This post was first published on my personal blog but I thought it belonged here as well. My best friend lives in Chicago and while out there on a visit we went on a Chicago ghost tour. This is the review I typed up.
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Original publish date: January 28, 2008
I’m back from my trip to Chicago and all missions were accomplished!
I’d have to say the best part of the trip was the Ghost Tour. It.Was.Awesome. If you’re ever in Chicago (or live in Chicago) be sure to go on it! You learn a ton of history about the area and the tours are always different. When I go back I’m totally going on another tour.
I liked the fact that the tour was educational. You learned about the city, the events that cause Chicago to be haunted and other little random facts. It wasn’t just “This place is haunted. Moving on….” The tour guide and the bus driver really took the time to explain everything and even shared their own experiences.
The first stop on the tour was Death Alley which you can find behind the Oriental Theatre. Before the Oriental stood there, there was The Iroquois Theatre.
The Iroquois Theater Fire in Chicago, Illinois, claimed 602 lives on December 30, 1903. It is, as of 2008, the single-building fire in U.S. history with the most fatalities, claiming over 100 more fatalities than the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston. The Iroquois Theater, at 24-28 West Randolph Street, was advertised as “absolutely fireproof.” The theatre opened on November 23rd and burned 37 days later on December 30th. Over 1,900 people were in attendance at a matinee showing of the popular musical Mr. Bluebeard.
It’s said that you can at times smell smoke, hear screaming, feel cold spots and even actually see apparitions. Death Alley is where around 100 of those that perished jumped to their deaths. When they reached the window, they expected to see a fire escape but it hadn’t been installed. Some of the people who jumped managed to survive because they landed on the bodies of those who jumped before them.
The next stop on our tour was the location of the Eastland Disaster. It took place on the Chicago River when the Eastland capsized. 841 people, including 22 families, died. Some of the reasons for this disaster was the fact the ship was past capacity with 2,500 onboard and what the crew did to try and stabilize the ship and allow more “room” for the passengers.
The crew attempted to stabilize the ship by admitting water to its ballast tanks, but to little avail. Sometime in the next 15 minutes, perhaps owing to a passing canoe race on the river side of the ship, a number of passengers rushed to the port side, and at 7:28am, the Eastland lurched sharply to port and then rolled completely onto its side, coming to rest on the river bottom, which was only 20 feet below the surface. Many other passengers had already moved below decks on this relatively cool and damp morning to warm up before the departure. Consequently, hundreds were trapped inside by the water and the sudden rollover; others were crushed by heavy furniture, including pianos, bookcases, and tables. Although the ship was only 20 feet from the wharf, and in spite of the quick response by the crew of a nearby vessel, the Kenosha, which came alongside the hull to allow those stranded on the capsized vessel to leap to safety, a total of 841 passengers and four crew members died in the disaster. Many were young women and children.
Tied into this haunting is the haunting of Harpo Studios. At the time, the studio was home to the National Guard Armory which was used as a make shift morgue. Obviously we weren’t allowed inside Harpo Studios but the tour guide told us about the various hauntings like that of the “Grey Lady” who’s been caught on video. Oprah did a show in 1996 about the haunting at her studio but doesn’t discuss the topic anymore.
After that we headed to one of the most famous hauntings in Chicago, Hull House. This is where you can see the Devil baby! The story of Hull House and the Devil Baby is the inspiration for “Rosemary’s Baby.” Interesting eh? According to prairieghosts.com:
Hull House has long been known as a pioneering effort in social equality. Jane Addams and Ellen Starr Gates opened the house in 1889 to educate and improve the lot of the newly arrived European immigrants. Jane Addams became the “voice of humanity” on the West Side, enriching the lives of many unfortunate people at the house.
You could say Hull House was the early start of foster care/social services. Hull House is rarely remembered for that part of its history. Instead it’s known worldwide as the location of the “Devil Baby.”
Hull House received its greatest notoriety when it was alleged to be the refuge of the Chicago “devil baby”. This child was supposedly born to a devout Catholic woman and her atheist husband and was said to have pointed ears, horns, scale-covered skin and a tail. According to the story, the young woman had attempted to display a picture of the Virgin Mary in the house but her husband had torn it down. He stated that he would rather have the Devil himself in the house that the picture. When the woman had become pregnant, the Devil Baby had been their curse. After enduring numerous indignities because of the child, the father allegedly took it to Hull House.
It’s said that sometimes the Devil Baby will appear in pictures taken of the upstairs windows. According to the legend, that’s where the baby was kept until it died. Did I manage to snag a photo of the infamous Devil Baby? You’ll have to wait and see!
The final stop of our tour was the location of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. At least what’s left of the location. The building where the massacre took place is no longer standing but you can see the tarline on the building next door of where the roof was at the time. In case you don’t know what happened or WTF I’m talking about…
On the morning of Thursday, February 14, 1929, six members of George ‘Bugs’ Moran’s gang and a mechanic who happened to be at the scene were lined up against the rear inside wall of the garage of the SMC Cartage Company in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago’s North Side. They were then shot and killed by four members of Capone’s gang (two of them dressed as police officers). When one of the dying men, Frank Gusenberg, was asked who shot him, he replied, “Nobody shot me.” Capone himself had arranged to be on vacation in Florida at the time.
Imagine that! Capone was on vacation and out of town! Shocker right?
Anyway, that ended our tour! I really didn’t mean for this post to be this long but I wanted to try and include as much as I could about the stories. If you’d like to learn more about the spots the tour took us to, I recommend picking up Chicago Haunts: Ghost lore of the Windy City. The book is written by Ursula Bielski whose husband was the tour guide. I bought the book while in Chicago to have something to read on my flight back home and it’s really interesting.
