A field guide to haunted eats

Open since 1847. Long Grove’s ghost walk still starts in a town this tavern outlived.

Berwyn’s 1917 roadhouse. The stage is famous. The building has had a century to collect a regular.

A Clarendon Hills tavern whose resident never left the parking lot in 1974.

A Route 66 BBQ house in Berwyn. Investigators called it a hotspot and meant both the pit and the hall.

A 1904 tavern across from Rosehill. The cemetery does not always stay on its side of the street.

Andersonville’s Swedish tavern. The mural has company. The owner stopped covering it up.

Humboldt Park’s 1937 tavern. She takes booth one, booth nine, and the women’s room.

Capone’s Uptown jazz club. The tunnels were sealed. The noise was not.

A Lakeview tavern whose former owner died on the premises and did not entirely clock out.

Two murders under this roof. The Ghost Lab came. The room did not empty.

A 1932 Bucktown tavern whose old owner still throws the glassware.

A Division Street dive. The bartender shot a hold-up man. The doorway kept him.

Clark and Belmont’s infamous dive. Gacy drank here. The room never quite brightened.

Lincoln Park’s English pub. Sharon died of measles here in 1959. She still reshelves nothing.

Halsted’s old Tonic Room. A knife in the wall, pentagrams in the basement, a bouncer who could not move.

Old Town ribs since 1932. Capone’s booth is still a booth. The house does not oversell the rest.

Lake Forest’s 1929 English inn. The dining rooms are public. The halls keep innkeeper hours.

St. Charles’s 1928 river hotel. The chambermaid went into the Fox. The sixth floor kept her shift.

Chicago’s oldest tavern building. The Fire missed it. The bookcase still opens on Prohibition.

Elm Street’s dive club. The speakeasy killed a woman. The room kept the hours.

River North’s Irish pub. A brakeman killed her upstairs. She still walks the bar in a nightgown.

A Victorian brownstone that still seats the family who died here.

Across from Resurrection Cemetery, Chet’s still pours a Bloody Mary for the hitchhiker who never made it home.

The Drake’s Prohibition-era bar. The Lady in Red jumped from ten. The lounge kept her tab.

Streeterville’s tavern. Captain Streeter’s neighborhood. A woman in white still uses the holidays.

Marina City’s House of Blues. In 1972 the cinema manager was stabbed in the dark. The complex kept her.

Coffee and a pint on the Resurrection Mary road, with a family that predates the building.

Adams Street since 1898. They poured the day Prohibition died. The stand-up bar still behaves like a last century.

Capone-era roadhouse on Archer. The bordello closed. The house did not empty.

The Palmer House dining room. The Fire took the first hotel. The second one kept the staff.

A Loop tavern since 1935. The tracks still shake the glassware. Some of the regulars never caught the last train.

A Loop pizza house where some regulars never picked up the check.

An 1893 World’s Fair hotel. Some floors were sealed. The boy on twelve did not get the memo.

Engine 104’s 1905 house. The trucks left. The dining room kept the brick.

Lemont’s Main Street burger tavern, in a limestone canal town that does not stay quiet.

Aurora’s 1856 railroad roundhouse. The stalls still employ men the railroad already buried.

Blue Island’s Creole house. Not the Quarter. Close enough to plate the ghosts of another city.

An 1838 canal warehouse in Lockport. Investigators spent the night. The restaurant still takes walk-ins.

An 1890s Joliet dining room. During renovation, the crew hit bone.

Hammond’s Hohman Avenue supper. The mills changed shifts. The dining room kept seating them.

Illinois’s oldest standing brewery, now a distillery. Capone bootlegged here. The night watchman never clocked out.

Hammond’s distillery tasting room. The Region still pours. The mills changed shifts.

Munster’s famous brewpub, a mile of industrial park from the Illinois line.

Schererville’s family house since the 1920s. Perch, chicken, a booth that has heard the Region’s whole shift.

Crown Point’s downtown pint, a block from the jail Dillinger walked out of.

Crown Point’s square gastropub. The courthouse lady still chooses a color. The jail is next door.

A pint on Crown Point’s square, in the same orbit as the lady in the courthouse.

Crown Point’s German brewery, a block from a courthouse that will not empty.

Chesterton’s Italian house, inland from the dunes and the lake’s older weather.

Michigan City’s brewpub. The lake on one side. The prison’s weather on the other.

Valparaiso’s 1857 tavern. The haunted pub crawl still starts at the bar.

Valparaiso’s 1860s mill, now a distillery campus. The factory stopped. The pour did not.

Bloomington’s 1936 Italian grill. The booths have heard central Illinois’s whole argument.

Peoria’s 1927 hotel dining room. Capone had a hide. A woman in green did not check out.

Otto Sallman still works his Galena cafe. The living are the only ones who get a check.

Galena’s tasting room was the town’s first mortuary. The piano still works without a player.

Illinois’s oldest hotel. The Lady in Black’s file did not close until 2011. Dinner is still served.

Springfield’s 1884 dining room. Lincoln’s town still seats the living at supper.

Springfield’s brewpub, a block from Lincoln’s house. The capital still pours. So does the neighborhood.

Alton’s cash-only tavern. The town is one of America’s most haunted. Eddie’s is where it drinks.

Alton’s Broadway grill. The haunted dinner tours still start with a plate here.

A 1910 Alton bakery that learned to pour. The bluff town’s dead are still on the delivery list.

Grafton’s waterfront plate, at the meeting of rivers the dead have been using for a long time.

Grafton’s river-road dining room, on the same run as Pere Marquette and Alton’s dead.

A CCC lodge on the Illinois River. Guests have seen a white figure. The chicken is still family-style.

An 1867 mineral-springs hotel in Okawville. The waters still run. So do the former owners.

The Lemp brewing family kept dying in this house. The dining room is still open.

Ohio’s oldest inn still sets a table for guests who checked in two centuries ago.

A CCC lodge in the Shawnee. Family-style chicken. The park keeps its own hours after the plates are cleared.

A mansion hotel in Golconda, on the Ohio. The state’s southern edge still sets a table.

Confederate sharpshooters used this cellar. The inn still serves supper in it.

Baltimore’s oldest saloon — and, if the story holds, Poe’s last pour.

Aaron Burr’s carriage house still knocks over champagne it did not pour.

A butter-yellow Victorian where Zoe still looks for her sister, and a dead dog still works the porch.

Savannah’s 1753 seamen’s inn, rumored tunnel and all, still serving supper.

Anna still keeps room 204. Dinner downstairs does not require her permission.

America’s most photographed plantation haunting still serves supper on the grounds.

Pierre lost the house in a poker game, then kept the second floor anyway.

The second-oldest restaurant in New Orleans still employs a few people who are off the clock forever.

Count Arnaud’s daughter still dresses for Rex in a dining room that never closed.

The oldest restaurant in America has had 350 years to collect a regular or two.

Boston’s oldest restaurant keeps a woman in colonial dress on the second floor.

A 1916 Austin roadhouse whose staircase still belongs to a woman in white.

Bullet holes from 1915, a piano that does not need a player, and Clark Gable’s worst night.

Two mission-era adobes serving Mexican food — and, on some nights, a headless friar.

A 1905 boarding-house saloon. Sam drinks downstairs. Rose never checked out upstairs.

A Prohibition distillery on the cliff, still keeping a table for a woman in blue.