Illinois

Illinois history exceeds the capacity of the Sears Catalog for categorization and the World’s Fair for spectacle. And no matter what the self-appointed tour guide at the local diner might say, the heritage of the land of Lincoln doesn’t end with Capone’s demise. Like the Chicago Loop, the Prairie State’s past seems to defy straightforward chronology—Cahokia offered a version of urban sprawl more than a thousand years before the first Windy City skyscraper. From Park Forest to Cave-in-Rock, scan our shelf of Illinois history books with the unflagging enthusiasm of a Wrigley Field hot dog vendor. [View all Illinois books]
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4 products
Haunted Joliet Prison
Haunted Joliet Prison
$21.99
Eerie Quad Cities
Eerie Quad Cities
$21.99
Haunts of the White City
Haunts of the White City
$23.99
Ghosts of the Quad Cities
Ghosts of the Quad Cities
$21.99

Haunted Joliet Prison

9781467147163

$21.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
The iron bars of Joliet Prison might once have held John Wayne Gacy, Baby Face Nelson and other notorious inmates as unwilling guests, but their stories now desperately cling to the limestone walls. After 160 years spent crammed with victims of misfortune and agents of mayhem, the grim landmark immortalized in movies like The Blues Brothers is now entirely given over to the ghosts of its past. Follow a singing ghost to the convict cemetery where thousands of unclaimed bodies are said to lie. Listen for the tread of Odette Allen, the warden's wife who was brutally murdered in her bedroom on the second floor. Unlock the gates of Joliet Prison's haunted heritage with Wendy Moxley Roe.
Haunted Joliet Prison

Eerie Quad Cities

9781467147477

$21.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%
Like the mighty Mississippi River that cleaves the Quad Cities, the region's history can trap the unwary in some unexpected eddies. Peer through the fog of the past to catch a glimpse of the Tinsmith Ghost of Rock Island or the river serpent with a price on its head. Get the back story on the Banshee of Brady Street, read the 1869 report on a Bigfoot sighting near East Davenport and run the numbers on local UFO activity. From phantom footsteps in the Renwick Mansion to a mausoleum heist in Chippiannock Cemetery, Michael McCarty and John Brassard Jr. trace a path through the shadowy heritage of the Quad Cities.
Eerie Quad Cities

Haunts of the White City

9781467139656

$23.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%

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.

Haunts of the White City

Ghosts of the Quad Cities

9781467141062

$21.99 Save Liquid error (snippets/product-template line 248): Computation results in '-Infinity'%

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.

Ghosts of the Quad Cities