Haunted Places in Illinois: 10 Sites With Real History

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The best-documented haunted places in Illinois are the ones where a real event sits under the ghost story: the 844 people who died in the 1915 Eastland disaster, a 1934 FBI shooting outside a Lincoln Park theater, and a pioneer cemetery in Cook County that vandals wrecked. Below are 10 haunted places in Illinois, mostly in and around Chicago, each split into what the record supports and what is only told as legend. Some of these haunted places in Illinois are open to visitors, and a few are private property or gone entirely.

Quick answer if you're short on time: Of the haunted places in Illinois here, the Congress Plaza Hotel, Old Joliet Prison, and the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum are the easiest to visit legally, Resurrection Mary is the most famous legend, and the Eastland site and the Murder Castle site are history you can only stand near.

1. Resurrection Cemetery and “Resurrection Mary” (Justice)

Resurrection Mary is Chicago's best-known ghost: a young woman in white who is said to hitch a ride or dance with a young man, then vanish near the gates of Resurrection Cemetery on Archer Avenue in Justice. The earliest sighting usually cited is Jerry Palus's story of dancing with a cold-handed woman at the Liberty Grove and Hall; accounts date it to 1936 or 1939, and it was told long after the fact. Two real women are offered as the original: Mary Bregovy, reported in a March 1934 Chicago Tribune item as killed in a car crash in the Loop, and Anna Norkus, who died in 1927 after leaving the Oh Henry Ballroom (now the Willowbrook Ballroom). Neither fits cleanly. Bregovy is described as a brunette while the ghost is blonde, and Norkus was twelve and is buried at St. Casimir's, not Resurrection. The famous 1976 “burned handprints” on the cemetery fence were attributed by cemetery officials to a truck damaging the bars. Of all the haunted places in Illinois, this is the one where the legend is clearly bigger than the paper trail.

Can you visit: The cemetery is an active burial ground. Respect posted hours and mourners, and do not wander at night.

2. Congress Plaza Hotel (Chicago Loop)

The hotel at 520 S. Michigan Avenue opened in 1893 as the Auditorium Annex, just before the World's Columbian Exposition, and was expanded by Holabird & Roche in 1902 and 1907. It later became known for a long-running labor strike that began on June 15, 2003 and ended on May 30, 2013. The ghost claims come mostly from ghost-tour companies and hotel-lore sites: a one-legged man called Peg Leg Johnny, a spirit in Room 441, and a boy said to haunt the 12th floor. Those sources do not give documents for the underlying deaths, so treat them as hotel folklore. It is one of the haunted places in Illinois that you can experience as a paying guest.

Can you visit: Yes. It is a working hotel with a lobby, event spaces, and rooms. Ask the front desk about any ghost-tour partnerships rather than wandering the floors.

3. Biograph Theater (Lincoln Park)

The Biograph opened in 1914 at 2433 N. Lincoln Avenue. On July 22, 1934, John Dillinger left a showing of Manhattan Melodrama and was shot dead by federal agents led by Melvin Purvis in the alley beside the building. That is documented history. The theater became a Chicago Landmark in 2001 and was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. Victory Gardens Theater bought it in 2004 and reopened it as a live-performance venue in 2006. The ghost story, that Dillinger's spirit is felt in the building or walks the alley, appears on ghost-tour and listing sites, and we found no primary or news source that records a specific sighting. Among haunted places in Illinois, it is one with weak evidence for the ghost and strong evidence for the event.

Can you visit: The theater runs live shows, and the alley and sidewalk are public. Many Chicago ghost and gangster walking tours stop here.

4. The Eastland Site and the Former Harpo Studios (Chicago River / West Loop)

On July 24, 1915, the steamer Eastland capsized in the Chicago River while loading Western Electric employees and families for a company picnic. The final death toll was 844. Many bodies were laid out in the nearby Second Regiment Armory on Washington Boulevard, which Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios later occupied. Local ghost writers say staff at Harpo reported children laughing and a woman sobbing in a restroom, but those accounts are retellings, and the studio closed in 2015, with press reporting the building was demolished in 2016. Because the tragedy is real and recent enough to have descendants, it deserves care among the haunted places in Illinois: the ghost stories are folklore, the 844 are not. We cover other Chicago-area hauntings in our piece on the Candyman mirror ritual legend.

Can you visit: The riverfront near Clark Street is public. The armory building itself is gone.

5. The H.H. Holmes “Murder Castle” Site (Englewood)

Herman Webster Mudgett, who used the name H.H. Holmes, began building the large structure at 63rd and Wallace in 1887 and added a third floor in 1892, calling it a hotel for visitors to the 1893 World's Fair. A fire in August 1895 damaged it, and it was torn down in 1938. The site is now a U.S. Post Office branch. The surviving documentation of Holmes's killings is mostly from his own confessions, which were unreliable, and from sensational newspapers, so the exact count is debated. We found no historical document that records a haunting of the site itself; the ghost angle is a retelling in tours and books. Read the full case in our H.H. Holmes and the Murder Castle article.

Can you visit: You can see the post office from the street. Nothing of the building remains.

6. Bachelor's Grove Cemetery (Bremen Township)

Bachelor's Grove is a small pioneer cemetery inside the Rubio Woods forest preserve in Cook County's southwest suburbs. It holds more than 200 burials; accounts date the first burial to 1838 or 1844, and the most recent known burial is 1989. In the 1970s, vandals ransacked the secluded graveyard, and few of the original markers survive. Ghost reports are enormous in number: floating lights, a phantom house, a ghostly farmer and horse, phantom cars. Other writers note that many of these tales were passed along by generations of teenagers, with little evidence behind them, and that cemetery vandalism and trespass at night are a documented problem. This is one of the best-known haunted places in Illinois, and the most easily damaged by visitors.

