One thing that we can’t show people during our tours (because it’s in a locked-away section of the Congress Hotel) is the mysterious Hand of Drywall Dave. There have been plenty of murders in the hotel, and there are plenty of ghosts that have been reported – some quite frequently – in the place, but one legend that we’ve never been able to find anything to back up is the story that one of the workers building the place during the 1905 expansion was accidentally (or perhaps not so accidentally) killed by being walled up inside the place.
We consider this story to be a myth. BUT, on a 2006 investigation, we came across what looked like a fossilized hand reaching out of a wall in a closet! We joked that it looked like a hand, but didn’t think much of it until we blew up the picture – and found that it had four fingers and a thumb!
Is it a glove that got plastered over by a construction worker with a weird sense of humor?
Is it the hand of the mythical Drywall Dave, reaching out for freedom?
Or could it be the long-rumored ghost of Teddy Roosevelt, carrying his trademark big sick?
WIlly, our driver, insists that there’s a fourth possibility: Jimmy Hoffa.
Sneak in a hammer and/or chisel and give it a couple whacks… seriously. I would. LOL =P Odd that no one has bothered to check…