About Ursula

Ursula Bielski is an author, historian and folklorist whose work explores ghosts, supernatural belief, cemeteries, religious experience and the strange histories that linger beneath familiar places. For more than three decades, she has researched and documented accounts of the unexplained, becoming widely known for her work on the haunted history of Chicago and the American Midwest.

She is the author of more than a dozen books, including the Chicago Haunts series, Graveyards of Chicago and Chicago Haunts: 200 Years of True Ghost Stories, as well as books published by The History Press. Her writing combines archival research, firsthand testimony, folklore and cultural history, with particular attention to the ways supernatural stories preserve memories that might otherwise be lost.

Ursula founded Chicago Hauntings Tours in 2003 and directed the company for nearly two decades. Through years of research, writing, lectures, television appearances and fieldwork, she became one of Chicago’s best-known authorities on ghosts and haunted history. Although she now lives in Dixon, Illinois, Chicago remains central to her work and to the body of stories she has spent much of her life collecting.

Her television and radio appearances have included the Travel Channel’s Ghost Adventures, The Maury Show, Coast to Coast AM and Darkness Radio. She has also written and edited children’s nonfiction, created historical audio tours and taught courses in paranormal studies and the supernatural at the college level.

A practicing Catholic, Ursula is especially interested in the meeting place between supernatural experience, folklore and faith. Through her World of the Supernatural channel, The Ghostlorist, her writing and her Uncanny Catholic projects, she explores everything from classic ghost stories and historic hauntings to apparitions, religious mysteries, UFOs and the spiritual questions raised by encounters with the unexplained.

Ursula holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Benedictine University and a master’s degree in American cultural and intellectual history from Northeastern Illinois University. Her work has been recognized by the Chicago Public Library Foundation for its contribution to the preservation and interpretation of Chicago history.

When she is not researching the dead, Ursula enjoys gardening, cooking, old films, perfume, books and quiet life in her nineteenth-century farmhouse in northern Illinois.