Review: The Devil in the White City

“City of the Big Shoulders:

They tell me you are wicked and I believe them, for I have seen your painted women under the gas lamps luring the farm boys.
And they tell me you are crooked and I answer: Yes, it is true I have seen the gunman kill and go free to kill again.
And they tell me you are brutal and my reply is: On the faces of women and children I have seen the marks of wanton hunger.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.”
– “Chicago” (Carl Sandburg)

This book hit me hard because I was primarily expecting it to be the story of H. H. Holmes with some of the 1893 World’s Fair history as a backdrop. But I was pleasantly surprised.

The Devil in the White City is Erik Larson’s gritty love letter to Chicago; it reads like Sandburg in prose and treats with great depth of emotion the glory, misfortune, and horror that ambition can bring. The chapters alternate between the story of architect Daniel Burnham and the many others who designed, planned, and built the Chicago World’s Fair, and the story of H. H. Holmes, one of America’s early serial killers, who operated in the area around that time. Larson lets the two narratives sit beside each other without any great need for explanation. The fact that he doesn’t urge the reader to make any specific connection between their themes leaves the reader with feelings of intangibility and enormity that would have otherwise been spoiled.

For all of its merits, what makes this book successful isn’t the humanity Larson preserves in his subjects, the detail he is able to provide from his extensive research, or the fact that it reads slightly more like a novel than it does a historical narrative. It’s that he portrays Chicago as an entity of its own and instills that entity with its true essence. This is perhaps only graspable if you’ve spent a certain amount of time in Chicago. I hope, though, that it does impart some sense of the city’s deeper history to those who have not visited.

As for Larson’s treatment of H. H. Holmes, I loved his victim-centric perspective. The author spends more of the time talking about who Holmes’s known victims were, what dreams and aspirations they sought to fulfill in Chicago, and how much their families worried about and worked to find them after they went missing. As sensationalist and romantic as Larson is about some aspects of the fair, he turns his eye on Holmes in a matter-of-fact way, never letting his audience forget the man’s true nature. I’m a reader who knew quite a bit about Holmes, but this book helped me get to know his victims in such an intimate way that I kept praying they would take the first train out of Chicago as soon as he became involved with them.

Overall, I found that Larson treats history with respect for its nuance and complexity, although I would have appreciated a clearer focus on the exploitation of indigenous peoples that occurred during the fair. It seems, at times, that the author becomes so swept up in the glamor of the event that he forgets to provide a true balance; brief mentions of the squalor in the “Black City” aren’t always enough to provide a detailed picture of the lives of those who, for instance, couldn’t afford to make it to the fair, or who spent so much time building the exhibition and found themselves out of a job upon the exhibition’s opening. Readers are given a glimpse into these experiences, but the bulk of the narrative concentrates on the very wealthy men who oversaw construction.

The last aspect of the book I want to praise is found only within its “Notes and Sources” section. Here, Larson shows an appreciation for the importance of libraries: “I do not employ researchers, nor did I conduct any primary research using the Internet. I need physical contact with my sources, and there’s only one way to get it. To me every trip to a library or archive is like a detective story. There are always little moments on such trips when the past flares to life, like a match in the darkness.” He goes on to affirm the truth that books and documents are not only sources of text information but physical, historical objects. My ultimate takeaway from The Devil in the White City was that the story’s teller cared, and you can’t buy that. And yes, it did move me to tears in its epilogue, which includes a laundry list of ways the Chicago World’s Fair changed America alongside a reveal of what happened to some of the most famous structures erected during that time. I can fairly say I lost it when I learned that Daniel Burnham was responsible for some of the prettiest places in Chicago: The Magnificent Mile, the Rookery on S. La Salle, and the Museum of Science and Industry. I traveled the spectrum of human emotion while reading this book, and I highly recommend that you experience what the White City has to offer.

“What You Got Here, It Ain’t For Me”: The Haunting of the Congress Plaza Hotel, Pt. III

“Sometimes places create inhuman monsters.”
–The Shining (Stephen King)

This is the balcony of the Gold Ballroom. If you want to have your wedding reception here, it’s a cool $30,000. Our group had to be let in by a security guard, who has had objects thrown at him and has heard his name called in his ear when doing rounds. The room is vast, the carpet is ugly, and the whole deal gives you the vibe that the room is actually sentient. If only one place in the Congress is actually haunted, I would bet money that the Gold Room is it. Just entering it makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck.

