hh holmes murder castle tour

Entertainment

Serial Killer H.H. Holmes' Infamous Hotel Met A Mysterious End

History's new documentary series American Ripper dives into the bloody history of H.H. Holmes. The Chicago serial killer is infamous not just for the multiple murders he confessed to committing (the actual total is probably higher), but the resources he dedicated to conning and then killing his victims. The tricked-out hotel he had built for the purpose of more easily satiating his urges probably saw more mayhem and murder than any other travel accommodations, but could the morbidly curious still spend a night at the "murder castle"? If you dared, could you visit H.H. Holmes' hotel and see the site of an undetermined number of deaths?

Those interested in taking a haunted tour of the base of Chicago's most infamous serial killer will be disappointed to learn that Holmes' hotel is no longer standing. According to The Chicagoist, an aspiring entrepreneur purchased the building after Holmes was hanged for murder, intending to make it into a tourist attraction. "On Aug. 19 [1896] at 12:13 a.m., a railroad night watchman spotted flames coming through the Castle's roof," the piece reads. "Seconds later, explosions blew out the first-floor windows, and the fire was out of control by the time help arrived. 90 minutes after the fire was reported, the roof had collapsed and most of the building demolished ." The source of the fire was not determined, though it's possible that some neighbors may have rather seen the building destroyed than turned into a circus.

While the building where Holmes committed his most atrocious crimes has fallen, a new building has been erected in its spot. If you choose to walk onto these possibly haunted grounds, you'll be able to do so during regular business hours. You can even buy stamps while you're there.

That's right – The only building that still exists on the land where H.H. Holmes built his modern dungeon is the Englewood Post Office . While most of the area formerly occupied by the Murder Castle is now overtaken by grass and foliage, the post office erected on its land serves as the closest thing to a H. H. Holmes landmark. What was once a place of isolation and death is now the home of helpful USPS staff members, P.O. boxes, and medium-sized wait lines.

Despite the unassuming nature of the post office, its loose affiliation with the Holmes "murder castle" has turned it into a makeshift tourist attraction. While the ground it sits on is probably considered by some to be a prime location for multiple hauntings, it seems that this establishment provides more services than scares. The post office's Yelp page provides far more insight into the quality of the post office itself (free street parking!) than reports of hauntings or relics from Holmes' time on the site.

While the post office has absolutely no affiliation with Holmes and features no official acknowledgement of the site's bloody history, the address itself is still a popular destination for everything from Chicago walking tours to investigators of the morbid and paranormal . While Holmes likely never intended for his "murder castle" to become a government building, there is one detail about the site that reveals something about the building that used to stand there.

While the Englewood post office only takes up part of it, the castle itself took up the entire block and was also three stories high. So if you visit, you can compare the building that currently stands there to the comparatively massive scope of Holmes' hotel. It just so happens that you can also send a package while you're there.

The Devil In The White City Bus Tour

What to expect.

Imitated by many, this is the original tour created by Chicago Hauntings in 2004, inspired by the phenomenonal best seller, The Devil and the White City, Erik Larson’s brilliant look at the minds behind the best and worst achievements of Victorian Era Chicago.

H.H. Holmes, The Murder Castle, The World's Fair & Victorian Chicago tour

Join us for an excursion through the spaces and places made famous by Erik Larson’s blockbuster, The Devil in the White City . You’ll visit sites of Victorian era intrigue, including the site where the Great Fire began, Prairie Avenue historic district, the World’s Fairgrounds and, yes, the site of the former Murder Castle of the only and only H.H. Holmes, “America’s First Serial Killer.” Many believe that H.H. Holmes “murder castle” is an inspiration for the Hotel Cortez in the hit television show American Horror Story hotel due to the sinister intent behind the Chicago hotel construction.

See our tour guide Tony Szabelski tell a story of H.H. Holmes to CBS 2 in Chicago

Why Choose American Ghost Walks?

The Devil In The White City Bus Tour was founded by Ursula Bielski, famed Chicago ghostlore historian who literally wrote the book on hauntings related to H.H. Holmes and The Devil In The White City !

Expert paranormal guide

Select Saturdays and Sundays at 1pm

Easy/Moderate

$69 Per Person

Slide title

The Devil In The White City himself, H.H. Holmes...

