Haunted Illinois: 11 Ghost Tours In Chicago And Elsewhere

CHICAGO — Throughout its prairies, river towns and big cities, Illinois is filled with ghosts bumping into each other — from Honest Abe Lincoln and ne’er-do-well neighborhood hobos to dead pioneers and gangsters. If you’re looking for a fright this Halloween, Patch has rounded up the best bus and walking ghost tours in the Chicago area and beyond.

Each tour is unique, offering its own interpretation of Illinois’ local haunts, including historical perspectives, storytelling and opportunities to do your own paranormal investigations.You may even find yourself part of a YouTube video or podcast.

Because the business of boos is brisk in October, ghosts and spirits —much like the news— aren't known to take a vacation, so don’t be bummed if some tours are currently sold out. Many of these tours actually run throughout the year.

We also advise calling or emailing ahead of your tour to find out about face mask and social distancing COVID-19 guidelines.

Chicago Gangster and Ghost Tours

It's hard to believe that a century has passed since Prohibition was enacted in 1920. Chicago Gangster and Ghost Tours dives into the city’s haunted gangster hangouts and old crime scenes where it all went down 100 years ago. Take a 1.5-mile walking tour through the old Chicago Loop Vice District. Notable stops include the Congress Hotel, where ol’ Scarface himself, Al Capone, ran his incognito bootleg business, Death Alley and Palmer House. Tours are led by historians, who share the infamous stories of the ghosts and gangsters of Chicago’s streets. Four tours are offered daily: 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 4 p.m. and 8 p.m. Walking tours are limited in group size for social distancing. Tickets range are $27 adults; $25 for seniors (age 65+) and youths (7-17). Kids age 6 and under are free. Book online to reserve a spot.

Chicago Hauntings

Chicago Hauntings offers a treasure trove of walking and bus tours, and frequently makes the lists of top ghost tours in America and Chicago. Take a chilling walk through Lincoln Park and Prairie Avenue, which was once the home Al Capone. The ghost tour company also ventures into the suburbs, including Aurora and Naperville, where you might run into the Naperville Bride. Beware: In addition to encountering a phantasm, you might learn a tidbit about local history, too.

Tours are being booked now for the Original Chicago Bus Tour, Lincoln Park Haunting Chicago Ghost Tour and Ghost Hunt, Prairie Avenue Ghost Tour, The Devil In the White City, Resurrection Mary/Archer Avenue Triangle, Aurora Hauntings Ghost Hunt and Naperville Hauntings, as well as private tours. Tours range in price from $29 to $49, including rates for seniors and children. Visit Chicago Hauntings to book a tour; call 833-446-7813 or email info@americanghostwalks.com.

Graveside Paranormal

Graveside Paranormal (GP) is a rising star in Chicago’s ghost tour industry. People who’ve taken Neal Gibbons’ tours rave about his storytelling and their encounters with the spirit world. Graveside Paranormal visits the most haunted destinations, where Gibbons and partner Steve Leinweber have previously uncovered paranormal activity. Many of these are exclusive locations unknown to other ghost tours.

Guests get hands-on paranormal investigation experience with the help of EVP recorders (guests are also welcome to bring their own equipment) and other ghost hunting tools. Delve into the Forge Bar in Blue Island, where moans have been picked up on EVP recorders, and shadowy figures have been known appear.

Patch has been on a few of Gibbons’ tours, and we've had some weird experiences, including in the back end of Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, where a spirit gave the name of a guest’s dead grandmother’s dog through Leinweber’s Ana Hatta box, which is said to communicate with souls beyond the grave.

Guests ride on luxury coach buses, where Gibbons keeps things entertaining with videos of old Universal monsters and 1950s sci-fi clips. You’ll roam the forest preserves visiting little-known haunted destinations and sing karaoke with the ghosts at Chet’s Melody Lounge.

GP is giving tours Friday and Saturday during the month of October that depart from 115 Bourbon St. in Merrionette Park. Nightlife and Day Time tours are $45, and Trick or Treat tours (Oct. 23 and Oct. 30) are $65 at the Bridgeview Park District. Book tickets online.

Old Joliet Prison Tours

The Joliet Area Historical Museum offers a variety of walking tours of the Old Joliet Prison including self-guided and docent-led historical, guard, paranormal, photography and haunted history tours of the old jolly tea room. The looming, limestone gothic structure opened in 1858 as the Illinois State Penitentiary and was built in the 1850s by convict labor. Convicts and criminals literally worked the rock pile, quarrying limestone onsite. Joliet Prison or Joliet Penitentiary, as the locals called it, housed prisoners of war and criminals during the Civil War. By 1872, the prison population had swelled to 1,239, then a record number for a single prison.

The prison was slow to modernize, and there was no running water or toilets in cells until 1910. Before the Joliet Prison closed in 2002, Leopold and Loeb, Baby Face Nelson, Richard Speck and John Wayne Gacy passed through its cells. The venue's paranormal and ghost hunting tours are sold out, but you can still book a haunted history walking tour in October to get a glimpse into the grim history of the state and the nation’s correctional practices. Also, you never know when Dickie Loeb might stumble out of the old prison shower.

Tours will meet at the Old Joliet Prison main parking lot off of Collins Street in front of the prison (1125 Collins St., Joliet, IL for your GPS). This is an age 16+ tour. Tickets are $40 and can be purchased online.

