Hello and welcome back to the
Most Amazing Channel on the Internet – I am your host Rebecca Felgate and today we
are talking about the Top 10 Chicago Urban Legends.
I love me some Chicago!
I went a few winters ago and want to go again soon for some summer adventures!
Any of you guys from Chicago?
Let me know what City you’re from in the comments section down below.
OKAY 10 - Haunted Oprah Show The Ophrah Winfrey Show is famously filmed
in the Windy City near the spot of one of the worst boating disasters of all time, which
resulted in the largest loss of life from an incident in the great lakes.
In 1915, passengers were boarding the SS Eastland which was docked in the Chicago River.
Workers from Hawthorne Woks were off to a picnic.
A full boat caused weight distribution issues and the boat listed to one side, rolling.
This trapped some passengers below decks, others were crushed by heavy furniture.
844 passengers and four crew died in the disaster.
The dead were taken to a nearby armory building, which served as an impromptu morgue.
Fast forward decades and this building is now a warehouse and film studio where the
Oprah Winfrey show is filmed.
Many members of the show's crew gave reported seeing and hearing strange things in the building.
There have been reports of screams from the doomed passengers, and even some apparition
sightings.
The most frequently spotted ghost is the Grey Lady, who is often seen stalking the halls.
9 - 12,000 Corpses Under Lincoln Park Parks.
Great.
Green spaces, picnics, lemonade….cheeky beers, banter, frisbee…fun times and thousands
of dead people.
Wait.
What?
Yeah…rumour has it that Lincoln Park is built on an old cemetery… and surprisingly,
this urban legend is true.
Between 1843 and 1865 there were four different cemeteries in the spot where the public park
is now.
The city was eyeing up the spot for a park, and after the Fire of 1871, they had the perfect
excuse to start again.
While some bodies were exhumed and moved, around 12,000 remain under the park.
When the zoo was built in 1962, bodies were unearthed and reburied!
With that many bodies, is it any surprise there have been a number of ghost sightings
in the area?
8 - Mrs. O Leary and the Fire That Killed 300 People
The Great Fire of Chicago was one of the most horrendous things that happened to the city.
3.3 square miles of the city burned from the 8th to the 10th of October in 1871 and left
100,000 people without homes.
The popular legend blames Mrs. O’Leary… you know the song… late last night before
she went to bed, Mrs. O’Leary hung a lantern in her shed….then her cow kicked it over…winked
at her and said they’ll be a hot time in the old town tonight?
You know the score.
Except poor old Mrs. Leary never did it – she was a poor Irish Catholic Immigrant and was
made a scapegoat because Protestant Founders of the US were distrustful of Catholics, and
there was a lot of Irish racism around at the time.
Reported Michael Ahern of the Chicago Tribune was to blame for fanning the flames on Mrs.
O'Leary's reputation…
but it was already destroyed…I mean people across the world are singing songs about it.
She was pardoned by Chicago’s city council in 1997, as was the cow…but, of course,
this was far too late for Mrs. O. None the less, the legend lives on.
Continuing with the Great Fire of Chicago, we have the Haunted Water Tower at number
7 In the fire, legend has it that one brave
citizen pumped water from the iconic Chicago Water Tower to try and help quell the flames.
The water tower on Streeterville survived the blaze as a result of the man's actions,
proving himself as a hero as he manned the pumps instead of fleeing for his life.
Then, as the metal structure got hotter and hotter and the flames rose around him, the
man knew he was going to die.
Rather than die slowly and painfully, the legend has it that he hung himself from the
structure.
Legend has it that sometimes people still see his body hanging through a towers upstairs
window.
This has been confirmed by a police officer who also saw the awful sight.
6 - The Devil of Hull House Is this the real-life story behind Rosemary’s
baby?
This story spawned the popular movie.
The Hull House was a focal spot in the Chicago community.
Jane Addams’ took the building over in the late 1800s and ran it as a women’s shelter.
Jane reportedly took in a woman who was heavily pregnant and whose husband had abandoned her.
It seems the midwives in Jane’s Employ would not go near the child after it was born because
of its monstrous appearance.
The legend states that the baby was born a monster because his father yelled to heavens
in the frustration of being given only daughters.
He yelled, “I would rather have the devil in this house than another daughter.”
Jane kept that baby a secret, but one day, three Italian women burst into the house and
demanded to see the devil baby.
They said they knew a baby had been born with pointed ears, a tail, and cloven hooves.
The woman caused such a fuss and would not leave until forcibly removed that locals started
talking.
Soon a crowd appeared at the house and people wanted to get a look at the child.
The mystery was never resolved, but there have been many whispers of hauntings at the
house.
Some report seeing the devils face at the window of the house to this day.
5 - Homey The Clown Homey the clown is a classic Chicago urban
legend and long predates the creepy clown sightings of 2016.
