Update

Sorry for the recent silence - we've been occupied with doing some intensive research inside of a certain famously haunted place. We can't talk about it much yet; this is one of those investigations where loose lips might sink ships. But it'll be worth the wait - the information (and evidence) that we're getting on this place is pretty awesome!

Also, don't forget that next Saturday, the 26th, is the annual Bughouse Square Debates in Bughouse Square, on Clark just above Chicago Ave. Things usually pick up around 11am! I'll sure be there - in fact, it's sort of my bachelor party, since I'm getting married the next day.

The book should hit stores in the next couple of weeks - it's at the printers now!

The Fool Killer Submarine

One of our favorite topics around here is The Foolkiller, the submarine found in the river in late 1915 that contained the skulls of a dead man and his dog. How old the sub was, who the guy was, and what became of the thing, are some of the city's enduring mysteries. Here's an original ad from the Tribune that we dug up:



Yes, the thing was actually on display in the loop - dead bodies and all! Inflation has certainly gotten bad lately - the goodman theatre offered to show me a skull lately, and the price has has gone up from a dime to $500!

Anyway, the section on the submarine in our book is, by FAR, the most extensive study on the thing ever published, examining all of the claims, myths, and theories that have been put forth over the years. We haven't solved all of the mysteries - but we have some good ideas!

The book is now Available for pre-order! and will be released very soon!

The Book!

Weird Chicago:The Book is now available for pre-order!

Featuring fresh takes on Chicago's famous ghosts - and a whole bunch of new ghosts that have never been written about before - in addition to history that will fascinate and surprise even the most accomplished Chicago historians!




Pre-order a limited edition copy signed and numbered by all three authors now!

Alligators in the River!

Well, how about this?

Alligator found in Chicago River.

I thought the killer bees would get here first, honestly.

Forgotten Assassin of a Forgotten President

In the 1860s, a man named Charles Guiteau came to Chicago to work as a shystering lawyer. Previously, he had been living with a free love community in New York; their philosophy had been that every man was married to every woman and that everyone should love everyone else. After meeting Guiteau (who the nicknamed Charles Get Out), they changed their philosophy to "everyone should love everyone else except for Charles Guiteau."

By the 1870s, Guiteau, having annoyed the legal profession sufficiently, was living on Dearborn street, right next to what is now the Excalibur club, and working as a preacher. He claimed to have discovered that Jesus had returned to Earth in A.D. 70 (an idea he stole wholesale from the free love sect), and preached in a handful of downtown churches.

When THAT didn't work out, he drifted into politics, and, having made a couple of speeches supporting James Garfield for President, decided that Garfield should make him Consul to Paris. When the Garfield people laughed him out of the White House, Guiteau decided that his best course of action was to shoot Garfield in the chest. And so he did.

His trial was bizarre enough to become the social event of the season. Guiteau would pass notes to random spectators asking for advice, gave his testimony in the form of epic poems (having decided to become a poet), and claimed that HE didn't kill Garfield - the doctors did. This was probably true (Garfield ended up getting poked in the liver a few times while doctors tried to find the bullet. Alexander Graham Bell invented a metal detector to find it, but it didn't work; by the time any of the resident geniuses realized that the metal bed was probably screwing it up, it was too late). But it didn't get Guiteau off the hook - he was sentenced to hang. On the scaffold, he sang a song even worse than the one Carl Wanderer sang on the scaffold in Chicago a few decades later - one of his own composition called "I'm a Going to the Lordy."

We've pinpointed the locations of three building around downtown Chicago where Guiteau lived - one was near Haymarket Square, another was where the Dearborn St. post office is today, and one is next to the Excalibur club. As far as I know so far, none are still standing, but I'm not sure of this yet.

John Wilkes Booth also lived in Chicago briefly (see previous post). Leon Czolgosz, McKinley's assassin, visited Chicago briefly to meet with anarchist Emma Goldman at her home in 1901.

A Holmes mystery solved!

One of the great mysteries of the H.H. Holmes story revolves around Benjamin Pietzel, Holmes' accomplice who became a victim, along with three of his children, as dramatically portrayed in "Devil in the White City." THe mystery? How do you pronounce his name?

Documentaries about Holmes tend to be all over the map here - Pihtzuhl, Pytz-zuhl, Pit-uh-zull, etc. Spelling vary between Pitezel and Pietzel.

