DuPage County's First City · Joseph Naper Settlement · North Central College (1870) · 1946 Naperville Train Disaster
Naperville, Illinois, was settled in 1831 by Joseph Naper and is the oldest continuously incorporated city in DuPage County. US Ghost Adventures' Naperville program, branded on-site as Naperthrill, operates a nightly, roughly 1-hour, 1-mile walking tour meeting at the Spirit of the American Navy statue in Burlington Square Park, 317 N Ellsworth St. The route covers the Old Nichols Library building, now serving the community as a restaurant; Jefferson Hill, the former home of Oliver Julian "Judd" Kendall, son of Naperville mayor Francis Kendall, now a small commercial block; and Seybert Residence Hall at North Central College, whose campus dates to 1870.
The operator's broader marketing also references the real, documented 1946 Naperville train disaster (a Burlington Railroad collision that killed dozens of passengers) and the unsolved 1976 murder of 16-year-old Pamela Maurer, posthumously linked by investigators to convicted-and-deceased Illinois serial killer Bruce Lindahl, tied by the operator's marketing to the site of a former downtown bowling alley; that material is not part of the tour's three featured stops and is not reproduced in this listing. Naperville has multiple parallel ghost-tour programs; American Ghost Walks (americanghostwalks.com) runs a separate, unrelated Naperville program led by Diane Ladley, already a distinct listing in this corpus.
Sources
- https://usghostadventures.com/naperville-ghost-tour/
- https://www.getyourguide.com/us-ghost-adventures-s157625/
ApparitionsPhantom VoicesPhantom SoundsCold SpotsObject Movement
According to the operator, Old Nichols Library is haunted by a young female spirit associated with an unsolved local case, and by the ghosts of individuals whose graves near the site were never relocated. Jefferson Hill is described as haunted by the spirit of Oliver Julian "Judd" Kendall, a Naperville World War I hero interred in France whose apparition is said to have returned to patrol his former family home, now a row of shops. Seybert Residence Hall at North Central College is tied by the operator to two haunts unsettling residents: an unnamed "shadowed brute" and a former priest whose story is not detailed on the operator's page.
All of the above is the operator's own marketing and narrative framing, not documented history independently verified by HauntBound, and is included here only to describe what the tour covers. Real named individuals referenced in the operator's broader Naperville marketing — including a 1976 murder victim and a deceased convicted serial killer — are not part of the tour's three featured stops and are not reproduced in this listing as haunting claims.
Notable Entities
Oliver Julian "Judd" Kendall