In 1991, there was a slew of reports about a creepy clown cruising the streets trying
to lure kids into a red and blue van with Ha Ha written on the side.
The Clown was dressed as a TV character called Homey and was said to be offering up candy
and money to children who would come with him.
The police had a lot of reported sightings, mainly from children.
They dismissed a report from two ten-year-old boys in Oak Park, suggesting kids had banded
together to troll the police.
None the less, this didn’t quell the rumors and a whole epidemic of sightings sprung up
over the city.
The clown, however, was never caught.
A lot of kids around in the 1990s in Chicago will remember Homey.
4 - The Machine Guns of the St Valentines Day Massacre
The Saint Valentines Day Massacre is no urban legend – it was a real and gruesome morning
of bloodshed in 1929, during the gang-riddled era of Chicago.
7 members of the North Side Gang were lined up and shot at with machine guns against a
Lincoln park garage.
This led to further bloodshed between the Irish North Siders and the Italian South Siders,
famously led by Al Capone.
While legendary, this is an irrefutable truth.
The urban legend slips in as people claim the Clark Street spot is haunted by the massacred
souls to this day.
Civilians report hearing screams and gunfire as they walk by the massacre spot.
There have also been a lot of reports of animals being freaked out as they pass the spot.
3 - The Knocking Ghosts of Flight 191 On the 25th May 1979, American Airlines Flight
191 crashed moments after takeoff from Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport.
258 Passengers and 13 crew were killed, as were two people on the ground.
This insane death toll makes this the worst aviation accident in United States History.
Just as the jet was beginning its takeoff rotation, the left engine separated from the
left wing and smashed into the runway, severing hydraulic fluid lines.
As the plane began to climb, the damaged left side of the plane produced less lift and caused
the plane to roll.
This then caused the plane to crash in an open field right by the airport, killing all
on board.
The pictures from the aftermath are truly harrowing indeed.
Debris was hurled into a nearby trailer park which destroyed five trailers…but that wasn’t
all the trailer park would see of the crash.
As the years went on, people living at the trailer park have reported frantic knocks
at their doors, only to open them and find nobody there.
One resident reported coming across a worried man who claimed he needed to make a connection.
Another man in the area was walking his dog when he came across a man in a suit that smelled
of gasoline who told him he needed to make an emergency call.
2 - The Italian Bride Mt Carmel Cemetery is best known for being
the final resting place of Al Capone and a number of his gangster cronies.
Also resident in the cemetery is the much famed and deeply mysterious Italian Bride.
The Bride wasn’t actually a bride at all.
She was a young woman named Julia Buccola who died in childbirth in 1921.
She was reportedly buried in her wedding dress, which sparked her urban legend name.
Following her death, her mother had a string of wild and vivid dreams that her daughter
was not dead.
Julia would tell her that she was alive and needed her help.
Finally, six years after her daughter's death, the dreams got too much for Julia’s mother,
who had her body exhumed.
When the casket was opened, her body had not decayed one bit since the day she was buried.
Creepily, on her gravestone, there is a picture of her body after she was exhumed, and yeah….she
does look pretty freshly dead….which… is really the best a gal can hope for sometimes.
Finally, at number one, we have one of the most popular Chicago urban legends of all
time.
1 - Resurrection Mary Ah, the vanishing hitchhiker.
This urban legend is pinpointed to the southwest of Chicago in Justice Illinois.
Since the 1930s, around 30 men who have been driving along Archer Avenue between Resurrection
Cemetery and Willowbrook Ballroom have reported being hailed over by a young blonde haired,
blue eyed woman in a white party dress.
Further reports say she is wearing dancing shoes, wearing a shawl and holding a small
clutch bag.
The men that have stopped for her and let her in their car report her being softly spoken
and shy.
The woman asks to be dropped off at Resurrection Cemetery and then disappears in front of the
gates.
The legend says that this girl was in the ballroom with her boyfriend in the 1930s but
they got into an argument and she decided to walk home.
Sadly as she was walking up Archer Avenue, she was hit by a car that then sped away.
She died at the scene, but her spirit is still searching for a chivalrous man to drive her
home.
Other reports have involved drivers breaking suddenly when they see a woman in white in
the middle of the road.
So that was the Top 10 Scary Chicago Urban Legends - City are you from?
Comments from our live stream…ironically Real Madrid Fan said: Mexico is going to
win the world cup lets go Mexico!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!?
That One Guy You See Everywhere said: I didn’t even know you guys did live streams.
ChimCity BTS Said: Danny at 1:21:04 looks like the classic good guy who's out with some
friends and has smoked so much pot for the first time that is confused on who the hell
he is first and then why the lamp on the sidewalk is moving like it's waving his hand at him.
Haaa
Well….what an adventure this has been….what Urban Legends shall we do next!