We can now confidently say that it's pronounced Pyte-zuhl. How do we know? We hosted three of his great-granddaughters, two of whom are still named Pietzel, on our tour this past Friday! Pictures and more are forthcoming.

The Courthouse and Gallows - Continued!

Even decades after the Chicago courthouse building had stopped being used as a court, after the jail was torn down, and after its days as the "Hotel Hoover" were over, this pile of lumber still sat in the basement:



It was the old city gallows. The shot above is how they appeared in 1950; they would remain there more than twenty-five years after that.

There was a reason they had to be kept around: one criminal, "Terrible Tommy" O'Connor, had been sentenced to hang before making a daring escape shortly before his scheduled execution. A few years later the city switched to the electric chair, but O'Connor's sentence specified that he had to be hanged within the vicinity of the courthouse and jail, and if they ever caught, they were going to have to do exactly that!

Lawyers and other such geeks enjoyed arguing about what would REALLY happen if O'Connor were caught up through the 70s - few believed that they'd actually hang him in what was, by then, a parking lot. A judge finally ruled that O'Connor was probably dead and that the gallows should be sold to the highest bidder.

O'Connor was never caught, but a picture of him is now up in the lobby of the courthouse building! Watch for our new courthouse/gallows podcast next weeks!

Forgotten Chicago Hauntings - The Icebox Ghost

In September, 1902, the Ward family had what must have been one tense family reunion at Mrs. Ward's house on Polk St near Halsted. Two months before, her son, Thomas, had threatened to kill her and even fired a gun at her, hitting her in the arm. At the reunion, he was up to his old tricks, beating her and threatening to kill her, until his brother pull a gun and shot him in the face.

A couple of months later, his ghost began to be spotted sitting on an empty ice box on the porch, which was visible from Blue Island Ave. Crowds would gather to see it, and, by the time it made the papers, onlookers were simply saying "Tommy's on the ice box again!"

The sightings had apparently stopped by 1903 - we haven't found a case of anyone seeing it since then.

Or have we?

The section of Polk and Blue Island where the ghost was seen no longer exists. Currently, the spot where the house stood seems to be right where the student center at the University of Illinois now stands - right next to Hull House.

The Wizard of River West

Here's a guy I see all the time around the River West / West Town area. Best facial hair in the neighborhood, and a really nice fellow:

Book Update!

I'm now going through the complete manuscript, adding sidebars, making corrections, and adding sections here and there. It's going to be a long weekend of "WAIT! We forgot to mention Thomas Neill Cream!" and frenzied typing.

Then, after that, it'll be a brief period of cutting. The manuscript currently clocks in at more than 1100 pages in standard MS form!

Obviously, the final book won't be that long - anything that just won't fit will end up here on the blog!

Cap Streeter's Funeral

George Wellinging "Cap" Streeter ran his boat ashore n 1888, started charging people money to dump their garbage near the boat, and eventually created a 186 acre landfill that we now know as Streeterville. He spent more than 30 years battling with the city over ownership of his new land, which he claimed as his own country.

We're finishing up the book now, and I've been trying to find a good source on the story that he put a curse on the land on his deathbed. Other than some stories that his last words may have been "damn ye," I haven't found much yet. I maintain, in any case, that if he DID put a curse on the land, he must have sucked at cursing things. Sure, there have been some odd deaths in the neighborhood, but no more than in any other neighborhood when you get right down to it. I'm starting to think that the curse is one of those stories that someone made up circa the 1970s - there're many such stories floating around in the realm of Chicago ghostlore. Most of them are going in the book anyway - people would throw a fit if we left a couple of them out - but we try to flag the stories that we have our doubts on.

However, in my digging, I DID run across this terrific picture of Cap Streeter's funeral, with his plug hat resting on the coffin:

Like going back in time

Last night, we had something on the tour that sure doesn't happen every day: A Johnny Depp sighting.

One of the blocks down which we often travel has been rebuilt to look about as it did in 1934 for the filming of Public Enemies, a movie about John Dillinger, who was shot and killed on the block in the alley near the Biograph Theatre. I wasn't on the tour last night, but apparently the bus went by and got a brief glimpse of filming in the infamous alley.

I've gotta say, the attention to detail on the set is FANTASTIC. They even went to the trouble of printing up old menus to put in the windows, and the barber shop has old detective story magazines sitting around! We rounded up a whole slew of set pictures this morning:



See our whole set of set pictures on flicker!