All happened in the East tower.
One of the great tragedies in Chicago's history, the largest loss of life
It looks like what they're doing is screaming.
Room for 441.
Bodies have intensity to pop up out of the ground.
I'm Mark Seaton, I work as a tour guide for Chicago Hauntings.
Hi my name is Bill Savage I teach Chicago literature history and culture
in the English department Northwestern University and at the Newberry Library of Chicago.
The idea of being haunted by a ghost
usually something horrible has happened there from what I, at least, encountered.
My perspective on these haunted places is of a scientific rationalist.
Chicago's haunted by lots of things that are kind of invisible or
hidden or not thought about. But they're more larger historical events and
socio-economic realities.
There's been reports, definitely between the '60s and '70s
of horrible deaths that have happened there.
There's a few construction workers who died while they were building it.
A few of them plunge to their deaths. There's also been a few suicides that
have happened inside Marina City.
A couple of murders that have happened there as well.
There was a young woman who was stabbed to death.
A man who shot his mother and then he killed himself.
But one of the things that gets to be bizarre about it is that
out of all these reports they've all happened in the east tower.
The question is what's going on in the east tower that causes
all of these strange phenomenon to be happening or these accidental deaths.
They've seen shadow figures inside the towers. There's also reports
of having cold spots inside the tower, people feeling bouts of depression.
Marina City is concrete, literally, concrete evidence of the racism and
white flight that shaped so much social policy in this city in the '40s, '50s, '60s and '70s.
Think about the name of the place, "Marina City." It was designed to be
a self-contained city within the city so that white middle-class people would
have somewhere safe to live.
The fact that you could live in that building, park a car in that building,
doing a shopping in that building, and never have to leave it.
You're not in one of those changing neighborhoods on the south or
west sides where white flight was happening due to white racism.
Obviously one of the great tragedies in Chicago's history the the largest loss
of life in a single incident in history the city.
The Eastland was a boat, it's about the size of a mini cruise ship.
it was docked in front of the Reid Murdoch Building on July 24th 1915.
After the boat capsized, there was 2,500 people
that went into the water, and 844 people lost their lives. Including 17 entire families.
Nobody famous was on that boat. Nobody famous died unlike the Titanic.
It was working-class people immigrants from the Western Electric Company on
Cicero and Berlin.
They brought the bodies to the Second Regiment Armory and that building later on
would become famous because it was turned into Harpo Studios in the 1980s.
For the site people have reported of hearing screams and cries of terror
coming from the river right where the Eastland was docked.
Faces being seen in the water.
There's also reports of people seeing people drowning in the river.
Harpo Studios, where Harpo Studios was, they tore it down last year,
There's reports of seeing ghosts and apparitions inside Harpo Studios.
The most popular one was the Gray Lady, who they believed was one
of the victims at the Eastland tragedy.
But I think should really haunt Chicagoans about that disaster
was how long it was ignored and covered up for almost a
century most of official Chicago ignored that event. it didn't reshape any policy
unlike the Iroquois theater fire which helped create safety standards in public
buildings where you have panic bars. Other tragedies in the city have like
reshaped, literally reshape the world and how we relate to one another in space.
The hauntings that take place there is mostly associated to the Glessner House
It's haunted by the architect Henry Hobson Richardson when he first designed
the building he never got to see the actual house completed. But there have
been reports that people have seen his ghost inside the house.
Also over at Prairie Avenue is where the Fort Dearborn massacre took place back in 1812.
In the 1980s there was a construction crew that came through and
they started doing some digging, they were doing some some road work, and they
ended up unearthing the bodies to the Fort Dearborn massacre and ever
since then there's been reports of spirits and apparitions popping up in the area.
More specifically people have stated of seeing these ghosts running
and what it looks like they're doing is screaming.
Prairie Avenue was a prime example of
first neighborhood being built up by the rich and being an
opulent place. The big industrialists in the city had their mansions down there.
When the Northside became more fashionable in the palmer's move north,
that area and the near south side was abandoned. And it became part of a vice
district, part of a basically ghetto and a slum,
and that deterioration, that class movement across the city
is something that I think should be paid more attention to.
Congress Plaza Hotel is one of the most haunted places in Chicago if not the
most haunted place. There's room for 441.
There have been reports of objects moving around the room on their own
Also people waking up in the middle of
the night to the silhouette of a dark figure of a woman
standing at the foot of their bed. And there's also reports of having the
covers ripped off of them in the middle of the night.
You can stay in the room in room 441.
Yeah, if you'd like.
Well, what should haunt Chicagoans about the Congress Plaza Hotel
is that it was the site of a single longest strike in American history
10 years. The custodial staff were on strike to get a living wage and
they failed. After ten years they were broken.
Chicagoans should be haunted by the class inequity that the labor movement
tried to address back in the 19th century and tries to address today with
the fight for 15.
if you go to Lincoln Park Zoo, more specifically it's the barn that is
haunted there in Lincoln Park Zoo.
The reason why it is haunted is because it's
built on Chicago City Cemetery, Chicago's first cemetery.
All the bodies with a few exceptions were relocated
to other cemeteries because it was low swampy
ground, it wasn't very good. In high water, bodies had a tendency to pop up
out of the ground. So you can see how it could become a an urban legend of haunting.
Dr. Lester Fisher. He was the director there at Lincoln Park Zoo and
when he was first building the barn, they unearthed I think it was ten bodies from
the Chicago city cemetery that were still buried there.
And he contacted the city of Chicago for a few times
I think was for a couple of weeks but
nobody ever responded back to him, so he just took the executive decision and
decided to put the bodies back. And those were the were where the hauntings take
place. People have reported of hearing voices inside the barn. There's also been
reports of seeing people walking around wearing clothing from the early 1800s.
Cogently perhaps Lincoln Park very close to the cemetery area that was the site of the
St. Valentine's Day Massacre.
2122 Clark Street. The garage is gone now.
There's just a parking lot and a lawn that's there.
People have heard the dog
barking who was in the garage at the time during the massacre
They've also reported of hearing machine gunfire coming from the site.
You know, if the St. Valentine's Day Massacre haunts Chicago
it should be about the legacy of organized crime in this town
which includes not just the corruption of
politicians and judges and the police department, but it also includes the kind
of racial violence that we see today, a racialized violence, where there are
neighborhoods that are marginal where crime thrives. Today as we confront a
city where certain neighborhoods are marginalized and more violent than other
neighborhoods where that violence is in part fueled by the drug trade, that's the
same thing that fueled the killings of prohibition.
To this very day, the city is haunted by gang violence in a very literal way.
We don't need guys with fedoras and Thompson submachine guns disappearing
through walls to be haunted by gang violence.
Gang violence is part of the reality of the city