the same spaces.

They walk the same halls.

Most leave nothing behind.

Occasionally, according to the stories, someone does.

And at the St. James Hotel in Cimarron, visitors have been reporting for years that the old building has considerably more guests than appear on the register.