to either Mary or me.
The smaller room adjoining the back parlor was called the octagon room, for obvious reasons, and was the “nerve center” of the Settlement. A pigeon hole desk, now only collecting dust, years ago would have been stuffed with messages for Hull-House volunteers. An old-fashioned two-piece phone stood silently on the desk. Nearby, an ancient typewriter slowly rusted away.
These rooms were interesting from a historical perspective, but my imagination was continually drawn to the stairs in the foyer. I stood there before the velvet rope that blocked access to them and looked up. There wasn’t much to see, only the light gradually fading into gloom at the top of the stairs.
Although I didn’t see anything that day as I peered up into the darkness at the head of the stairs, others have seen strange things. Dale Kaczmarek, a Chicago-area ghosthunter, once took a photo of the stairs, using a standard 35mm camera with infrared film. Although the stairs were empty when he took the photo, four shadowy monk-like figures appeared on the print after the film was developed. This is interesting because there are no known connections between monks and Hull-House, yet monks, or at least dark, hooded figures, are common ghostly apparitions, even in locations in which no monks were ever known to have lived. Other people have reported seeing similar dark and hooded figures in the windows of Hull-House. Who these figures may be, and why they are at Hull-House, remains a mystery.
While the ghostly encounters at Hull-House were originally attributed to Mrs. Hull, some believe that the ghost of Jane Addams herself may also be roaming the rooms in which she spent so much of her life. Perhaps her work there is not yet finished.
Museum of Science and Industry
CHICAGO
CHICAGO’S MUSEUM OF SCIENCE AND INDUSTRY, located at 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive, is one of the country’s pre-eminent centers for informal science and technology education.
It is also home to at least three ghosts.
The beautiful domed and columned building was originally built as the Palace of Fine Arts for the 1893 Columbian Exposition and is the only surviving structure from that exposition. The museum, which is situated along the shore of the Jackson Park lagoon, looks more like an ancient Greek temple than it does a center of science and technology. Perhaps it is that feeling of antiquity that draws the ghosts.
One of the museum’s most famous ghosts is that of Clarence Darrow, the celebrated lawyer whose battle with William Jennings Bryan in 1925 over the issue of teaching evolution in schools—a trial known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—has become a landmark case in the annals of jurisprudence and was also the inspiration for the play and movie Inherit the Wind. Darrow figured prominently in many other high-profile cases, including the 1924 Leopold and Loeb case, in which he defended two stone-cold teenage murderers of a fourteen-year-old boy and won them life imprisonment instead of the electric chair.
Darrow lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood that includes the museum. He died in Chicago in 1938 and his cremated remains were scattered in the Jackson Park lagoon as he had requested. Every year a wreath-laying ceremony honoring Darrow is held at the bridge spanning the lagoon. In 1957 the bridge was dedicated in his memory and is now known as the Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge.
Dale Kaczmarek, a Chicago ghost investigator who also operates area ghost tours, reported that a man on one of his tours took photos of the lagoon and captured the smoky image of a face near the bridge. Could it have been the ghost of Clarence Darrow?
“His ghost has been seen here in the museum as well,” said Travis*, a docent my wife, Mary, and I met at the Burlington Zephyr exhibit inside the museum. Travis was a rosy-cheeked young man whose new beard was just starting to grow in. Travis wore the blue uniform and cap of a train conductor, but he looked more like a kid on Halloween trick-or-treating as Captain Kangaroo.
“People have seen an elderly man dressed in a suit, walking in the hall by the windows that overlook the lagoon. They say he matches the description of Clarence Darrow. He’s there for just a moment, then he disappears,” Travis said.
Travis told us how the ghost interrupted a children’s Halloween storytelling session he was conducting at the museum. “I looked up and there he was. In the next second he was gone.”
We were standing before the gleaming engine of the Burlington Zephyr, one of the country’s first diesel streamlined trains, as we spoke. The stainless steel Burlington Zephyr seemed to glow in the vast, dark hall of the museum. Three cars were attached to the engine: a mail car, a passenger car, and a passenger lounge at the rear of the train that featured a curved exterior and panoramic windows. Travis said he had more to tell us, but it was time for him to lead the next tour through the train. Mary and I climbed aboard with him and a handful of other visitors.
The tour began in the mail car, with the history of the Burlington Zephyr given to us by Zeph, a robotic figure in the form of a talking burro so lifelike that some of the little children in the group patted its nose and tried to feed it some hay while it talked. The real Zeph joined the Dawn to Dusk Club of eighty-four distinguished passengers on the Zephyr’s maiden run from Denver to Chicago on May 26, 1934. Zeph came on board when the Rocky Mountain News offered the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) a “Rocky Mountain Canary” as a mascot for the trip. It was only when the burro was delivered that Ralph Budd, CB&Q president, understood he had accepted a burro and not a bird. Budd quickly ordered hay to be placed on board for Zeph, remarking, “One more jackass on this trip won’t make a difference.” Zeph sped off into history as the Zephyr broke all train speed records of the day, traveling 1,015 miles in 13 hours and 5 minutes, the longest nonstop train trip the world had ever witnessed. The Zephyr’s average speed was 77.5 miles per hour, although it peaked at 112.5 miles per hour.
The Zephyr’s sleek styling and incredible speed made it an instant celebrity, and the train starred in the 1934 movie The Silver Streak. Streamlining became all the rage in design, copied in everything from cars and airplanes to toasters and vacuum cleaners, and Madison Avenue ad agencies appropriated the Zephyr for advertising campaigns.
At the museum, the next car was the passenger coach. Unlike the stuffy old Pullman coaches, the Zephyr’s coach was as streamlined as its gleaming exterior. The clean lines and sleek design were accented by indirect lighting, plush upholstered seats, and colors in soothing pale green, cool blue, and light brown. Passengers could order 20¢ hamburgers and hot dogs, or other food from the kitchen. They were served by the all-female Zephyrettes, on-board hostesses who saw to the passengers’ every need. The day we were there, there were no Zephyrettes on board to assist the life-sized plaster passengers, who now sat scattered among the plush seats. Each of the figures had a speaker built into it so that it could “talk” to the others about the train and the journey. It was an eerie feeling, sitting next to these immobile figures, never knowing when the one right beside you might suddenly speak. I noticed that those same little children who so happily had fed the fake Zeph now clung to their parents.
The last car on the tour was the lounge car. Large windows completely lined its sides and rounded back end. A film projected onto the windows gave the illusion of movement while the jostling floor mimicked the rocking of the train along the tracks.
As we stood behind a velvet rope, we watched three robotic figures dressed in the style of the 1930s, seated in comfortable upholstered chairs. Ralph Budd sat on the left wearing a three-piece suit. His sister, Mrs. Katherine Wilder, occupied the center seat. To her left sat her young daughter. They all moved as they chatted with each other, subtle movements such as the turning of a head, a hand moving to one side, the flexing of a foot. There was
