Woodstock Historic Town Square · James Dacey execution (1886)
American Ghost Walks is a multi-city ghost-tour operator, run under Huberty LLC DBA American Ghost Walks, with programs across Illinois, Wisconsin, and other states. The Woodstock, Illinois program is a single 90-minute walking tour developed by paranormal researcher Allison Jornlin, working with original Woodstock tour host and magician Joe Diamond. The operator describes conducting on-location research through local archives and interviews with business owners.
The tour meets in front of Starbucks at 129 W Van Buren St, near Woodstock's historic Town Square, and runs Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 PM, rain or shine, for a ticket price of $35.08 per person including taxes and fees. Minimum age is 13. The route covers the Old Courthouse, where the operator's page states convicted murderer James Dacey was imprisoned in a basement cell, tried in the courtroom above, and executed on July 22, 1886 after roughly two years awaiting his sentence; the City of Woodstock's own history of the courthouse dates McHenry County's only legal hanging, Dacey's, to July 16, 1886. The route continues to the Woodstock Opera House, the Classic Cinemas Woodstock Theatre, and the Main Street PourHouse tavern.
Sources
- https://www.americanghostwalks.com/tour/woodstock-ghost-walk
- https://www.americanghostwalks.com/woodstock
ApparitionsUnexplained SoundsResidual Haunting
According to the operator's account, James Dacey howled through the night for the two years he awaited execution in the Old Courthouse's basement cell, waking nearby residents; some visitors are told he never left. The tour frames the Woodstock Opera House as the town's most-haunted location, without detailing a specific account on the public page beyond a reference to a figure the operator calls Elvira.
Smaller stops carry their own reported activity: Liquid Blues is described as home to a playful, unnamed presence; Down2Earth, a New Age shop, is said by the operator to carry on a family tradition tied to a resident spirit; and Town Square Park, the filming location for the movie Groundhog Day, is tied by the operator to older stories about a since-buried medicinal spring on the site. The operator's marketing also references broader local strangeness — UFO reports and the Bull Valley Monster legend — as background color for the area rather than as tour stops.
All of this is the tour operator's own narrative material, included here to describe what the tour covers, not as an endorsement of any specific claim.
Notable Entities
James Dacey