H. H. Holmes Murder Castle

The Fountain of Time Being Built in 1920

A replica of the statue of Columbia as seen in the World's Fair

Tourgoers at the site of H.H. Holmes Murder Castle today

On The Devil In The White City Bus

The Union Stockyards Gate in Chicago also features a powerful Firefighters Memorial 

Captivated guests learn more about H.H. Holmes at the site of the Murder Castle

The Columbian Exposition as seen in 1893

Important Info

• Wear comfortable shoes and warm clothing, and bring a poncho or umbrella (in case of rain) for our walk through the former fairgrounds of Jackson Park. Walking is minimal.
• We recommend using  SpotHero  to save you time near the Congress Plaza Hotel. 
• The tour group meets in the Congress Lounge bar inside the hotel.
• Because this is a limited capacity tour, all sales are final. But we will reschedule you if you have an emergency.

Service animals are welcome. However, for liability issues, please leave your furry friends at home if you don’t require their assistance.

• The bus is not wheelchair-friendly, please check our walking routes for several tours that answer 

List of Services

One of the city’s most haunted locations, it’s the perfect spot to grab a drink before or after the tour.

The last buliding standing from the 1893 Columbian Exposition at the World's Fair features strange ghosts from a sailor to a little girl to perhaps the Devil In The White City himself.

Walk the World's Fairgrounds and discover the spirit that people see wandering near this beautiful site...

The former killing grounds of H.H. Holmes, the Murder Castle was the buliding that he designed to his malignant specifications, a place of traps, sorrow, and no return.

This massive limestone gate heralds a time when Chicago was the meatpacking capital of the world, notably memorialized in Upton Sinclair's famous account The Jungle. This perfect photo spot also features the city's memorial to its brave firefighters.

And much much more... Write a description for this list item and include information that will interest site visitors. For example, you may want to describe a team member's experience, what makes a product special, or a unique service that you offer.

Availability

Meeting point.

Inside the bar at the Congress Plaza Hotel (520 S Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60605)

• Start your adventure at the Congress Plaza Hotel is notoriously one of the most haunted spots in Chicago, originally built as the Auditorium Annex to house the masses who would attend the 1893 Columbian Exposition at the World's Fair.
• Presidents Grover Cleveland, Teddy Roosevelt, and Franklin Roosevelt have all stayed in this magnificent piece of Windy City history. It's also the spot where The Devil In The White City himself, H.H. Holmes would collect potential victims that he could bring back to his Murder Castle.
• Venture to Chicago's original Millionaire's Row, Praire Avenue. On the National Register of Historic Places, this street was the home of Gilded Age mansions belonging to the likes of Marshall Field (department stores), George Pullman (the railroad sleeping car), and Philip Armour (of the hot dogs fame!)
• Secrets and scandals abound in this area from the late Nineteenth Century, discover them with us.
• Visit the only building remains standing on the old 1893 Fairgrounds in Chicago’s Jackson Park today: the former Palace of Fine Arts which now houses the spectacular Museum of Science and Industry.
• Could the bowler-hatted, mustachioed man seen walking the Yesterday’s Main Street exhibit be the ghost of Herman Webster Mudgett (the real name of H.H. Holmes?) And that's just one of the ghosts that people have seen...

Frequently Asked Questions

Do you go inside any of the haunted buildings.

On this tour, we focus on building exteriors and outdoor spaces. Businesses and public places are open for you to visit during regular business hours. Otherwise we respect the privacy of individuals and organizations and expect that our guests do the same.

Do guests really see ghosts on this tour?

We can never guarantee a supernatural encounter, but we will explain paranormal phenomena such as cold spots and residual hauntings. What we do guarantee: Our local connections and dedication to research means you'll get authentic accounts — in all their shocking detail.

Can I bring my pet?

Is this ghost tour kid-appropriate.

While our tours do not contain anything too graphic or inappropriate, we find that kids that enjoy history have the best time. You know your children and that's left up to you. We do not recommend bringing children in strollers because sometimes that can be difficult with larger walking groups.

What if I'm late or cannot find my guide?

We do our best to answer calls and emails as promptly as they are received. Please make sure to leave a voicemail with the city and tourtime.  We try to accommodate travel and weather issues, but our public tours cannot wait for more than 10 minutes. Reschedules are available if the date you are interested in is not sold out.

What is your cancellation policy?

Because this is a limited capacity tour, all sales are final. But we will reschedule you if you have an emergency, we love ghosts, not monsters!

Copyright 2024 Huberty LLC DBA American Ghost Walks

Watch CBS News

Chicago Hauntings: The Story Of H.H. Holmes' Murder Castle, And Sightings In The Basement Of The Englewood Post Office Standing In Its Place

By Adam Harrington , Blake Tyson

October 30, 2021 / 8:00 PM CDT / CBS Chicago

CHICAGO (CBS) -- If you go to the corner of 63rd and Wallace streets in the Englewood community today, you will find a U.S. Post Office.

