Touring Weird Chicago

If you’ve never been to Chicago, you might get most of your impressions of the Windy City from one of three sources: old gangster movies from the 30s, the Matthew Broderick movie, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, or the original sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show.  In retrospect, it’s not much to base an impression of a city that’s been around since 1833 and whose famous University of Chicgao began in 1892.  No, in order to really know this city, you have to live in it a while, check into one of Chicago’s luxurious hotels, eat in its restaurants and diners, check out its theater and clubs, and perhaps attend one of the weirdest tours of the Toddlin’ Town, Weird Chicago.
 
The Weird Chicago tour is a ghost tour of the city like no others, taking you to places that are presumed haunted, to crime spots and strange locations.  The tours have appeared on a number of cable television networks, such as the Discovery Channel, A & E, The Biography Channel, TLC, and the History Channel.  The three hour tours may explore everything from the Great Chicago Fire to the crimes of the 19th Century to Al Capone. 
 
The tours depart from the Hard Rock Cafe in downtown Chicago and follow a number of hardened cases.  There’s the Devil and the White City Tour, in which you explore the history of American serial killer H.H. Holmes at the 1893 Chicago’s World Fair, and explores the “Murder Castle,” an infamous site in Chicago history.  There’s the Blood, Guns & Valentines Al Capone Tour, taking a look at where Al Capone lived.  There’s even a Red Light District Sex Tour, that focuses on the history of sex in Chicago, examining the original red light district as well as the world’s first Playboy Club, and more.  This particular tour is limited to those eighteen and above, with proof of age required.  In fact, Weird Chicago seems to have a tour for every bizarre taste, including pub crawls and public enemies tours, as well as the Bloody Chicago Crime tours. 
 
One of the more interesting tours explores Archer Avenue and the haunted highway, the source of the ghost story, Resurrection Mary.  It’s one of Chicago’s best known ghost stories, and perhaps the origin of all those stories about a woman who appears on a lonely highway and taken into a motorist’s car, only to have the woman disappear and the driver learn the woman was a ghost.  Hearing such stories and traveling to such sites will certainly make you put aside at least some of your sitcom friendly Bob Newhart and Ferris Bueller notions of Chicago.

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