A recent episode of Empire  filmed here. As one of the actresses sat at these tables during a scene, her body language became tense. After the scene cut, she left the ballroom abruptly and refused to return. When asked what it was that startled her, she said that someone had begun violently tugging on her hair. Allegedly, she is still on the show, but her contract now specifies that she will not re-enter the Gold Room under any circumstances.

A similar story surrounding celebrities revolves around the Congress as a whole. In the early 90’s, the slasher Candyman was being filmed in the Chicago area. One of the top-billed cast, perhaps Tony Todd, was supposed to stay at the Congress during shooting. According to our security guard, the actor spent no more than ten minutes in his room before fleeing back downstairs with his bags. The security guard asked him why he no longer wished to stay there, offering to move him rooms (publicity was understandably important). Visibly frightened, the actor leaned in and told our guide, “What you got here … it ain’t for me.” He would never return to the hotel.

Another of the fascinating rooms we were able to view was this nondescript upstairs banquet hall where Al Capone used to play cards. Capone had a well-known fear of being shot from behind, so his favorite seat in this room was up against the wall, which he knew had three inches of concrete behind it. The door to this room is very oddly placed; when you enter, your tendency is to turn to the left to face the majority of the rectangular space. If you were entering with the intent of doing harm to Capone, you would likely have your back turned to him, at which point it would probably be too late for you. That is, if you made it that far. The room also has several large windows with a balcony where Capone’s men would look out on the street to warn him of approacing danger.

I believe the ghost stories surrounding Capone the least. The Windy City already has a sizeable claim to the gangster, but he died in Miami Beach from refusing to take his syphillis medication. Is it logical that Capone would return to– well, haunt– his favorite haunts? Maybe.  Although I highly doubt it, this was a unique piece of history without the ghost lore.

So, too, was the nearby Florentine room, where Capone had his parties. I confess that it was around one in the morning by the time we reached our last stop and I was more interested in starting the three-hour drive home than I was in a piano that allegedly plays by itself. At this point I had been awake for almost 20 hours, so if I’d heard the laughter of any drunk flappers, I might have had to put it down to sleep deprivation.

Did I see or hear any ghosts at the Congress hotel? No. Did I see lights go off by themselves and experience some heightened alertness in rooms that contain a lot of history? Yes. I remain firm in my assertion that things have a logical explanation most of the time. But what we can’t explain is how drastically we are affected by the stories of those who have come before us. I think that’s what I’m into the ghost hunt for.

Perhaps the last thing you’re wondering is if I’ll stay at the Congress next time I’m in Chicago. The answer is HELL NO.

-N

“What You Got Here, It Ain’t For Me”: The Haunting of the Congress Plaza Hotel, Pt. II

“Room service? Send up a larger room.”
– Groucho Marx

(Part I here)

This is a typical upper-floor hallway at the Congress Hotel. If you even glance at it, you’ll notice two things: one, it contrasts drastically with the elegance of the lobby, and two, the twins from The Shining are missing. It’s easy to see solely from this picture how people have gotten it in their heads that this place is haunted. It’s a truly labrynthine building, constructed in a rigid U shape so that windows that hug the inside of the structure’s legs look out onto the windows of its parallell rooms. The Congress is a living cliche, Stephen King and Hitchcock and every other master of horror rolled into one.

Some of its scariest features arise from mere suggestion. Several rooms have been permanently “retired,” their key-card locks replaced with doorknobs and reinforced with deadbolts. The staff, although disgruntled with the hotel’s lore, remains reticent about the reasons for putting such rooms out of commission. If you ask any higher-up or employee who’s been there for a while for an answer, they clam up and smile. Not surprisingly, this method of fielding visitor questions only exacerbates the creation of ghost stories. Paranormal guides will tell you that the rooms are no longer in use because they’re so haunted there was nothing left to do but lock them up. We, however, got the sneaking suspicion that the poor old Congress is starting to disintegrate, and some rooms are so hazardous and deteriorated that management just decided it would be cheaper to put an extra lock on them and call it a day.

This, however, doesn’t account for the case of Room … yeah, you guessed it, 666. If you’re walking down the sixth floor corridor, you will pass 664, a large, blank wall, and then 668. It’s not that there is no Room 666; legend has it, it’s still there … under the wallpaper. If you run your hand along the wall, you can clearly feel one side of the door frame, then the other. The door lintel is still there, too, centered between the two bumps that mark the molding around the door frame. The security guard told us that the window washers are the only ones that can see in these days, and that the furniture is still there, right where they left it in the 70’s or 80’s. The real answer is probably more underwhelming. It’s likely that Room 664 is a large office. Hotel management does seem to go in and out of it. In keeping with my previous theory that some of the rooms have been closed off rather than renovated, I think poor 666 just got a lazy wallpaper job.