The Post Office is a modest, somewhat institutional yellow brick building – one of many built during the New Deal era under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The Chicago Transit Authority Green Line runs on an elevated trestle just behind the Post Office, while a weathered concrete freight train embankment runs just to the east. An eagle carved in stone hangs over the front doors of the Post Office, while a sign with three yellow triangles in a once-black, now faded blue circle next to the doors evokes a past time of menacing uncertainty – denoting a fallout shelter in the building.

We'll get back to the Englewood Post Office. This story is mainly about the building that stood there before the Post Office was built.

The Post Office does not stand perfectly on the footprint of that earlier building. Tony Szabelski of Chicago Hauntings Ghost Tours says it would have encompassed the eastern part of the present-day Post Office footprint, and the grassy knoll that separates the Post Office from the freight train embankment.

That earlier building is most infamously known as the Murder Castle. We don't know exactly how many people H.H. Holmes – one of America's first serial killers – murdered in the building around the time of the World's Columbian Exposition a few miles to the east in Jackson Park in 1893. But its horrors are the stuff of legend, albeit subject to a challenging task of separating fact from myth.

The Crime Museum tells us H.H. Holmes was born Herman Webster Mudgett in New Hampshire. He graduated from high school early and attended medical school at the University of Michigan – where the Crime Museum says the story is he stole cadavers from the school's laboratory, disfigured or burned them, and then planted the bodies to suggest they'd been killed in accidents – while taking out insurance policies on the deceased people in question and collecting the money.

Holmes moved to Chicago around 1885 after finishing medical school, and began working at a pharmacy under the name Dr. Henry Howard Holmes, the Crime Museum tells us. The pharmacy appears to have been located on the northwest corner of 63rd and Wallace streets, where an Aldi store with a vast parking lot can now be found.

The commonly-heard story goes that the drugstore was owned by an elderly man with terminal cancer named Dr. E.S. Holton, whose wife took over the store when he died. Holmes went on to buy the store from Dr. Holton's wife, the legend claims. Mrs. Holton disappeared, and Holmes claimed to everyone that she'd moved to California – and she was never heard from again, the story goes. The implication is that most believed Holmes probably killed her.

But in a 2013 article, Adam Selzer of Mysterious Chicago reports some aspects of this tale are not accurate. He reported it turns out that Dr. E.S. Holton was not Mr. Holton, but Mrs. Holton – the initials stood for Elizabeth Sarah. Dr. Holton and her husband, William, also actually outlived Holmes by several years and were still living in Chicago after Holmes was executed – the old pharmacist dying of cancer was a myth that was apparently spread by Holmes himself, Selzer reports.

What is known is that Holmes did take over the pharmacy, and had the building that became known as the Murder Castle constructed across the street between 1889 and 1891. The Crime Museum reports Holmes hired and fired numerous crews during the construction period so they wouldn't be able to figure out what he was really up to with the building.

The building was originally two stories high – with storefronts including a drugstore on the ground floor, and apartments above. Holmes went on to add a third story.

Once the building was completed, the story goes that Holmes began placing classified ads for jobs for young women, as well as advertising the hotel as a place to stay. The story goes that hotel employees and guests were also required to have life insurance policies, and Holmes himself paid the premiums provided that they list him as the beneficiary, according to the Crime Museum account.

Soon afterward, many women started disappearing, the story goes.

When the World's Fair came to Chicago – drawing tourists from around the world – the story goes that Holmes' Castle was billed as the World's Fair Hotel.

Inside Holmes' castle, the story goes that the rooms could not be locked from the inside of the room – only outside. Meanwhile, everything back in those days was lit with gas lamps, and the story goes the connections to the gas lamps were outside the room – set up such that Holmes could turn on the gas and asphyxiate people at will.

Szabelski notes that there were reports that the building also had a lot of strange oddities to it when it was built. There were doors and stairwells that led to nowhere, and hidden and closed rooms throughout the building. Stories claim that parts of the walls moved, and there were chutes that led down to the basement. In a December 1943 article for Harper's Magazine , writer John Bartlow Martin used most gruesome terms to describe that basement:

"The cellar was perhaps the most remarkable section of the building. It was fitted with operating tables, a crematory, pits containing quicklime and acids, surgical instruments, and various pieces of apparatus which, resembling mediaeval torture racks, never were satisfactorily explained. (Some thought Holmes used these appliances to wring from his victims the whereabouts of their wealth; others said he used them in experiments which he hoped would prove his pet theory that the human body could be stretched indefinitely, a treatment that, ultimately, would produce a race of giants.) Holmes sometimes destroyed the bodies of his victims completely; sometimes, aided by a needy skeleton articulator who answered his advertisement in the paper, he stripped the flesh from their bones and sold the skeletons to medical institutions."

