Palmer House Hotel

Sauk Centre is a prairie railroad town in central Minnesota, and its Palmer House has stood on the corner of Main Street since 1901. Ralph and Christena Palmer built it on the site of the Sauk Centre House, the town’s first hotel, which burned in June 1900; the new building was the first in town with electric light. It catered to travelling salesmen arriving by train and to locals who gathered in its lobby, and a 20-room rear wing was added in 1916. A 1993 renovation reduced it to 19 guest rooms, each with a private bath. The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Its literary claim to fame is Sinclair Lewis, Sauk Centre’s native son, who worked two summers as a desk clerk there as a teenager. In his 1920 novel Main Street, which skewered small-town Midwestern life, the Palmer became the “Minniemashie House.”

Its ghost stories are more recent. The best known concerns Room 17, said to be haunted by “Lucy,” whom local rumour describes as a prostitute murdered at the earlier Sauk Centre House – said in the legend to have been a brothel – and Room 22, linked to a hostile presence called “Raymond,” supposedly her pimp. Neither figure appears in any historical record, and the documented history of the Sauk Centre House is simply that of the town’s first hotel. Guests and staff also describe children playing in empty upstairs halls and a boy with a ball, said to have died of influenza. The hotel began hosting paranormal seminars in 2008, and it has since drawn Ghost Adventures, The Dead Files and other programmes, while its own historical tours end with a “mini investigation” in the basement.

Reported activity includes doors slamming, sudden temperature drops, the sound of children running and playing in empty hallways, a boy seen with a ball, furniture moved overnight, objects thrown, and guests feeling their legs pulled in bed. Paranormal groups report responses using flashlights and EMF meters.

Room 17 (“Lucy”), Room 22 (“Raymond”), the upstairs hallways, the bar and the basement, which is closed except on tours. Most accounts come from overnight guests and paranormal investigations.

The Palmer House has appeared on Ghost Adventures, The Dead Files and Chasing Paranormal, regularly tops Minnesota haunted-place lists, and celebrates its link to Sinclair Lewis, whose boyhood home in Sauk Centre is a museum.