Can you visit: Only under forest preserve rules and hours. The Cook County government oversees the cemetery; do not enter after hours and do not disturb stones.

7. Graceland Cemetery (Uptown, Chicago)

Graceland is a Victorian cemetery on Chicago's North Side whose burials include architects Louis Sullivan and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Daniel Burnham, Marshall Field, and George Pullman. Two stories are told about it. The first is that the Lorado Taft sculpture known as “Eternal Silence” shows you your own death if you stare into its eyes, which is plainly folklore. The second involves Inez Clarke, whose statue in a glass box is said to vanish during thunderstorms. The plaque reads 1873 to 1880, but local cemetery researcher Helen Sclair has said the grave may hold a child with a different name, and the details of the real girl's life remain murky. Few Illinois sites mix real Chicago history and urban legend as neatly.

Can you visit: Yes. Graceland is a working cemetery open during posted daytime hours, with architecture-focused tours. Treat it as a place of burial, not a stage set.

8. Hull-House (Near West Side)

Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded Hull House on September 18, 1889, in a mansion on Chicago's Near West Side. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1965, and today the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum is run by the University of Illinois Chicago. The ghost lore here is unusually well documented, because Addams herself wrote about it. In the mid-1910s a rumor of a “Devil Baby” drew crowds of old women to the house, and Addams used the episode in her 1916 book The Long Road of Woman's Memory to explore what the story meant to the women who came. That is a folklore document, not evidence of a haunting. The museum itself has published a blog post on the house's supernatural folklore, treating it as folklore.

Can you visit: Yes. The museum has regular hours and educational programming; confirm times on the museum's site.

9. Old Joliet Prison (Joliet)

The prison operated from 1858 to 2002, first taking inmates transferred from Alton. Leopold and Loeb, convicted in 1924, were sent there, and the building later served as a filming location for The Blues Brothers and Prison Break. After closing because the buildings were obsolete and dangerous, it reopened for public tours in 2018 under the Joliet Area Historical Museum, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2023. Ghost stories about cell blocks and the women's prison are common in paranormal media, but most come from entertainment sources and tour promoters. Among the haunted places in Illinois you can tour, this is one of the biggest.

Can you visit: Yes, through scheduled tours. Book through the museum; the site is not open for self-guided entry.

10. McPike Mansion (Alton)

Henry Guest McPike commissioned this Italianate and Second Empire house in 1869, and it was completed in 1871 on a hilltop estate he called Mount Lookout. After his death in 1910 the property changed hands, was later ransacked, and deteriorated. Sharyn and George Luedke bought it at auction in 1994 and have been restoring it through donations and tour revenue. The owners say the mansion is haunted by a former owner and a servant, and it has appeared on paranormal TV. That makes the ghost claims essentially the owners' own and the shows' framing, not an independent record. It is one of the few haunted places in Illinois on this list outside the Chicago area.

Can you visit: Yes, on advertised tours and events. The property is private, so go only when it is open.

What's Actually Verifiable

Across all 10 of these haunted places in Illinois, the dates, deaths, and landmark designations are documented. The ghosts mostly are not. Resurrection Mary has two candidate women who do not match the sightings, Hull-House's Devil Baby is a documented rumor rather than a haunting, and Bachelor's Grove's best-known tales are described by other writers as teen-passed lore.

Visiting Haunted Places in Illinois Responsibly

Haunted places in Illinois range from museums with ticket desks to forest-preserve graveyards and private homes. Stay on public property, book official tours, and never enter closed buildings or cemeteries after hours without permission; trespassing is illegal and several of these sites are unsafe or fragile. For the wider American picture, see our guide to haunted places in the United States.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most haunted place in Illinois?

There is no objective ranking of haunted places in Illinois. The Congress Plaza Hotel and Resurrection Mary's Archer Avenue are the most often named in Chicago, and Bachelor's Grove Cemetery is the most reported in the suburbs. None of the ghosts has been verified, but the history behind each place is documented.

Is Resurrection Mary a real ghost?

No verified evidence shows that Resurrection Mary is a real ghost. The story dates to the 1930s, and two real women are proposed as the origin, Mary Bregovy and Anna Norkus, but neither matches the usual description. The 1976 fence “handprints” were attributed by cemetery officials to truck damage.

Can you visit the haunted places in Chicago?

Yes, several. The Congress Plaza Hotel is a working hotel, Hull-House is a museum, and Graceland Cemetery is open in daytime. The Biograph is a theater, and its alley is public. Check current hours, since schedules change, and use licensed tours for private sites.

Is Bachelor's Grove Cemetery legal to visit?

Only under Cook County forest preserve rules and posted hours. Night entry is trespassing, and vandalism of graves has been a long-running problem there. If you go during open hours, stay on public paths and do not touch or move any stones.

Was the H.H. Holmes Murder Castle real?

The building was real: Holmes built it in Englewood beginning in 1887 and it was torn down in 1938. What is disputed is the number of victims. Most of the numbers come from his own shifting confessions and newspapers, so be cautious about any specific count.

Is Old Joliet Prison open for tours?

Yes. It reopened for public visits in 2018 through the Joliet Area Historical Museum, and it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2023. Tours are scheduled and booked in advance, so check the museum's site for current formats and dates.