C H I C A G O  G H O S T S :
Ghosts of Prairie Avenue

Prairie Avenue, the quickly gentrifying district just west of Chicago's Soldier Field, was Chicago's easy street in the days after the Great Fire.  Anyone who was anyone in the city had a multi-room mansion on this fabled thorougfare, but the avenue--though devoid of financial worries--was hardly free of care.  The hush of death fell on Prairie in 1905 when Marshall Field, Jr., prince of American retail, was found shot to death in the bedroom of his 20-room home down the street from his fabled father.  Rumors flew about untoward doings of Field in the old Levee district nearby.  Some said that Field had a secret life in the Levee, perhaps a lover (or worse) at the famed Everleigh Club brothel.  

Though the family stuck to the story of "accident" (they claimed Field had accidentally shot himself while cleaning a hunting rifle), the house soon became "uninhabitable." Since the death of Field, rumors of shadowy figures, footsteps, and inhuman cries have haunted the house, just recently rehabbed and sold (in sections) as condominiums.  Is all peaceful again on Prairie Avenue?  The new owners won't tell . . . .

For more on haunted Prairie Avenue, check out "More Chicago Haunts: Scenes from Myth and Memory."