HauntBound archive · catalog record
Reported phenomena, as catalogued
+ 2 further entries on record
American Ghost Walks' flagship Chicago program
Congress Plaza Hotel, 520 S. Michigan Avenue, Chicago, IL 60605
Research updated September 2026
Age
10+
Cost
$$
Walking tours $34.99-$49 + tax; bus tours $59-$69 + tax. Booking required online.
Access
Accessibility not stated
Sidewalks and curbs in the Loop and adjacent neighborhoods; bus tours seated
Equipment
Photos OK
Eastland Disaster · 1893 World's Columbian Exposition · H.H. Holmes Murders · Chicago City Cemetery
The Chicago Hauntings program was developed by ghostlore historian Ursula Bielski, who has run Chicago ghost tours for more than two decades. The chicagohauntings.com brand is now operated by American Ghost Walks, a Wisconsin-based company that runs similarly themed programs in multiple Midwest cities.
The flagship Original Chicago Hauntings Ghost Tour is a three-hour evening bus tour that departs from the Congress Plaza Hotel at 520 S. Michigan Avenue, an 1893-era property completed in time for the World's Columbian Exposition. The tour visits the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, the original Chicago City Cemetery in Lincoln Park, the Iroquois Theater fire site, and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre site. Other programs include the Lincoln Park Hauntings Ghost Tour & Hunt walking tour; the Devil in the White City Bus Tour, focused on H.H. Holmes and the 1893 fair; the Resurrection Mary 4-Hour Bus Tour, which traces the southwest-suburban legend along Archer Avenue; and the Prairie Avenue Ghost Hunt walking tour.
Walking tours are priced at $34.99, the flagship bus tour at $49, and the longer themed bus tours at $59 to $69. Reservations are made through the company's TripWorks booking widget; phone bookings are available at 1-833-GHOST13 (1-833-446-7813).
Sources
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.
Notable Entities
A three-hour evening walking tour through the Loop and adjacent neighborhoods, covering 19th-century murders, the Eastland disaster, and reported activity at the Congress Plaza Hotel and other downtown landmarks. Departs Saturdays at 7 pm from the Congress Plaza Hotel.
A two-hour evening walking tour of Lincoln Park, the former site of the Chicago City Cemetery, with handheld investigation equipment provided to participants.
A three-hour bus tour tracing the locations associated with Erik Larson's nonfiction account of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the murders attributed to H.H. Holmes.
A four-hour bus tour focused on the Resurrection Cemetery legend and the southwest-suburban hauntings linked to the Archer Avenue corridor.
A 60-plus-minute Thursday-evening walking ghost hunt along Chicago's Prairie Avenue 'Millionaire's Row,' the late-19th-century mansion district that once housed the Glessners, Marshall Field, and other Gilded Age industrialists.
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Site of the Iroquois Theater fire; the alley behind it was once nicknamed Death Alley.
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