However, Selzer reports in his book, "H.H. Holmes, The True Story of the White City Devil" , that some of these stories amount to so much mythology. While reports say Holmes told investors he planned to use the building as a hotel for World's Fair guests, Selzer writes the castle never actually went into operation as a fully-functioning hotel at all. Selzer also writes the secret chambers in the building really served the purpose of hiding stolen furniture rather than disposing of bodies.

Selzer also reports that only one of Holmes' victims was known to be a tourist visiting the World's Fair. And as to those elaborate torture chambers and other architectural horrors, Harold Schecter, author of the book "Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H.H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago," chalks them up in a History.com article to the sensational yellow journalism of the era in which details were sometimes concocted.

There are claims that Holmes killed as many as 200 people - though Selzer told History.com that this claim is a "throwaway line" that does not have a basis in fact. Holmes confessed to 27 murders, but even that figure is dubious, inasmuch as some of the people he claimed to have murdered were actually still alive, Selzer told History.com.

Szabelski notes the story goes were at least nine or 10 people who we know would have been last seen with Holmes in the so-called Murder Castle, and who were never seen again.

Holmes later left Chicago and found his way to Texas and then to St. Louis, where he was arrested and jailed for a swindling operation involving the sale of stolen horses, the story goes. While in jail, the story goes that Holmes engaged his cellmate – Wild West outlaw Marion Hedgepath – to set up an insurance scam where Holmes would take out a $10,000 policy on his own life and then fake his own death.

Holmes tried to take out the policy after being released on bail, but the insurance company became suspicious – so Holmes instead went to Philadelphia and concocted a similar scheme in which his longtime business partner, Benjamin Pitezel, would be the one to fake his own death, the story goes. But Holmes actually killed Pitezel, and went on to kill Pitezel's three children. The bodies of daughters Alice and Nellie were found buried in Toronto, and the body of son Howard in Indianapolis, multiple accounts say.

Holmes was tried and convicted of Ben Pitezel's murder, and was hanged in a public execution at Moyamensing Prison in Philadelphia on May 7, 1896.

So of course, you wanted to know about ghost stories. Many people say the basement of the Post Office that now occupies the Murder Castle site can be very creepy, Szabelski tells us. They report hearing sounds or seeing shadow figures.

There is a portion of the basement of the current building that crosses over to a section that would be underneath the grassy area to the east. That section of the basement reportedly looks much older, and many people believe it would have been part of the original basement for Holmes' murder castle.

Finally, there's the question of what became of the murder castle after Holmes left it behind. Most reports say after a police investigation was completed at the building, someone named A.M. Clark took it over with plans to turn it into a macabre museum. Many reports say soon after that – in 1895, sometime before Holmes was executed – the building burned to the ground.

The second part is not true. Selzer points out in his book that while there was a fire that damaged the building at that time, the upper two floors were rebuilt afterward – and the building remained until it was finally torn down in the 1930s to make way for the Post Office.

The story of Holmes and the Murder Castle reentered the popular conscience in 2003, when Erik Larson's book, "The Devil in the White City," became a bestseller.

Video produced by Blake Tyson. Written story by Adam Harrington.

• 63rd Street

Adam Harrington is a web producer at CBS Chicago, where he first arrived in January 2006.

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News | 130 years later, was H.H. Holmes’ Englewood…

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News | 130 years later, was H.H. Holmes’ Englewood ‘Murder Castle’ the house of horror legends claim? It wasn’t even a hotel, experts say.

Chicago Tribune historical photo

The H.H. Holmes "murder castle" is seen here in March 1937. The building at 601-603 W. 63rd St. was sold in 1938 and razed to make way for an Englewood post office. The main entrance was at 603 E. 63rd St. and housed a sign company in 1937 where Holmes had his drugstore.

C.D. Arnold

The Grand Plaza in front of the Administration Building, seen on Chicago Day, Oct. 9, 1893, the twenty-second anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire. The Administration Building was a 55,000-square-foot dome that held the offices of organizers of the 1893 World's Fair. It was the first building fairgoers likely saw after they paid their 50-cent entrance fee.

The first Ferris wheel was built by George W. Ferris for the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. It stood 250 feet high and had 36 cars that could each carry 40 people.

