La Posada de Santa Fe (Staab House)

Abraham Staab came to New Mexico as a young German-Jewish immigrant and became one of Santa Fe’s most successful merchants. When he married Julia Schuster, he promised her a fine house, and in 1882 he built it: a three-story brick mansion in the French Second Empire style two blocks east of the Plaza – the first brick mansion in a city of adobe. The couple filled it with European furnishings, entertained Santa Fe society and raised seven children there.

Julia died in 1896, and Abraham in 1913. According to legend, Julia withdrew from society after the death of their youngest child and spent her last years in her upstairs room – a detail repeated in nearly every telling, though the record of her inner life is thin. In 1930 Robert H. Nason of Chicago bought the house and its grounds, built Pueblo Revival adobe casitas around it and opened La Posada in the mid-1930s; the mansion itself was cut up into apartments. Later renovations turned the property into a 159-room resort, now a member of Historic Hotels of America.

Staff stories about “the grand lady” reportedly began soon after the property became an inn. People describe a woman in period dress drifting through the old mansion, especially near the staircase and her former bedroom; glasses and trays falling from waiters’ hands; lights turning on by themselves; and a chill in the bar that occupies her former parlor. The hotel has embraced her, naming its restaurant Julia and describing her as its muse.

Julia Staab’s ghost has been featured on Unsolved Mysteries, Weird Travels and Lifetime’s The Haunting Of…, and the resort has offered ghost-themed packages in her name. Like many hotel ghosts, her legend tells us as much about how a family’s story is remembered as about anything seen in the halls.

A woman in Victorian dress on the staircase and in the upstairs rooms of the old mansion, falling glasses and trays, lights switching on, cold spots – reported by staff and guests since the 1930s.

The original Staab mansion at the heart of the resort: the grand staircase, Julia’s former upstairs bedroom and the ground-floor rooms that are now the Staab House bar.

La Posada is a fixture of Santa Fe ghost tours and of TV programs including Unsolved Mysteries, Weird Travels and The Haunting Of…. Its restaurant, Julia, Spirited Restaurant & Bar, is named for her.