Haunted & Paranormal

At the close of the nineteenth century, Chicago offered the world a glimpse of humanity's most breathtaking possibilities and its most jaw-dropping horrors.

Even as the White City emerged from the ashes of the Great Fire, serial killers like H.H. Holmes stalked the sparkling new boulevards and tragic accidents plagued the factories, slums and railroads that powered the churn of industrial innovation. Ship captains spoke to the dead, while undertakers discovered reanimated corpses no longer requiring services. From posh mansions built on massacre grounds to the drowned quarries of a forest preserve, Ursula Bielski follows the dark undercurrents beneath the electric lights of the World's Fair.

For the first time in print, Michael Kleen presents the full story of the Prairie State's dalliance with the dark arts.

Although Illinois saw no dramatic witch trials, witchcraft has been a part of Illinois history and culture from French exploration to the present day. On the Illinois frontier, pioneers pressed silver dimes into musket balls to ward off witches, while farmers dutifully erected fence posts according to phases of the moon. In 1904, the quiet town of Quincy was shocked to learn of Bessie Bement's suicide, after the young woman sought help from a witch doctor to break a hex. In turn-of-the-century Chicago, Lauron William de Laurence's occult publishing house churned out manuals for performing bizarre rituals intended to attract love and exact revenge.

Just beneath the glossy surface of Rockford's rich heritage lies a dark history of tragedy.

The city's troubled and turbulent past left scars that still resonate today. Geraldine Bourbon's final struggle still echoes throughout the farmhouse where her estranged husband pursued her with a pistol from room to room before gently laying her corpse on the bed. The sobs of society darling Carrie Spafford still keep vigil over the family plot of the cemetery where she sowed the heartbreak of her twilight years. From the vengeance of Chief Big Thunder to the Witch of McGregor Road, author Kathi Kresol shares the legends and lore of Rockford's haunted history.

A thrilling collection of tales and a unique guide for the intrepid supernatural sleuth-seeker who knows that dead do not always rest in peace.

At the heart of Peoria's Haunted Memories is the rich and compelling history and folklore of the Peoria area. Buildings and cemeteries in and around the city provide ideal stomping grounds for many restless specters. In this collection of haunted sites, the reader will be introduced to some of Peoria's best-loved mansions, institutions, and graveyards, as well as many of its more illustrious citizens. From Bartonville State Hospital to Bradley University, historic downtown theaters, hotels and taverns, and local churches, where ghostly congregants and ministers continue to worship, this book presents these ghost stories and legends for the fi rst time together in print.

Historic, haunted, chilling tales of the town of Naperville, Illinois as told by America's Ghost Storyteller. A must-read for fans of the paranormal.

Established in 1831, Naperville is one of the oldest settlements in the Greater Chicago area. The city's rich and fascinating heritage has been carefully passed down from one proud generation to the next; however, nowhere has Naperville's ghostly oral tradition and haunted history been preserved until now.

Most of Naperville's unique legends--compiled for the first time ever in these pages--arose from accounts of actual historic events and from the lives of notable personages in the city's long history. As the tragic events and persons faded from living memory, all that might remain of them would be ghost stories whispered by firelight and, later, by flashlight tucked under a teenager's chin at slumber parties.

Some eerie legends in these pages have origins that are lost in time, and still other hair-raising ghost stories included in this work are chilling contemporary, firsthand accounts of paranormal encounters within Naperville's sprawling boundaries . . . perhaps from even just down the street.

Aurora was the first Illinois city to have electric streetlights, but a dark history has resisted illumination as stubborn as the chilly corner of the old roundhouse repels the summer heat.

Learn why Aurora counts ""City of Cemeteries"" among its nicknames as Diane Ladley, ""America's Ghost Storyteller,"" describes the nineteenth-century doctor suspected of trading bodies between his cancer center and a neighboring graveyard. Other eerie legends and strange stories revealed in this book include the marauding brave brought to justice in the Devil's Cave by his own tribe, the sweet legacy of NFL great Walter Payton and the elephants that saved a circus from a tornado.

Divided by state lines and the Mississippi River, the Quad Cities share a common haunted heritage.

If anything, the seam that runs through the region is especially rife with spirits, from the Black Angel of Moline's Riverside Cemetery to the spectral Confederate POWs of Arsenal Island. Of course, the city centers have their own illustrious supernatural residents - the Hanging Ghost occupies Davenport's City Hall, while the Phantom Washwoman wanders Bettendorf's Central Avenue. At Igor's Bistro in Rock Island, every day is Halloween. Michael McCarty and Mark McLaughlin hunt down the haunted lore of this vibrant midwestern community.