Chicago Tribune archive

The Statue of the Republic, at 65 feet tall, stood across from the domed Administration Building at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition. The original was destroyed in a fire, so a replica was made in 1918 to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the World's Fair. The replica, only 24 feet high and made of gilded bronze, resides in Jackson Park.

The main entrance to the H.H. Holmes "murder castle" is shown here in 1937 when a sign company most recently occupied the storefront that Holmes once occupied with his drug store. The old tile floor can still be seen in this photo.

World's Columbian Exposition

Visitors to the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 could take a gondola ride to cover some of the 633-acre expo and give the feet a rest. This is a view of the colonnade from the Grand Basin.

International News

The Agricultural Building of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

Columbian Exposition crowds were so huge at times that trains, like this one on Cottage Grove Avenue, carried an overflow of passengers on the roofs of their cars.

Library of Congress

People walk down the Midway Plaisance at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, Ill., circa 1893. The Ferris wheel can bee seen in the background.

A woman rides on back of a camel at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, circa 1893.

The center of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 was an architectural wonder known as the Court of Honor. It featured Venice-like waterways and a collection of stately palaces that served as exposition halls. The Palace of Fine Arts was the future home of the Museum of Science and Industry.

Chicago History Museum

The exposition helped mark the 400th anniversary of Columbus' supposed discovery of the New World, and fair crowds lined the shores of Lake Michigan waiting for a replica of the Christopher Columbus caravels to arrive from Spain.

One of the replica Christopher Columbus ships that sailed from Spain for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

This one-day admission ticket to the World's Columbian Exposition cost 50 cents.

With fair buildings as the background, officials for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 pose for a group portrait, including architect Daniel Burnham, third from left.

The Liberty Bell left its home in Philadelphia for only the second time in history to be part of the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. The bell traveled aboard a flatbed rail car and was greeted with fanfare on stops between Philadelphia and Chicago.

Chicago police guard the Liberty Bell, which was in town for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. A lengthening of the bell's famous crack was discovered in Chicago and may have been caused by the bell's travel by rail.

The Columbian Exposition had an emergency crew, pictured here on the boat F.D. Millet, that was skilled in swimming and climbing and trained to respond to emergencies. The crew rescued three men whose pyrotechnics raft had broken off from its mooring during a storm.

A parade during the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago.

At the center of the Columbian Exposition's Court of Honor was the Statue of the Republic, designed by Daniel Chester French. A replica of this statue now stands in Jackson Park.

A view of Jackson Park with the German Building featured in the foreground surrounded by other Columbian Exposition landmarks in 1893.

One of the first electric trolleys installed on 61st Street was used during the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.

C.D. Arnold/Art Institute of Chicago

Visitors to the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition took in the view of the Court of Honor from the roof of the Manufacturers Building.

Chicago's Herman Webster Mudgett, also known as Henry Holmes and H.H. Holmes, was America's first documented serial killer.

Exterior of the H.H. Holmes "murder castle" on 63rd and Wallace streets in Chicago. The Tribune described it in a 1937 article: "There were rooms that had no doors. There were doors that had no rooms. A mysterious house it was indeed -- a crooked house, a reflex of the builder's own distorted mind. In that house occurred dark and eerie deeds." This photo originally appeared in the book 'The Holmes-Pitezel Case, a History of the Greatest Crime of the Century' by Frank P. Geyer.

Two portraits, one a profile, of American pharmacist and convicted serial killer Herman Webster Mudgett (better known by his alias H.H. Holmes, 1861 - 1896), in the mid to late 1890s. The photo originally appeared in the book 'The Holmes-Pitezel Case, a History of the Greatest Crime of the Century' by Frank P. Geyer.

Nearly 129,000 people -- "a surging sea of humanity," as the title on this stereograph print describes it -- filled the grounds on the opening day of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.

This photo ran in the Tribune on Jan. 14, 1938 announcing the sale of the H.H. Holmes "murder castle", which sold the previous day. The mansion was razed to make way for an Englewood post office.

But in recent years, the city’s finest hour has been inextricably intertwined with its first serial killer , the dapper and duplicitous H.H. Holmes, thanks largely to Erik Larson’s wildly popular 2003 novel “The Devil in the White City.”

On the 130th year since Daniel Burnham’s sweeping transformation of Chicago’s southern lakefront into the classical alabaster-columned “White City,” the tales of Holmes’ dealings here, including his so-called “Murder Castle” in the Englewood neighborhood, remain largely sensational tabloid fabrications. Differing accounts claim that Holmes may have had hundreds of victims who were tortured and killed within any of the building’s network of secret rooms.

