Photograph by Thomas Crone
About 4,200 people will make the trip through Downtown’s historic, impeccably appointed Campbell House Museum this year, taking a docent-lead tour that will sweep them back into a tony version of the 19th century. But it appears that one particular visitor is proving the most unusual of them all, leaving Museum employees vexed as to when their next visit will take place.
Here’s the backstory: over the past seven or so weeks, somebody, either solo, or as part of a team, has been leaving half-dollar coins at the Campbell House. At first, Museum director Andy Hahn simply tossed them into regular bank deposits, not giving them a particular extra thought. But then they kept coming. There have been no set patterns in the way the coins have arrived, though a couple of very broad trends can be discerned. For example, at the beginning of the movement, another coin was often added; it was a modest penny that got him thinking a month back.
“With the extra penny that made it 51 cents,” he reasons. “And 51 is a very important number at the Campbell House, as the place was built in 1851.”
That idea, though, would get squashed along with others, as the half-dollars started arriving without any complementary change. An early one was painted gold, though the job had been done some time back, with the paint all but flecked away. Two then arrived with Sharpie marks through them. Then came a run of unadorned coins, including three that appeared eight days back, with all three coins appearing on that Sunday at different times of the day.
Adding to the intrigue was this: this past Wednesday, when Look/Listen visited the Museum to check up on the story, another coin was sitting on a top step. Sure’s shootin’, there it was, just sitting on the edge of the step, placed by someone who actually walked up to the Museum’s front door, or by a person who reached through the small fence alongside the YMCA parking lot.
At the moment this recent drop was noticed, two distinct expressions came from the Museum’s toppers. Director Hahn was almost celebratory, with an excited “There’s one right now!” Meanwhile, assistant director Shelley Satke was crestfallen. “No, no, no,” she sighed. “This morning, when I got to work, I made it a point to stop right here and look.”
To date, Satke’s been shut out in the search for the coins, and it’s not too much to suggest that she’s as mystified by her own not finding them, as she is by their appearance at all. Hahn’s scored a few of the finds, as has Lindsey Davis, who lives on the property in the carriage house, and works the weekend shift. She found a run of three coins on a recent weekend. One of the prime spots for drops is just outside of her residence, on a small table that sits just inside the fence line.
“We don’t know where they’re coming from,” Hahn says, “but we do know where they’re appearing.”
Because the coins come throughout the day, the mystery is more quirky, still. There are possible explanations on who might be a culprit. For example, the YMCA is just next door. Someone going in for their daily cardio might be feeling puckish. Or it could be a resident from the Terra Cotta Lofts and/or the Annex Lofts, which are literally across the street; using a little imagination, one can picture a loft dweller dropping the coins by, then sitting in their loft, Rear Window-style, while waiting for the bemused staffers to come across the donations. A charter school across the street to the east is another direction, though that one seems a bit more of a stretch. Another interesting—if at first blush, unlikely—option is the local homeless population, which is a large one in the Campbell’s western corner of Downtown, as homeless residents have been known to come in for both tours and to make donations. As the building has no security cameras, that aspect of surveillance is out.
Now, before this conversation takes place solely on our mortal plane, one needs to consider the fact that the Campbell House—well before Museum was attached to its name—had a history of deaths take place inside its walls and gardens.
“Oodles,” Hahn says, when asked of passings on the property. “Dozens. Family members, employees of the family, a couple Museum workers, as well; one in the ’40s and another in the ’50s.”
The spectral action at the Campbell House has ultimately been of the fairly mild variety. While the over-caffeinated Ghost Adventures crew might not find much during their patented, all-night lock-ups, local ghost hunters have been an active presence over the past couple of years. Since an initial group came in for a study about 18 months back, word spread of their investigation and a handful of other regional groups started coming in. Each particular ghosting club found something of interest, though, at this point, Hahn feels it’s unlikely that “we’re going to get a whole lot more out of that.
“This place has had people coming through it like this for over 70 years,” continues Hahn, who’s worked at the Campbell for nine of those years. “There’s been a long history of people who’ve had a chance to have experiences here.”
Both Satke and Hahn—along with volunteers and other staffers—have heard creaks and footsteps in the building after hours or when no tours were taking place. Over the years, one former intern reported seeing an actual presence in the space. And a tour-goer was given a mild nudge (as opposed to a shove) to the back, again suggesting that the Campbell House ghosts are among the civil and mannered variety. Interestingly, some of the deceased former residents still get mail at the building.
In yet another wrinkle to our tale, Hahn and Satke keep a handful of letters in the office, ones sent to various Campbell family members over the years. Almost always written in the same hand, the letters have been addressed to different Campbells, including birthday cards and anniversary notices. These pieces of correspondence have been postmarked locally, but no further clues exist to connect the letter-writing prankster to the one currently dropping half-dollars.
In some respects, the arrival of the coins could be some of small benefit to the place. True of many museums, the Campbell House could always afford to have more tourists and more donations. And the attention to the space from such an unanticipated “campaign” could bring a few more people into the venue for the first time. (As a persona aside, this writer had never been inside the Campbell, despite walking between the YMCA and the Shell Building on dozens, if not hundreds, of occasions in the 1980s. It’s quite a place, a real corker of an example of upper-crust STL living conditions in our city’s heyday. If you go, be sure to ask about the photos of the Campbell men as members of Yale’s Skull & Bones society.) Hahn respects the fact that the most cynical among us might question such a quirky phenomenon, wondering aloud if there’s some bizarre publicity stunt at work here.
“We can only tell you what we’ve found,” asserts Hahn.
To which Satke adds, “And if we did do something like that, it’d be... better.”
With due respect, the arrival of mystery half-dollars is kind of cool, really. Weird, fun, odd, even a bit “sinister,” as they found the trend in the earliest weeks.
To follow the mystery, there are three ways to keep up via new media. The Campbell House blog’s at: campbellhousemuseum.wordpress.com. They’re on Facebook under Campbell House Museum and also take part in Twitter, via @campbellmuseum.
Whatever you, no copycat antics, please! Whether this be an art-school project or simply a bored loft dweller having a lark, let’s collectively enjoy this puzzle in pure form for as long as this mystery plays out.
