The Congress Hotel in Chicago, Illinois is said to be the most haunted place in the Windy City. It was built to accommodate travelers to the World’s Fair in 1893.
Staff at the Congress Hotel report poltergeist activity like electrical appliances turning on and off on their own. There have been reports of ghostly noises coming from the old fashioned hotel ballroom at night. When security guards open the ballroom doors to see what is going on the ballroom is empty and quiet.
There have been reports of hauntings and ghosts in the hallways. The hotel staff have all seen an apparition they call “Peg-Leg Johnny”. The ghost a vagrant with a peg leg has 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.
As a hotel that has entertained a number of famous guests, there are legends about different well-known personalities who may haunt the hotel. One of the more notorious ghosts may be that of gangster Al Capone, who owned the hotel for a while and used it for his headquarters.
But the most shocking thing about the Congress Hotel is the story of the worker who was mistakenly walled up behind the drywall during construction. You can still see his hand poking out of the plaster in the wall, gripping one of the iron bars in the framework. Staff call it “The Hand of Mystery”.
The Congress Hotel has an eerie reputation for being haunted and the first annual Chicago Ghost Conference was held at this haunted hotel in 2007.
The poor man!Why did’nt they remove his body?Anything to make a buck I guess.
I have stayed at this hotel not knowing it was haunted and this one girl I was with that nobody liked kept saying she didn’t want to turn off the light at night, because these at the front desk told her about the ghosts and we all just thought she was making stuff up to get attention, I guess not now that I read this.
Yuck! The hand of the mystery
Not scary at all. But that’s sad how the poor guy got trapped.
Not scary:P
that poor man getting trapped there so sad