Chicago Haunts: 200 Years of True Ghost Stories: AUTOGRAPHED FIRST PRINTING

There is no city in America quite like Chicago—and there is no ghost book quite like Chicago Haunts: 200 Years of True Ghost Stories.

In this monumental new volume, acclaimed Chicago historian and folklorist Ursula Bielski presents the definitive collection of Chicago ghost lore ever assembled: more than 800 pages of haunted history, supernatural folklore, paranormal investigation, urban legend, true crime, cemetery lore, religious mystery, and firsthand ghost stories gathered across nearly four decades of research.

From the blood-soaked sands of Fort Dearborn to the shadowed halls of the Drake Hotel, from Resurrection Mary and Archer Avenue to the forgotten graves beneath Lincoln Park, Chicago Haunts explores two centuries of the city’s most chilling legends and unexplained encounters. Drawing from newspaper archives, oral histories, church records, police accounts, cemetery research, and firsthand interviews, Bielski traces the hidden supernatural history of Chicago through its tragedies, disasters, murders, folklore, and restless dead.

Inside these pages are hundreds of stories involving:

• Haunted cemeteries, ghost roads, phantom hitchhikers, and cursed houses
• The Fort Dearborn Massacre, gangland killings, and infamous Chicago crimes
• Resurrection Mary, Bachelors Grove, the Devil Baby of Hull House, and the ghosts of Archer Avenue
• Haunted hotels, theaters, bars, schools, churches, hospitals, and mansions
• The Great Chicago Fire, Eastland Disaster, Our Lady of the Angels fire, and other tragedies said to have left spiritual scars on the city
• Phantom gangsters, spectral soldiers, vanished hitchhikers, mysterious women in black, and ghostly children
• Lake Michigan ghost ships, cryptids, lake monsters, Mothman-style sightings, and supernatural folklore from across Chicagoland
• Forgotten burial grounds, Lincoln Park’s hidden dead, and the eerie legacy of Chicago’s cemeteries
• Religious mysteries, alleged miracles, demonic legends, occult traditions, and paranormal investigation culture

This sweeping collection journeys through nearly every corner of haunted Chicago, including Graceland Cemetery, Rosehill Cemetery, Bohemian National Cemetery, Archer Avenue, Cuba Road, Prairie Avenue, Navy Pier, Lincoln Park, Fort Sheridan, Great Lakes Naval Station, the South Side, the North Shore, and the hidden ghost districts that generations of Chicagoans have whispered about after dark.

More than simply a ghost book, Chicago Haunts is also a portrait of Chicago itself: a city shaped by violence, ambition, disaster, immigration, religion, corruption, reinvention, and memory. Bielski explores not only the stories people tell, but why they endure—how ghost lore preserves the tragedies, fears, griefs, and forgotten corners of history that official narratives often leave behind.

For readers of paranormal history, true crime, folklore, supernatural nonfiction, haunted America, Midwest legends, and Chicago history, this landmark volume stands as the ultimate chronicle of the Windy City’s haunted past.

A massive and unforgettable journey into one of America’s richest supernatural landscapes, Chicago Haunts: 200 Years of True Ghost Stories is destined to become the classic work on haunted Chicago for years to come.

Autographed by the author. First 100 orders include an autographed bookmark.

Please note this book ships with standard shipping of $7 as it weighs about 4 pounds, but to help you save on larger orders, each additional item in the same order adds just $4 to the shipping total.