The Most Haunted Places in Illinois

Ranked

1. 

   1. Peoria State Hospital (Bartonville Asylum) Bartonville · Asylum / Hospital · Family Comfort: Low

   Peoria State Hospital opened in Bartonville in 1902 as a psychiatric institution under reformer Dr. George Zeller and closed in 1973; most of its sixty-three buildings have since been demolished. Zeller recorded that when a burial-corps patient known as Old Book died in 1910, staff and patients reported seeing him weeping at his own funeral. Visitors to the surviving buildings describe a girl in a former basement and heavy footsteps in the old men's ward.

   4 original accounts · documented across 3 decades, 1900-2000 · retold in 5 later publications

2. 

   2. Bachelor's Grove Forest Preserve Midlothian · Outdoor / Natural Site · Family Comfort: High

   Bachelor's Grove Forest Preserve is the wooded Cook County land around the cemetery of the same name, reached by a quarter-mile trail from the Rubio Woods lot after the Midlothian Turnpike was rerouted decades ago. Visitors on that abandoned road report a phantom sedan and horse-drawn vehicles appearing and vanishing without sound. Others describe a white farmhouse with a woman on its porch that disappears when approached, along with lights in the woods at dusk.

   4 original accounts · documented across 6 decades, 1950-2015 · retold in 4 later publications

3. 

   3. McPike Mansion Alton · Haunted House / Historic Home · Family Comfort: Low

   Alton mayor and horticulturist Henry Guest McPike built this sixteen-room Italianate mansion between 1869 and 1871 and lived there until his death in 1910; the house sat empty for decades before new owners began restoring it in 1994. Guides describe a dozen presences, most often a woman named Sarah, believed to have worked as a household servant. Visitors to the wine cellar report cold spots and the smell of flowers with no source nearby.

   3 original accounts · documented across 2 decades, 1994-2017 · retold in 5 later publications

4. 

   4. Roff House (Watseka Manor) Watseka · Haunted House / Historic Home · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Built in 1868 by Spiritualists Asa and Anna Roff, this house became the center of the 1878 Watseka Wonder, when twelve-year-old Lurancy Vennum reportedly took on the identity of the Roffs' late daughter Mary, dead since 1865, and lived as Mary for roughly fourteen weeks before returning to her own family. Guests today report doors found open that were shut the night before and sudden cold drafts in the upstairs corridor.

   3 original accounts · documented across 3 decades, 1877-2013 · retold in 4 later publications

5. 

   5. Rock Island Arsenal, Quarters One Rock Island · Museum / Historical Site · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Quarters One was completed in 1872 on Rock Island's Arsenal Island for Brigadier General Thomas J. Rodman, the arsenal's first commanding officer, and remains the second-largest federal residence in the country at 51 rooms. The US Army now partners with a local paranormal group on monthly investigations of the house, one of the few standing paranormal programs run by the US military. After recent occupants reported unusual activity, an earlier investigation there documented doors opening on their own, alarms triggering simultaneously, and unidentified figures on video that an investigator on the case could not explain, and a separate 2011 investigation recorded cold spots, equipment shutting off, and a flashlight that seemed to respond to questions. During a 2021 ride-along, an investigator recounted the first full-body apparition she had ever seen in the house, in the basement, and a staff member described her grandchildren hearing and being addressed by a singing female figure in an upstairs room.

   5 original accounts · documented across 2 decades, 2011-2021 · retold in 4 later publications

6. 

   6. Old Joliet Prison Joliet · Prison / Reformatory · Family Comfort: Moderate

   Old Joliet Prison opened in 1858, built partly of limestone quarried by the inmates who constructed it, and operated for more than a century before closing in 2002. Its residents included Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb in the 1920s and John Wayne Gacy in the 1980s. Tour guides and visitors report phantom footsteps echoing along the cell block galleries and sudden cold spots inside individual cells, concentrated now in the storm-damaged administration building undergoing restoration.

   2 original accounts · documented across 4 decades, 1858-2018 · retold in 5 later publications

7. 

   7. Mineral Springs Hotel Alton · Haunted Hotel / Inn · Family Comfort: Moderate

   The Mineral Springs Hotel began in 1914 as a planned ice warehouse for the Luer Brothers; when construction crews struck a natural spring, the project became a mineral-water resort hotel instead, and the building later housed author Troy Taylor's American Hauntings shop and Oddities Museum. Clarence Blair, an 18-year-old sheet metal worker from Granite City, drowned in the hotel's pool during a swimming lesson. A guest identified in later reporting as Lou Harwood is said to have shot himself in the hotel bar on his checkout day, after leaving letters for family and friends, in front of a bartender and a janitor. Tour groups report a man matching Blair's description at the pool's edge and describe being touched near the water, and after the hotel became a shopping mall in the 1970s, employees reported a man who vanished on approach and smelled of alcohol.

   3 original accounts · documented across 4 decades, 1913-2019 · retold in 2 later publications

8. 

   8. James M. Nederlander Theatre (Iroquois Theatre Fire Site) Chicago · Theater / Performance Venue · Family Comfort: Moderate

   HauntBound identified two distinct published accounts at this working theater, across four kinds of published source. Nine later publications retell those accounts. Reported phenomena include cold spots and disembodied voices.

   2 original accounts · documented in 2005 · retold in 9 later publications

9. 

   9. The Drake Hotel Chicago · Haunted Hotel / Inn · Family Comfort: High

   The Drake Hotel opened on Chicago's Magnificent Mile on New Year's Eve 1920, designed by the firm of Marshall and Fox, and has operated as a luxury hotel for more than a century, now under the Hilton flag. Its best known ghost story, the Lady in Red, holds that a guest jumped from the tenth floor during the opening-night gala after finding her fiance with another woman; Chicago historian Adam Selzer searched contemporary newspapers for the incident and found no record of it. The hotel's one documented violent death came on January 19, 1944, when a woman in a black coat shot society matron Adele Born Williams in her eighth-floor suite; Williams died the next day and her killer was never caught. Later paranormal accounts describe activity on the eighth floor tied to the unsolved case, along with reports of unexplained photographs and cold spots elsewhere in the hotel.

   3 original accounts · documented in 1920 · retold in 5 later publications

   Disputed by a historical authority Chicago historian and researcher Adam Selzer, investigating the hotel's most-repeated ghost story -- a 1920 New Year's Eve suicide -- found no period newspaper record of the death and no one who claims to have actually seen the 'Woman in Red' apparition said to result from it.

10. 10. White Cemetery (Cuba Road) Barrington · Cemetery / Burial Ground · Family Comfort: High

    White Cemetery on Cuba Road traces to an 1847 burial and was formally chartered in 1855 by early Cuba Township settlers; the township took over its upkeep in 1983 after years of neglect. Visitors since the 1960s have reported glowing white orbs over headstones and hazy figures passing through the iron fence. The best-known account describes a black car that turns into the entrance late at night and disappears before reaching the gate.

    1 original account · documented across 6 decades, 1820-2011 · retold in 5 later publications

    Disputed by a historical authority A paranormal-research organization's own investigation traced the cemetery's 'one-armed man' legend to a local schoolteacher who originated the story in the early 1960s, and its 'self-standing headstone' legend to schoolchildren who repeatedly tipped over a loose marker in 1971.

Superlatives