St. James Hotel, Red Wing

The St. James Hotel stands on Main Street in Red Wing, built in 1874–75 when the town was one of the largest wheat markets in the world. Eleven local businessmen backed the Italianate building, designed by Brink, Williams & Co., and it opened with a grand ball on Thanksgiving Day 1875. Its ground floor served travellers arriving by steamboat and rail, and the Red Wing Shoe Company bought it in 1977, renovated it and added a courtyard of shops and more rooms. It was entered on the National Register of Historic Places that same year and is today a member of Historic Hotels of America, with rooms named for Mississippi riverboats.

The hotel’s ghost lore has two strands. The first concerns Clara Lillyblad, a former manager of the hotel who is said to have lived in room 310 and, according to the hotel’s reputation, never fully left. Guests request that room when booking. Stories say she likes the Victorian dining room’s table settings arranged correctly, and paranormal writer Adrian Lee has said he saw the heavy walnut table in the dining room move by itself. Staff and guests have also told of slamming doors, cold spots and the sound of crying babies with none there.

The second strand is a real tragedy. On 13 July 1890 the excursion steamer Sea Wing capsized in a sudden storm on Lake Pepin carrying around 215 people from Red Wing, and 98 of them drowned, including fifty of the fifty-seven women aboard. The Minnesota Historical Society records that the steamer Ethel Howard brought dozens of the dead to Red Wing’s levee early the next Monday. Local ghost writers claim that the St. James served as a temporary morgue and that the victims’ spirits remain there. That claim appears in a radio-station ghost article without a primary source, and the historical records consulted for this entry do not mention the hotel.

The result is a haunting that rests on reputation rather than record. A 2025 radio feature marking the hotel’s 150th anniversary called it home to nearly a hundred spirits, but named no witnesses. The Sea Wing disaster itself is thoroughly documented: a federal inquiry found the vessel overloaded and its captain, David Wethern, unskillful, and a monument to the dead stands in Levee Park. For visitors, the Red Wing ghost walk and the Goodhue County History Center’s exhibit on the disaster are better ways to meet the story than the hotel’s legends.

A walnut dining-room table said to move by itself, slamming doors, cold spots and the sound of unseen crying babies, and a woman presumed to be Clara Lillyblad in room 310. Reports come from guests, staff and ghost writers and are anecdotal.

Room 310 on the third floor, the Victorian dining room and the upper halls; guests ask for the room by number when they book.

The hotel appears in Adrian Lee’s Mysterious Minnesota and in Minnesota ghost round-ups, and Red Wing runs ghost walks that tell the Sea Wing story. The disaster itself is commemorated by a memorial in Levee Park and a county museum exhibit.