Due to staff’s laissez faire attitude, several rooms that should be locked are often wide open. Those include this rather creepy boiler room (?), complete with a rickety wooden staircase that goes up to the hotel’s roof. Our guides told us that an angry male spirit resides here. Of late, he’s been cussing at one of the female investigators. While the guides tried to contact him using this Raggedy Ann doll with an EMF reader inside it, I was encouraged to go up the staircase.

At first, I was hesitant to go, but then realized that I was probably in as much danger of an angry man harassing me in public as I would be if I climbed the haunted stairs. I did not find any male ghosts up there. However, the brickwork at the top showed obvious signs of fire damage. Why? I don’t know. There are a lot of things that the Congress isn’t telling.

As the rest of the group turned to leave, I realized that I didn’t want to be the last one down the stairs. I voiced this aloud. One of the guides said, “That’s funny. That’s exactly what our female investigator said.”

So, you’ve probably gathered by now that I’m not sure most of the stories surrounding the Congress are true. Room 441, however, is a bit of an enigma for me. There is no particular incident, such as a suicide or murder, attached to this room. But over the years, stories of a nameless female entity have made 441 the hotel’s most infamous room.

The story itself is simple: if you stay in 441, chances are you will be awoken in the middle of the night by a woman approaching the foot of your bed from the direction of the bathroom. She will then violently begin to shake the mattress. Sometimes she will whisper in your ear. Hotel staff receives calls from upset guests in 441 so frequently that they’ve come to accept it as routine. Jack, the security guard, said that he had “a couple of Navy guys” who were staying in 441 “come running down the hallway in their skivvies” at 3 am, demanding a cab and that their belongings be sent to them at another hotel. Once, he found a woman so frightened that she was curled up crying in the room’s small closet. A man angrily reported to the front desk that someone had come into his room in the middle of the night and stolen his shoes. He had not left 441 all night and claimed he had taken them off and set them by the end of the bed, just as he did every evening at home. They were found on the sixth floor.

Whether Jack was lying or telling us the truth, it’s a shame he hasn’t written a book. As I mentioned in the previous post, some of the details are so silly, so specific, and so cliche all at once that one wonders how these stories could have possibly been fabricated. Why the story about the shoes? It doesn’t really fit with the more popular tales about the shadow woman, and it’s one of the less interesting anecdotes Jack had to share with us. Moreover, since the faces behind the hotel don’t encourage the spreading of these stories, why does every staff member you ask have an immediate response about someone  asking them personally to be moved from this room? It’s almost as if they’re warning guests in advance because they’re truly shaken and don’t want to end up dealing with it themselves later. You can read a ton of people’s personal experiences with Room 441 through a simple Google search, but one of the most notable and objective of these comes from Demented Mitten Tours’ blog. This person stayed in 441 while traveling through Chicago (they’re in Michigan, so if you’re in town and want to explore the darker side of that state, sign up for one of their many tours) and had about as much of a mixed experience with the Congress as I did.

Outside of 441, we asked this entity yes or no questions using flashlights that were placed just between their on and off settings. What? Oh, you’ve seen Buzzfeed Unsolved and you know that this trick is easily explainable because science? Well, I’m not going to sit here and deny facts, so cool your jets. I’m not the President of the United States.

What I did find interesting, though, is the timing with which the lights switched on and off outside of 441. We asked the entity several questions with nary a response. Sometimes long silences occurred as we waited for something to happen. Here are some examples of our inquiries to the spirit:

“Are you lonely?”

“Did something happen to you here?”

“Are you vengeful and angry?”

“Do you shake the bed because you’re trying to send a message?”

On and on and on. Until one of the investigators asked this question:

“Do you like scaring people?”

The flashlight did not flicker or gradually come to life, but turned on as if someone had suddenly flipped the switch. And stayed on. An excited murmur traveled through us. There was a moment of silence while we considered what to ask next. Then came:

“Do you want people to get out of your room and leave you alone?”

Flashlight off.

I know it has something to do with the reflector heating up and cooling off, but you can’t buy that careful timing. Is this a lesson in how easy it is to assign meaning to coincidence? Or is it more? I’m a staunchly reasonable person, but like many of us, I find myself unable to let go of the hope that there is something more for us to discover than science can understand.

In the final part of this series, we’ll explore some of the Congress’s private ballrooms, where spirits reportedly disrupt $30K weddings and send actors and actresses running.

I have tiptoed into the 21st century and signed up for a @macabrelibraria, but you can pry my CD’s from my cold, dead hands.

-N.

