The 1882 Staab mansion, now a resort, where Julia Staab is called Santa Fe's most famous ghost
330 E Palace Ave, Santa Fe, NM 87501
Research updated June 2026
Age
All Ages
Cost
$$$$
Resort room rates are in the upper range for Santa Fe and vary by season. The Staab House public rooms and bar can be visited by non-guests.
Access
Wheelchair OK
Six landscaped acres with paved paths; some steps in the historic Staab House
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1882 · Staab House Mansion · French Second Empire Architecture · Abraham and Julia Staab · Santa Fe Society History · Historic Resort Conversion
Abraham Staab emigrated from Germany and built a fortune in Santa Fe as a merchant and a supply contractor for the U.S. Army. In 1865 he returned to Germany to marry Julia Schuster and brought her back to New Mexico. In 1882 he completed a three-story brick mansion for the family in the French Second Empire style, said to be the first brick mansion in Santa Fe and furnished with imported European materials. Its third-floor ballroom became a center of Santa Fe society.
The family's prosperity was broken by personal loss. According to family and local history, one of Julia's later children died young, and afterward she fell into a long period of depression and grief, withdrawing from society for much of the rest of her life and rarely seen outside the house. Julia died in 1896 at the age of 52; Abraham died in 1913.
In 1930 the property was bought and developed into a resort. New buildings were added through the following decades, and the original Staab mansion was preserved at the heart of what became La Posada de Santa Fe, today a resort on roughly six acres a short walk from the plaza.
The building's documented history -- a wealthy nineteenth-century household marked by grief -- is the foundation for the ghost story that has made La Posada one of the most talked-about haunted hotels in the Southwest.
Sources
The ghost story at La Posada is unusually well anchored to a single, documented person. According to the most repeated account, the first reported sighting came in the 1970s, when a janitor mopping a floor in the old mansion looked up and saw the figure of a white-haired woman in a Victorian-era gown standing near a fireplace. The figure is identified as Julia Staab, and her former bedroom, now Suite 100, became the center of the reports.
Since then, guests and staff have described a range of quiet phenomena attributed to her: a woman's figure glimpsed in the older parts of the building, lights and fixtures behaving strangely, and a sense of presence in Suite 100. The hotel has at times marketed a themed package around the legend, and the Staab House bar trades openly on the story.
Julia's history was the subject of "American Ghost," a book by her descendant Hannah Nordhaus, and the haunting has been featured in national media including the television programs "Unsolved Mysteries" and "Weird Travels," as well as a High Country News feature on Suite 100. The accounts remain anecdotal, but the combination of a real, traceable woman and decades of consistent reports has given Julia Staab a standing in Santa Fe lore that few hotel ghosts can match.
Notable Entities
Media Appearances
Book a room at the resort, or specifically in or near the historic Staab House at its center. Suite 100, in Julia Staab's former bedroom, is the room most associated with her story; the hotel has at times offered a themed package built around the legend. The Staab House bar is open to non-guests.
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