Local historians and researchers have cast doubt on many of the most outlandish actions attributed to Holmes and his 63rd Street three-flat, including the popular theory that he lured and discreetly killed dozens of victims and disposed of them in the basement of his property.

Holmes’ former building at 610 W. 63rd St., which initially had a drugstore on the ground floor and rooms on the second floor before a third story was later constructed, did indeed have secret rooms and a walk-in vault that was “mostly” soundproof. But it likely was used to conceal stolen furniture rather than murder, experts say.

“The real story is actually more complicated and it’s not simply not just true or false … he did use (the building) to commit crimes, but probably not a lot of the crimes that people think,” said Paul Durica, a historian with the Chicago History Museum.

Born Herman Webster Mudgett in New Hampshire, Holmes was a charming, handlebar-mustachioed grifter and bigamist who arrived in Chicago in 1885 after studying in medical school, and styled himself a doctor and pharmacist in the years before the fair.

Books and documentaries have portrayed the womanizing Holmes as a ghoulish stalker and predator who lured single young women in town for the sprawling lakeside fair to his rooming house, where they mysteriously disappeared.

After his conviction for killing his business partner, Benjamin Pitezel, Holmes confessed to killing 27 people, most of them fabrications, experts say. Holmes denied killing Pitezel’s three young children, whom he shuttled around the country and Canada by railroad following the insurance scam that left their father dead. The bodies of Pitezel’s daughters, Annie and Nellie, were found in Toronto, while the remains of his son, Ben, were found in Indianapolis.

Holmes, who was only convicted in Pitezel’s murder, is suspected of killing several people during his time in Chicago but left the city in summer 1894 before he was linked to any murders. It was only after his subsequent arrest in Boston and confessions that his Chicago activities were scrutinized.

“He did kill nine or 10 people, but it wasn’t hundreds and hundreds. It wasn’t in a hotel, and it wasn’t World’s Fair patrons,” said author and Chicago tour guide Adam Selzer, whose 2017 book “H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil,” sought to demystify the killer behind the legend, using official records and documents.

Holmes’ confessions are what likely fed his legend. Since then, media and pop culture has reimagined Holmes as an American equivalent to Jack the Ripper. Some have even speculated that Holmes was the London lady-killer.

“He was a swindler, first and foremost, who partly through his own confessions, became a new American tall tale,” Selzer said.

“Whatever he said about himself, whichever way he tried to portray himself after he had been incarcerated, is most likely fiction,” Durica said. “It seems to be, by and large, if he did murder individuals, it was for financial purposes, or to protect himself.”

Even the Tribune peddled in rumors, reprinting a New York World tabloid story in an August 1895 Sunday edition that called Holmes “Bluebeard” after the legendary wife killer. The story, published as Holmes awaited trial in Philadelphia, included numerous falsehoods that would become the basis of Holmes’ legend, including a drawn diagram of his “castle,” complete with trap doors, hidden chambers and a crematory.

Durica said that immediately following Holmes’ death, most news reports focused on Holmes’ greed rather than a clear compulsion to kill. He theorized that Holmes was retroactively painted as a killer by people’s expanding knowledge of killers.

“We think, in hindsight, of him as a psychopath, a serial killer. But he was probably … if we were going to diagnose him today, we’d say he’s closer to a sociopath. A con artist. A grifter. A perennial liar,” Durica said. “Murder was a means to an end, but it had to serve a practical purpose. It wasn’t something he just engaged in because he had some overwhelming passion to commit these horrible acts.”

This sentiment was shared by Selzer, who has done one of the deepest dives into Holmes’ past for his 2017 book. In his book, Selzer, who operates the Mysterious Chicago tours and who examined the basement of Holmes’ former home, which partially sits below the current Englewood post office, dispels a number of Holmes myths, including the notion that he silently murdered dozens of people in the bustling community of Englewood.

The murder castle did have hidden rooms between floors accessible by dumbwaiter and a secret staircase. The sensational World article claimed the dumbwaiters were used to lower bodies to the basement, but Selzer and Durica said the elevators were used to hide furniture Holmes purchased on credit and hid from repossession agents. Holmes’ building had a nearly soundproof vault, but Selzer said there was no evidence that victims were gassed in airtight rooms or dismembered in a basement lab.

In addition to the 63rd Street property, Holmes was known to frequent a glass-bending business near what is now Seeley Avenue near Fullerton Avenue in what is now Bucktown, where some had theorized Holmes dumped some victims.