Chicago Oddities and Curiosities Expo

This was the first year that the Odeum Expo Center in Villa Park, IL hosted the Oddities and Curiosities Expo– and it had a crazy turnout. The expo opened at 10, and by the time we got there at 9:50, the line to get into the parking lot of the center was half a mile long. Apparently, it’s frowned upon to have an interest in weird stuff, but if you want to make a Saturday out of it, that is a-okay. For this reason, (and the fact that I’m not a professional photographer and just got a new camera) a few of the photos are a little lower quality than I would have liked. Hopefully, that won’t ruin your enjoyment of some spliced together animal parts, some very creepy dolls, the most nightmare-enducing teddy bear you’ve ever seen, and a prop that was clearly misplaced by a straight-laced, wholesome sort of magician.

In the disbelieving words of my mother, sure, “They just glued those on there!” But I’m a fan of creating one’s own brand new cryptids. After all, they’re no faker than the already well-established ones.

Some definitely haunted boxes. It’s a good thing I didn’t encounter an old wine cabinet here.

I sincerely wanted to take this adorable effigy of Moth Man home with me– but, alas, the emptiness of my wallet left him as elusive as ever.

He’s real, and he looks really good on the hearth next to your beer steins and fireplace tools.

Has anyone seen that video of Mickey Mouse that’s supposed to throw you into an inconsolable depression or something? Well, now you can have him right on your bedside table.

“How many of us do you recognize?” they chirped in unison, and after that, we never slept again …

This guy is giving Bill Skarsgård a run for his money.

 

I don’t know. I just don’t know, so don’t ask.

To make things worse, this teddy is animatronic and says sinister things while using his face as a mask and pulling it off over and over again.

Unfortunately, there were no prints available of this beautiful painting by Anthony Licari, or it would be hanging on my wall right now. But his website contains some equally haunting images for sale.

This is an item from our local vintage/oddities shop, Abernathy’s. I was really impressed by their selection; their booth certainly rivalled many of the others!

A lot is going on here. The Donald has even made an appearance, like an apparition in a photo you didn’t notice until you were looking at it later … and never wanted to see in the first place.

And here are the spoils! Sorry for the low-quality cell photo. I grabbed some hilarious Texas Chainsaw Massacre-themed BBQ sauce from Dead Darling Boutique, although I would have also purchased one of her adorable bat pillows if I had been on a slightly larger budget. Luckily, one of my QotD cohosts noticed Alexandra Winthrop‘s booth; she’s a Chicago tattoo artist who apparently loves to geek women out by creating gorgeous prints of Sylvia Plath complete with references to the epitaph on her gravestone. And finally, I scored this beautiful harvest goddess print from Jodi Cachia, whose art was so beautiful I had trouble deciding which print I had to have at the moment. I’ll certainly be back to satiate my love for the macabre with stuff from these creators’ sites!

Other amazing artists at this expo, whose work I did not get a chance to photograph and/or purchase:

• Bryan Fyffe has this gorgeously inexplicable style that hovers somewhere inbetween surrealism and minimalism (at least to my untrained eye). His work varies from evocative nature scenes to strangely cute haunted houses. There’s something for everyone here, and it’s all unique.
• I’m all for the handmade, organic treat-yourself stuff that’s coming from Spellbound Baths. They sell bath bombs, salts, and smudge sprays, but I think my personal weakness will be their candles; they’re little spells all to themselves that can help you set intentions such as relieving anxiety, releasing negative energy, and developing your spiritual mind. Plus, they have a bunch of gorgeous-smelling herbs and natural oils in them.
• Wendy Gauls’ shop, Etched in Embers, is on hiatus from Etsy, which makes me doubly disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to purchase her art. She does stunning wood art that you have to see to believe; you can’t peruse her shop at the moment, but there are still reviews with pictures of her work on the page. You can even sign up to be emailed when she returns. I have a blank wall in my apartment, so I hope that’s soon.

Things are getting exciting around here at The Macabre Librarian; it’s as if I started this blog and a ton of interesting opportunities suddenly came into my life. Coming up will be a post about my tour of Chicago’s Northwest side with Chicago Hauntings, as well as some really special pictures from my late-night private ghost tour with the company at one of Chicago’s most haunted buildings, the Congress Plaza Hotel.

I’m also beginning to be contacted by authors asking me for an honest review of their horror novels in exchange for a free copy. I’m honored that my opinion matters enough that someone would want me to do this, but for the moment I have a strict thesis-related reading list and my proposal is due in 25 days (yikes). In the more distant future, however, I’d be happy to do this for fellow writers and horror enthusiasts!

-N