(listen to the podcast above, or see us on iTunes!) So, here’s a tale for you all: In the winter, I drive for Lyft, one of those “taxi alternative” apps. And I love it – I always had this secret dream of being a cab driver, living like a character in an early Tom Waits…
Author: adam
“I Keep the Tavern Like Hell and Play the Fiddle Like the Devil”
In 1880, the Calumet Club held their annual reunion of early Chicago settlers. Now approaching a population of a million, half a century before Chicago had been little more than a mud-hole, where, one settler remembered, a typical sunday consisted of taking champagne to church to drink the preacher’s health, then hanging around the church…
HH Holmes “Murder Castle” Architect’s Diagram Discovered
I’ve been sitting on the above photo for quite a while, but now that advance copies of my book, HH Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil, are going around and they include it, I figure it’s time to release this one to the wilds of the internet. The initial construction of the…
New Master List of HH Holmes Victims
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…
“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…