“Holmes had probably disposed of a couple of bodies in the basement, then decided that destroying a body in a crowded building without arousing suspicion was impossible,” Selzer wrote. “You really just can’t have bodies decomposing in your basement without people noticing the odor. He probably tried it a few times, then decided to dispose of any bodies he found on his hands elsewhere, perhaps first in the shack, then in the glass-bending factory on the North Side.”

The myths surrounding Holmes persist today partially because of the true crime zeitgeist permeating pop culture, Durica said, comparing it with the enduring popularity of gangster Al Capone.

“What’s interesting about both Holmes and Capone is the whole kind of like cottage industries have sprung up around them. ‘The Devil in the White City’ sort of launched it with Holmes, but since that book came out you’ve got television documentaries, multiple ones. You’ve got all sorts of bus and walking tours that are designed around the Holmes story. That’s what you find with Capone as well. Books, films, tours, merchandise,” he said. “In both cases, it makes it easier for the fiction to kind of overtake the fact.”

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Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese are Creating a Devil in the White City Series for Hulu

The longtime collaborators are set to adapt the 19th-century true crime story.

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Hulu announced that the project was coming back in 2019.

At the Television Critics Association Press Tour, Craig Erwich, Hulu’s senior vice president of originals, said that The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic And Madness At The Fair That Changed America was being developed into a series for Hulu—with Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese attached to the produce.

In an earlier iteration of the project, DiCaprio was set to star as serial killer Dr. H.H. Holmes, but in 2022, Keanu Reeves was attached to the show. Reeves later dropped out, and in March 2023, it was reported that Hulu is no longer moving forward with the show. The Hollywood Reporter noted that Jeremy Allen White, Jude Law, and director Matt Ross are still in talks to work on Devil in the White City if it lands elsewhere.

Erik Larson The Devil in the White City

The story follows Henry H. Holmes, a.k.a. Dr. H. H. Holmes, America’s first modern serial killer who built a "Murder Castle" in the shadow of the 1893 World Fair, and Daniel Hudson Burnham, the director of works at the Fair. As the publisher's description of the Erik Larson book reads: "Two men, each handsome and unusually adept at his chosen work, embodied an element of the great dynamic that characterized America’s rush toward the twentieth century."

It was originally supposed to be a movie.

DiCaprio has been trying to bring H.H. Holmes's story to the screen since 2003, but a lot has changed along the way. For one, DiCaprio hasn't always held the rights to the book. Originally, he was hoping to work from public domain material about Holmes, who is said to have murdered somewhere between 27 and 200 people during the 1893 World's Fair.

Tom Cruise and Kathryn Bigelow, another actor-director team, initially had the rights. Their agreement lapsed in 2004, and DiCaprio acquired it thereafter. In 2015, he brought on Scorsese, who's been attached to the project since.

All previously announced projects were set to be feature films. This series project adds a new twist to the adaptation.

Devil in the White City could still happen .

Per Deadline , production on the show was not expected to begin until 2023. After it was dropped at Hulu, producers ABC Signature plan to shop it to other networks.

Stay tuned—we'll keep you updated as this show evolves.

Chloe is a News Writer for Townandcountrymag.com , where she covers royal news, from the latest additions to Meghan Markle’s staff to Queen Elizabeth’s monochrome fashions ; she also writes about culture, often dissecting TV shows like The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and Killing Eve .

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Did Serial Killer H.H. Holmes Really Build a ‘Murder Castle’?

By: Becky Little

Updated: May 8, 2023 | Original: January 23, 2020

H.H. Holmes is notoriously known as one of America's first serial killers who lured victims into his hotel dubbed the “ Murder Castle ” during the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. According to some claims, he killed up to 200 people inside his macabre hotel that was outfitted with trapdoors, gas chambers and a basement crematorium. But the actual story, while horrifying, may not be quite as sordid.

“There’s a total of about nine [people] that we can say with some confidence he probably killed,” says Adam Selzer , author of H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil . “He confessed to 27 at one point, but several of them were still alive at the time.”

The inflated numbers of up to 200 victims likely started, Selzer says, with a pulp book published in 1940, called Gem of the Prairie by Herbert Asbury.

“It had kind of a throwaway line that some people suggested it may have been as many as 200 people,” Selzer says. “Nobody had actually suggested that, in fact. But thereafter everybody else who [retold] the story threw in that same line until people started deciding that that was a real estimate or a real possibility.”

