{"id":1705,"slug":"st-james-hotel-cimarron-new-mexico","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["The St. James Hotel is where Lincoln's chef served gunfighters — Henri Lambert left the White House after the assassination and opened a saloon on the Santa Fe Trail in 1872, where 26 men were killed and the ceiling still has the bullet holes. Jesse James, Wyatt Earp, and Billy the Kid all slept there; Clay Allison danced naked on the bar.","The hotel was the trail's violence — the saloon where the morning question in Cimarron was 'Who was killed at Lambert's last night?' The Lambert children counted 400 bullet holes in the ceiling before it was replaced; 22 are still in the dining room's pressed tin. Room 18 was the dying room — the only one with its own outside door, so the bodies didn't cross the lobby. Fourteen men died in it.","The hotel is still there — the 1880 adobe, the bullet holes in the ceiling, Room 18 that was padlocked for decades because the strange events got too numerous. The file keeps the saloon: the 1872 gambling hall, the 26 killings, and the ceiling that still counts the shots.","The St. James is the archive's Santa Fe Trail file — Lincoln's chef's saloon, the 26 dead, and the bullet holes that are still in the tin."]},{"heading":"Why this file matters","paragraphs":["The St. James is the archive's Santa Fe Trail file — the chef's saloon, the 26 documented killings, and the bullet holes that survived the ceiling's replacement.","A hotel that kept its bullet holes keeps its count — the file's suggestion being that the St. James's hold is the ceiling: the 22 holes still in the tin, Room 18's outside door, and the saloon that counted its dead."]}],"name":"St. James Hotel","aliases":[],"type":"HOTEL","type_label":"Hotel","cats":["HAUNTED_LOCATION"],"groups":["hauntings","lodging"],"desc":"Historic hotel with gambling-related ghost folklore.","full_desc":"A hotel in Cimarron, New Mexico, St. James Hotel is filed here for what the record attaches to it. Historic hotel with gambling-related ghost folklore. The name the accounts keep returning to is T.J. Wright. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend, every one filed as account rather than fact. It is closed now; the account outlives the building.","address":null,"city":"Cimarron","county":null,"state":"New Mexico","postal":null,"region":"West","lat":36.508302,"lon":-104.910354,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"CLOSED","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":"Tourism page says currently closed and seeking buyers; its older room-booking prose conflicts with that notice. Confirm with operator.","ownership":null,"website":"https://www.exstjames.com/","phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Pass 1 source-grounded discovery; independent historical verification, coordinates and current access still pending. Confidence measures attribution quality, not paranormal reality.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":43.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":889,"type":"APPARITION","description":"New Mexico Tourism Department recounts a legend connecting room 18 with an alleged spirit named T. J. Wright. St. James Hotel, a hotel in Cimarron, New Mexico, has kept the story in circulation longer than most of its guest registers. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. Sources including 'Haunted New Mexico' keep the claim in circulation. The figure remains the site's most-repeated sighting.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":"T.J. Wright","where":"Room 18","first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.6,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Haunted New Mexico","url":"https://www.newmexico.org/haunted/","publisher":"New Mexico Tourism Department","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"New Mexico Tourism Department recounts a legend connecting room 18 with an alleged spirit named T.J. Wright. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. 'Haunted New Mexico' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. The account appears in 'Haunted New Mexico'. The legend does what legends do — it explains the place in a way the records can't.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Haunted New Mexico","url":"https://www.newmexico.org/haunted/","publisher":"New Mexico Tourism Department","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"entities":[{"name":"T.J. Wright","claimed_identity":"T.J. Wright","verified":null,"summary":"New Mexico Tourism Department recounts a legend connecting room 18 with an alleged spirit named T.J. Wright. The hotel keeps the account on its own record — the sort of haunting a building earns one guest at a time. The report is preserved in sources like 'Haunted New Mexico'. Named presences persist where anonymous reports fade — the file's name here is T.J. Wright.","behavior":"New Mexico Tourism Department recounts a legend connecting room 18 with an alleged spirit named T.J. Wright.","area":"Room 18","first_ref":null,"source":{"name":"Haunted New Mexico","url":"https://www.newmexico.org/haunted/","publisher":"New Mexico Tourism Department","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Haunted New Mexico","url":"https://www.newmexico.org/haunted/","publisher":"New Mexico Tourism Department","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},{"name":"St. James Hotel — official site","url":"https://www.exstjames.com","publisher":"The St. James Hotel","type":"OFFICIAL_SITE","authority":4}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":{"title":"St. James Hotel (Cimarron, New Mexico)","url":"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Hotel_(Cimarron%2C_New_Mexico)","desc":"Historic hotel","extract":"The St. James Hotel, located in historic downtown Cimarron, New Mexico, is a historic hotel, restaurant and saloon. Today, guests can stay at the historic hotel, in either the historic section or in a modern addition. The hotel is in the National Register of Historic Places and is part of the Cimarron Historic District.","img":"https://thumb.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/St._James_Hotel.jpg/330px-St._James_Hotel.jpg?utm_source=en.wikipedia.org&utm_campaign=api&utm_content=thumbnail","score":90,"lat":36.505,"lon":-104.92055556},"counts":{"claims":1,"history":0,"legends":1,"entities":1,"sources":2}}