NEW! Weird Chicago Podcast "The Haunted Hotel" was recorded here in 2008 - will the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt endorse a candidate in time for Super Tuesday? Find out for free on
! It features several new bits of information from our extensive research.
The Congress Hotel
Orbs, orbs, orbs in the Gold Room, a former ballroom. These are a perfect example of orbs that are, in reality, dust particles. Note how many of them are the shape of guitar picks.
 "The Devil's Hand" - is this the hand of the mythical Drywall Dave?
 Ken Melvoin-Berg of Weird Chicago and Hector Reyes take a break from hunting ghosts to hunt for zombies!
Theodore Roosevelt: He's Back, and he's pissed!
Picture taken in the Florentine Room, whee Roosevelt announced he was leaving the Republican Party, and where, six weeks later, he formed the American Progressive (Bull Moose) party. Some say his face is visible in the light in this picture, taken by Kayla Hendrick while the podcast was being recorded. | | The Congress Hotel, on Michigan Avenue a block or so south of the Loop in Chicago, was built to accomodate crowds for the 1893 World's Fair. At the time, it was as elegant as hotels get. The years, however, have not been terribly kind to the Congress - a staff strike which has lasted for years has been especially rough on the exterior. The ghosts of its former glory can be seen all over the building - but what about actual ghosts?
There are plenty of stories about the place, as there are with most old, formerly elegant buildings. Several guests note that the place bears more than a passing resemblance to the hotel from The Shining, and many complain about appliances turning themselves off and on - a classic sign of poltergeist activity which some blame on the ghost of The Judge, one of the last people who actually lived in the hotel, who used to ride around in his wheelchair, carrying a remote control.
According to reports on the internet, the place is said to be haunted by Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Thomas Edison, and Frank Lloyd Wright, all of whom crashed at the hotel at one point or another. However, none of the staff - some of whom had worked the night crew for decades - knew anything about any of these ghosts. However, they did have some good stories for us, including the ghost of Pegleg Johnny - a vagrant with a peg leg who had been spotted on one particular floor by several recent guests (research revealed that a hobo with a peg leg had, in fact, been murdered in the hotel decades before). Also, there were ghosts of a little boy who was seen running down the hall, a woman who committed suicide in a room on the 12th floor, and, possibly the ghost of a worker who was killed after being mistakenly (or possibly intentionally) walled up behind the drywall.
We've never found any evidence that a worker was actually killed this way - in fact, the story is almost certainly apocryphal. However, in a closet near one of the ballrooms, we found a protrusion coming out of the wall and enveloping a cross beam. From a distance, it sort of looked like a hand. We chuckled, took a picture, and moved on. However, when we blew the picture up, we were quite surprised to find that the protrusion clearly had four fingers and a thumb! Is it a glove that's been somehow plastered over - or the hand of Drywall Dave? The world may never know.
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