“Does anybody know the woman in green?” asked the Tribune in November of 1908. “Can anybody tell the name of the mysterious woman motorist who for the last month has been an unfailing topic of conversation for those who have time to observe humanity as seen in Chicago’s streets? Who is she?” For a month, Chicagoans…
Tag: unsolved mysteries
Did Dr. Thomas Neill Cream Kill Alice Montgomery?
Could a Chicago mystery from 1881 have been the work of one of our early serial killers? (See an update from 2017 at the bottom of the post!) Dr. Thomas Neill Cream. On April 9, 1881, 22 year old Alice Montgomery checked into a room at the Sheldon House, a west loop-area hotel on West…
Inside the Couch Tomb: New Eyewitness Accounts?
We talk quite a lot about the Couch Tomb here – the mausoleum that was never moved from City Cemetery after it became Lincoln Park. No one is entirely sure why it wasn’t moved (probably money, though there are rumors of a lawsuit) or who all is in it, if anyone. But we’re always finding new…
A Masked Supervillain Terrorizes Chicago, 1892
In late November of 1892, wild rumors spread about a mysterious “highwayman,” a masked robber who rode a dark horse with a blazing red leather saddle, and who had been terrifying Lake View, on the north side of Chicago. The Tribune described him as “either a maniac or a desperado.” Lake View and Lincoln Park became police…
The Mystery of Zanzic (and The Guy Who Died While Doing It With a Fake Ghost)
Whether this is eventhe same Zanzic is probablyup to debate. Something there was about the World’s Fair of 1893 that seemed to make everyone want to build a house full of secret passages around here. In 1923, Harry Houdini wrote an article in M.U.M., a magician’s magazine, about a conjurer named Zanzic who a operated fantastic spiritualist…
The Strange Death of Lazarus Averbuch
Averbuch, with the knife and gun he was said tobe armed with. In early March, 1908, a young man in his late teens named Lazarus Averbuch was shot to death in the entryway of police captain George M. Shippy’s north side home. Exactly what happened is a matter of some dispute. We know that Averbuch,…
William Duvol: Chicago’s Only Revolutionary Soldier?
Updated! new info at bottom. There are a couple of Revolutionary vets buried out in Elk Grove, but only one revolutionary soldier is known to be buried in Chicago proper: William Duvol, who died around the 1830s and whose headstone is at Rosehill Cemetery. (note: David Kennison, who is buried in Lincoln Park, claimed to be…
The Fool Killer Submarine: All We Know!
I tell the story of the Fool Killer, mysterious submarine wreck found in the river in 1915, on almost every one of my tours. “It might have been the first large submarine ever built, if it had worked,” I say. “But apparently it didn’t, because when they raised it up the next month, they found…