As we approach Halloween this weekend, we thought what better way to celebrate than research some of the real hauntings around the Second City. With a city with as much history as Chicago, there is bound to be a ghost here and there. Here are 10 of the Most Haunted Spots in Cook County.

HARPO STUDIOS

The control Oprah Winfrey has over America’s female population isn’t the only thing terrifying down at Harpo Studios. On July 24, 1915, a steam ship capsized in the Chicago River killing 800 passengers in the shallow waters. Almost 200 of those bodies were transported to a nearby warehouse that was used as a temporary morgue because the hospitals were all full following the disaster. 80 years later, Harpo Studios moved in, built upon the same city block. Night shift employees have heard phantom laughter through the halls and one ghost, “Gray Lady”, has been seen enough to become an honorary part of the staff.

EXCALIBUR NIGHTCLUB

There is nothing scarier than some of creepy old men who hang out at Excalibur on Friday nights. But apparently, there are other regular haunts than these aged club grandpas. Like Harpo, the building was used as a temporary morgue following the Eastland Steamer disaster in 1915. Since opening its doors in 1989, employees have often reported strange occurrences including falling glasses, flickering lights, mysterious cold spots. There’s even a floating woman in a red dress.

ARCHER AVENUE

Everyone has heard the story about the “vanishing hitchhiker” where a guy driving late at night who stops to pick up a beautiful girl on the side of the road. Offering her a ride home, the two share conversation until she suddenly disappears as they pass by a cemetery. But did you know that story actually originated here in the Windy City? Our hometown haunt, Resurrection Mary, according to legend got in a fight with her boyfriend at the Oh Henry Ballroom and stormed off into the cold night, where she was killed by a hit-and-run driver. For more than 80 years, there have been stories of men who say they picked up a blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl in a white party dress along Archer Avenue. She asks the drivers to let her off by Resurrection Cemetery.

MOUNT CARAMEL CEMETERY

The Italian graveyard home to many Chicago gangsters, including Al Capone, is known for the mysterious case of a young Ms. Julia Buccola Petta. Also known as “The Italian Bride”, young Julia died during childbirth in 1921 and was buried in her wedding dress. Shortly after the funereal, her mother had dreams in which Julia cried out to her that she was still alive. After living with the torment night after night for six years, the grave was exhumed to discover that while the casket had decomposed, Julia Buccola Petta’s body had not.

THE BIOGRAPH THEATER

The story of one of Chicago’s most notorious gangsters had the Hollywood touch over the summer as John Dillinger was brought to life on the big screen in the film Public Enemies. On July 22, 1934, FBI agents gunned down Dillinger as he left the movies with a woman dressed in red. Legend has it that every night, you can see a misty blue figure dash down the alley next to the Biograph and fall to the ground before vanishing into thin air.

WATER TOWER

Every Chicagoan knows that the Water Tower at the corner of Michigan and Chicago Avenue was one of the only buildings to survive the Great Fire of 1871. Legend has it, though, that other things may have “survived” from that night as well… There have been several accounts of tourists spotting a shadowy figure of a hanging man dangling in one of the upstairs windows. The man is said to be a worker who heroically manned the pumps to try and save the city, instead of fleeing for his life and hung himself before the flames could engulf him.

63rd STREET and SOUTH LOWE AVENUE

Chicago is home to a lot of things: deep dish pizza, a cursed Major League baseball club, and the country’s tallest building. But the Second City was also stomping grounds for America’s first serial killer. H. H. Holmes made a living during the World’s Fair in 1893 operating a hotel in Englewood at the corner of 63^rd Street and Lowe Avenue. The hotel’s rooms were unique in that they were all outfitted as death chambers for those unlucky enough to enter. His story has been popularized as of late in the book The Devil in the White City. The rooms in the hotel were built special to serve as asphyxiation chambers, doors opened to brick walls, and elevators that went nowhere at all. It was a real-life horror house. The most ghastly room of all in the so-called “Murder Castle” was the basement torture chamber hidden underneath his private apartment. After catching Holmes, police found a blood-spattered operating table in the room along with a crematorium and large vats of acid where he disposed of the bodies. Holmes was caught and sentenced to hanging after admitting to the murder of over 200 young women and hotel costumers. The original building is gone, but residents have reported ghastly moans and sights around the Englewood Post Office, which currently sits on the tainted ground.

CONGRESS HOTEL

With it’s marquee sign on Chicago’s skyline, the Congress has been a downtown staple for decades. The hotel was also a common meeting ground for mobsters in the ‘20s and ‘30s and was at one time “the” place to see and be seen. The halls are long and creepy and there are secret passageways in case the pigs ever decided to crash the party. Legend has it a mysterious mobster murder took place in the ‘20s and Room 666 is sealed shut without any explanation.

MARSHALL FIELD JR’s MANSION

Before Macy’s came in and did their “rebranding”, Marshall Fields was as iconic to the city as it’s skyline. Their name was everywhere and the family inhabited several mansions in the Prairie View neighborhood directly west of where Soldier Field currently sits. The department store titan purchased one such mansion for his song, Marshall Field Jr., as a wedding present in 1890. The red sandstone mansion at houses 43 rooms in an impressive 30,000 square feet of prime South Loop realestate. In Novembr 1905, Marshall Fields Jr. was found dead in the house, victim of an apparent “accident”. The family maintained that the young man was cleaning out a hunting rifle that accidently misfired, but it has been widely speculated that it was in fact a cover up for an accidental shooting down the street at the Everleigh Club brothel a few blocks away. The family claimed the house was “uninhabitable” with rumors of shadowy figures, unexplained footsteps, and inhumane screams in the middle of the night.

HULL HOUSE

While Chicago’s Hull House may be the most well known settlement house in the country, it has a darker side behind the philanthropic history. Numerous ghosts are said to haunt the halls from Jane Addams ghost to that of a devil baby born with horns and scales who was locked away in the attic. The building is also said to be built upon a Native American burial site. Spooky….