Weird Chicago/American Hauntings

Weird Chicago visits all the sites of Chicago’s mayhem and mystery. Tours include the Devil In The White City, where you visit H.H. Holmes’ hangouts, All Weird Chicago Bus Tour and Haunted History Downtown Walking Tours. There’s no itinerary, so every tour is different. Knowledgeable Chicago tour guides mix it up to keep everyone guessing. Book a Weird Chicago ghost tour.

Windy City Ghosts

One of Chicago’s oldest neighborhoods, Lincoln Park, has been the site of massacres and speakeasies, and the stomping grounds of serial killers, hot jazz babies and gangsters. Scratch beneath Lincoln Park’s recreational spaces, lakefront views and lagoon, and you’ll find its weird underside, where the ghosts of Al Capone, H.H. Holmes and John Dillinger are said to roam. The neighborhood was also home to L. Frank Baum and the prime suspects in the 1982 Tylenol Murders.

Windy City Ghosts hosts daily walking tours, rain or shine, including 60- and 90-minute walkabouts. Tours are led by knowledgeable Chicago guides who offer strange and disturbing tales of such haunted sites as the Order of the Golden Dawn, the former Hobbs Institute asylum, Biograph Theatre, Red Lion and John Barleycorn Memorial Park. Also hear about Lincoln Park’s history as the city’s burial ground. Tickets are priced at $19.99 and $24.99 for the extended tour and can be purchased online. Get your daily steps in while you learn something chilling about one of the city's most popular neighborhoods.

Beyond Chicago

American Hauntings

Are you morbidly curious? Troy Taylor, author, ghost and crime buff, manages American Hauntings out of Jacksonville, Illinois. The ghost tour company offers no-hype supernatural bus tours, river road tours and ghost hunts, as well as “evenings with” dinner events (Lizzie Borden, Edgar Allen Poe, an exorcism).

American Hauntings publishes ghost books and newsletters on the paranormal (American Hauntings Ink) and has a podcast. Tours and ghost hunts visit the Midwest’s most haunted landmarks in Carlinville, Alton and Springfield, into Indiana, Iowa and Missouri. October is booking quickly, so you have to hurry. Tours are offered throughout the year. Book online.

Haunted Decatur

Who knew Decatur was such a hot spot for sin, scandals and sordidness? One of Jacksonville-based American Hauntings' oldest tours, Haunted Decatur, offers a supernatural bus tour of the city’s crime scenes, scandals, unsolved murders and more. Each tour gets on and off the bus throughout the night at the most haunted places in town, including indoor locations where you might have the chance to meet a deceased Decatur resident. Book online.

Haunted Galena Tour Co.

Stroll through historic downtown Galena by candlelight. Guests of Haunted Galena Tour Company are led by costumed ghost guides who share Galena’s ghostly tales and eerie folklore about Galena. Tours are performed in a true storytelling format, and are offered Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday at 8 p.m., and Friday and Saturday nights at 8:30 p.m. throughout October. This is not a ghost hunting tour, but you are welcome to bring your EVP equipment. No kids under 7. Tours start at the Dowling House, 220 Diagonal St. in downtown Galena. Tickets are $21. 45; buy them online. Check out Haunted Galena Tour Company's other tours. All guides are fully vaccinated.

Amelia's Haunted Galena Bus Tours

During the 19th century, Galena newspapers regularly carried stories about citizens’ paranormal encounters and exorcisms. Today, you can climb aboard a coach bus, where Amelia’s Haunted Galena Bus Tours will take you to all the paranormal hot spots and share the lore and history behind these local urban legends. Sites visited include one of the area’s oldest cemeteries, along with the Dowling House, Ryan House and the DeSoto House Hotel — where Abraham Lincoln once made a speech from the balcony and the Lady In Black often roams. Three tours are offered daily throughout October. Buy tickets online.

Haunted Hannibal Ghost Tours

This tour is perched on the mighty Mississippi River in Mark Twain’s old hometown, Hannibal, Missouri. We’re throwing in the Haunted Hannibal Ghost Tour because we’ve had a few experiences that have scared the crap out of us, such as a 6-year-old’s iPad photo of her ghostly playmate, Billy Hoag, one of three boys who in 1967 got lost in Hannibal’s elaborate cave system and launched the largest cave rescue in U.S. history. The lads were never found.

Bus tours take guests to Hannibal’s most notoriously haunted sites, both past and present. Hear stories of murder and mischief from Twain’s boyhood days in Hannibal, meet the present-day ghosts of the mansions on Millionaires’ Row, and do much more.

Included on the tour is a ghost investigation in the Old Baptist Cemetery, a prominent setting in “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.” Guests have claimed to see a 5-year-old girl playing peek-a-boo in the northwest corner, and a tall Civil War solider named Edward, who isn’t particularly friendly. We’ve experienced some weird stuff in the cemetery, too.

Space is limited, so Hannibal ghost tours must be booked in advance to guarantee a seat. Visit Haunted Hannibal or call 573-248-1819 to schedule a Hannibal ghost tour. Tours depart from the Hannibal History Museum, 200 N. Main St.

Also on Patch: Halloween 101: Everything You Need For A Super Festive Front Door