Chicago Hauntings Ghost Tours

The Original Chicago Hauntings Tour treats the city's haunted reputation as a layered archive. Stops include the Congress Plaza Hotel, where guests have for decades reported a small figure on the upper floors and unexplained noises in Room 441. The narrative places these accounts against the hotel's documented history, including its construction for the 1893 fair and its long use as a political convention hub.

The Eastland disaster is a recurring touchpoint. On July 24, 1915, the SS Eastland rolled onto its side in the Chicago River while loaded with Western Electric employees on a company outing; 844 people died, including 22 entire families. Tour stops along the river relay reports collected from later occupants of the buildings used as makeshift morgues — most prominently Harpo Studios, formerly the Second Regiment Armory, where staff in the 1990s described phantom voices and footsteps.

The bus tours expand the geography. The Devil in the White City route follows the Englewood neighborhood where Henry Howard Holmes operated his Castle, a building used to defraud and murder women during the 1893 exposition. The Resurrection Mary tour traces Archer Avenue from the Willowbrook Ballroom site to Resurrection Cemetery, where the legend of a hitchhiking young woman in a white dress has been documented in newspapers since the 1930s. Guides quote the original sources rather than embellishing them.