Author: Jo-Anne Christensen

The history of Illinois is permeated with mysterious and ominous tales, from the streets of Chicago to the gentle curves of the Mississippi. Enjoy 75 accounts of ghostly visitations--among them spirits from the Great Chicago Fire, the curse of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, a spectral steamboat on Fulton County's Spoon River and the wandering ghost of Abe Lincoln.

Murder and tragedy are woven together with mystery and misfortune in this chilling collection of paranormal tales. Disembodied whispers behind walls and fading screams from across the water have given rise to ghostly legends and folklore around inexplicable events: 

• Al Capone's victims return in ghostly forms to drive him crazy
• the spirit of Abraham Lincoln is felt, both in the White House and in his native town of Springfield
• a beautiful young lady flirts in Chicago ballrooms and hitchhikes through the Southwest Side, but invariably vanishes behind the gates of Resurrection Cemetery when pursued
• farmers along the Mississippi feel their blood run cold when they encounter a grim, taciturn boatman-with the face of a corpse
• pedestrians on the Clark Street Bridge in Chicago hear the screams of the hundreds of pleasure-seeking passengers who plunged to their death when the steamboat Eastland capsized-in 1915
• a headless horseman riding a coal-black steed terrorizes citizens near Lakey's Creek
• visitors to the old Hickory Hill Slave House tell of a shapeless terror that lurks in the attic there, recreating the horrors of the Reverse Underground Railroad

From snowball-throwing spooks to grisly ghosts of vengeance, amazing apparitions arise in Decatur, Dallas City, Warsaw, Joliet, Bloomington, Peoria, Gurnee, Moline, Lewistown, Naperville, Monticello, Equality, Canton, Jonesboro, Woodstock, Normal, Charleston, Alton, and many little towns along the Mississippi.