When Hannah Nordhaus was a teenager, she would tell her friends about her great-great-grandmother Julia Staab, a pioneer of the Western frontier, whose ghost was often spotted in the hotel that used to be her mansion in Santa Fe. “I thought it was an exciting story, but I never believed in her ghost,” Nordhaus told Pasatiempo.

Staab, who died in 1896, began appearing on La Posada’s staircase and in her second-floor suite in the 1970s. Guests and staff spotted her or heard her speak. The dark rumors that arose around her, however, didn’t have much in common with what was known in the family. As far as the younger generations understood, Staab was a German-Jewish immigrant who became a member of high society, and her husband, Abraham Staab, was a powerful and generous businessman. Together they raised a large family. But local Santa Fe explanations for Julia’s restless spirit paint Abraham as a monster who kept his wife chained to a radiator because she went crazy after the death of her baby. Some speculate that she committed suicide — possibly with an overdose of laudanum — or even that Abraham murdered her.

Nordhaus grew up in Washington, D.C., and spent summers in New Mexico, where much of her extended family still lived. After college she worked as a ski instructor in Taos before eventually settling in Boulder. She is the author of the bestselling novel The Beekeeper’s Lament. A few years ago, while visiting her family’s home near Las Vegas, New Mexico, she came across a history written in 1980 by her great-aunt Lizzie. “It was this crazy story about my family that was a lot more complex than I’d been led to think,” she said. “It’s a story of sadness, madness, and forbidden love, drug addition, suicide, knives to the bosom, disinheritance, lawsuits, and family feuds.”