I’ve been examining the big, big panorama of the Iroquois Theatre after the fire that you can download from the Library of Congress – the one taken just days after Dec 30, 1903, when a fire there killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 600 people. An associate once gave me a poster-sized print (they sell…
Tag: iroquois theatre
Ghost pic in the alley?
I only occasionally post “ghost” pictures here, partly because I rarely see any thing I think are all that interesting. You know what I always say – “there is no good ghost evidence, only cool ghost evidence.” Well, here’s some of that. One of my most common tour stops is the alley behind the site of…
Iroqouis Theatre “Ghouls”
No one ever got in legal trouble for the fire at the Iroquois theatre that killed around 600 people. One judge ruled that while Will Davis, the manager, may have been “morally responsible,” he could not be held “legally responsible” due to some technicalities. The only people who got in trouble were a tiny fraction…
Ghost Picture from the Alley of Death and Mutilation
Only hours from the anniversary of the Iroquois Theatre disaster (which I just posted about a few days back), Brandon L got this nifty shot on one of my tours. He says there was no one there when he took the picture, and the person who was standing next to him said so, too; I…
The Iroquois Theatre Fire (or: How Bad WAS “Mr. Blue Beard?” )
The Iroquois Theatre fire is the subject of a fantastic new play, Burning Bluebeard, now running at the Neo-Futurist Theatre. The fire in question took place on Dec 30, 1903, during a matinee performance of a spectacle known as Mr. Blue Beard. It just now occurs to me that, while I’ve written here about the…
In the Alley of Death and Mutilation
When I was last giving tours, we hadn’t gotten a weird photograph in the alley behind the old Iroquois theatre (which newspapers called “The Alley of Death and Mutilation” after the fire in the theatre that killed over 600 people). But since I’ve started up again, we’ve had several. In particular, we’re getting a lot…
Temporary Morgues
Gosh, it’s cheerful around here lately, isn’t it? Let’s talk about temporary morgues! Temporary morgues are set up when disaster strikes, leaving too many dead bodies to fit in a regular morgue. You never can tell when a place you’re walking around might have been a morgue once. A few from Chicago history: 870 N….
A wonderful vaudeville relic
Our friends at Oriental Theatre regularly tell us their ghost sightings – the place was built over the foundations of the Iroquoid Theatre, which burned in 1903. They have been doing a lot of architectural investigating, too, looking in nooks and crannies for traces of the old Iroquois theatre that may have survived in forgotten…