I spent much of the last year digging through thousands of sources working on my new book, H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil, due in April 2017 from SkyHorse. Over the next few months, I’ll be putting up a few major Holmes posts that I’ve been sitting on, including the newly-discovered architect’s diagram…
Category: Mysterious Chicago Blog
“Rigged!” The Chicago Times and the Election of 1864
The Democratic National Convention of 1864 was by most accounts a disaster. Meeting in Chicago to nominate General McClellan to oppose Lincoln, the party struggled with an unhealed rift between delegats who wanted to crush the Confederacy in one big blow and those who wanted to quit fighting and just let the South go. The Tribune’s…
New Book: Mysterious Chicago – History at its Coolest
The new Mysterious Chicago book is in stores today, Oct 26, 2016! There is a launch party tonight at Anderson’s Books in Naperville at 7pm, though if I knew I’d be competing against a cubs World Series, I might not have scheduled it like this! Featuring dozens of unsolved mysteries from Chicago’s gruesome history, many…
Podcast: Searching for the Grave of Cap Streeter
Listen in above or on iTunes or archive.org! I’ve been speaking about Captain George Wellington Streeter since my very first tours. Though I doubt very much that he really put a “curse” on the landfill he created – and declared to be his own country – his story is a uniquely Chicago sort of tale, a story that…
HH Holmes’ OTHER Murder Castle in Fort Worth: Diagrams and More
Been a while since I had a new Holmes post up! But I spent the last year researching him in depth for my massive new book on him, and with a couple of Holmes bus tours coming, I thought today would be a good day to share a bit about the lesser-known OTHER Holmes Castle…
Podcast: Thomas Neill Cream – Antique Serial Killer
Listen in above or on iTunes or archive.org! A few months ago I had to take a quick trip to Madison, WI and made a side trip along the way to Garden Prairie, IL, searching for the grave of Daniel Stott, which lies in a quiet little graveyard surrounded by farmland. Most of the gravestones there are faded…
More Pioneer Ghostlore (Podcast)
Listen in above, or on archive.org or Subscribe on iTunes! There’s wasn’t time in last week’s podcast, The Bloody Hand of West Randolph, to cover all the great stuff in the 1888 Chicago book about early ghost stories. So now we’re back, covering a few more, including: – The Prairie Wraith, a woman in a pale…
Podcast: The Bloody Handprint of West Randolph
(new podcast! Click above, or see archive.org or iTunes In 1888, a book of anecdotes about early Chicago retold a heck of a ghost story: one night on West Randolph, a woman heard ghostly footsteps up and down the stairs, then saw a disembodied hand shoving her apartment door shut. She ran away, then came back…