There’s also no evidence Holmes trapped strangers inside his hotel in an attempt to kill them. The nine people he likely killed were all people he already knew, and the building he owned wasn’t a hotel. The first floor consisted of storefronts, and the second floor had apartments for long-term rental.

“When he added a third floor onto his building in 1892, he told people it was going to be a hotel space, but it was never finished or furnished or open to the public,” Selzer says. “The whole idea was just a vehicle to swindle suppliers and investors and insurers.”

Fraud, Affairs and Cover-Ups

Holmes was involved in a variety of fraud schemes, and it was actually his involvement in a horse swindle in Texas that led police to arrest him in Boston in 1894. Investigators soon began to suspect him of murdering his scammer associate Benjamin Pitezel in an insurance scheme, then murdering three of Pitezel’s children—who were roughly seven to 14 years old—in an attempt to cover it up.

After Holmes’ arrest, newspapers began printing lurid stories about his alleged Chicago “Murder Castle,” claiming he’d outfitted it with trap doors and secret rooms to torture and kill guests. According to Harold Schechter , author of Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H. H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago , these sensational details can be attributed to yellow journalism, the practice of exaggerating or simply making up news stories that flourished in the 1890s .

“It’s my belief that probably all those stories about all these visitors to the World’s Fair who were murdered in his quote-unquote ‘Castle’ were just complete sensationalistic fabrication by the yellow press,” he says. “By the time I reached the end of my book, I kind of realized even a lot of the stuff that I had written was probably exaggerated.” (His book was originally published in 1994 as Depraved: The Shocking True Story of America's First Serial Killer .)

Without any evidence, newspapers claimed Holmes used his building’s chute to transport bodies to the basement (the fact that he had a chute was not unusual, since many buildings had laundry chutes connected to the basement). These stories turned Holmes’ building into an elaborate torture dungeon outfitted with gas pipes to asphyxiate victims and soundproof rooms to hide their screams.

“All these myths—which to some extent I myself, I think, helped perpetuate a little bit—grew up around Holmes,” Schechter says.

The Real, Likely Victims of H.H. Holmes

These myths can obscure the stories of Holmes’ actual likely victims. Two of the earliest were Julia Connor and her six-year-old daughter, Pearl. They disappeared around Christmas of 1891 after Holmes had an affair with Julia and involved her in his business schemes. During his life, Holmes alternatively denied killing Julia and confessed to accidentally killing her while performing an abortion. It’s still unclear what happened to her and Pearl.

Over the next two years, Holmes may have murdered Emeline Cigrand, Minnie Williams and her sister Nannie Williams. Both Emeline and Minnie appear to have had personal and business relationships with Holmes when they disappeared. But as with Julia and Pearl, it’s difficult to say for sure what happened to Emeline, Minnie and Nannie.

The evidence for Holmes’ murders of Ben Pitezel and his young children Howard, Nellie and Alice in 1894 is more solid. Even so, investigators only tried and convicted him for Ben’s murder. Holmes received the death sentence in 1896 and died by hanging in Philadelphia, about a week before his 35th birthday.

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Holmes “Murder Castle” Basement Walk-Through (sort of)

Hi, folks! We’re gearing up for a busy spring. Our screening of the 1916 Essanay  Sherlock Holmes film was a sell-out, and we’re cooking up more cool events all the time. March 26 is our next H.H. Holmes “Devil in the White City: Myth and Mystery” tou r , and I’m finishing up the draft of my massive H.H. Holmes book for Sky Horse –  so what better time to get around to posting my “basement walk-through?”

The Holmes “murder castle” was there longer than people tend to think it was – the 1895 fire didn’t burn it to the ground, as many books say. In fact, it was there another 40+ years before the government bought it and tore it down to make room for a post office. There’s only a little bit of overlap between the footprints of the two buildings (as seen here), but there’ve always been rumors that there’s still some stuff down in the basement from the original. Could it be true?

I’ve been down there twice, once in 2012 and once this past February, both times with TV crews.  There’s nothing down there that I really think is original, but there’s some neat stuff, and I love poking around old buildings. It’s a fun adventure every time!

This time I managed to explore far futher than I did the first time, and, I’ve put together a walk-through showing what it’s like down there:

Down the basement stairs and to the left, there’s a series of store rooms full of Christmas decorations and stuff (it’s tempting to call them  torture Christmas decorations).  On the left is this industrial area:

On the wall is a hole you can climb into that leads to some tunnels. This is where there are some bricks that look old enough to be original “castle” bricks, but they’re probably outside the footprint of the old building:

At the end of that there’s a left-hand turn that leads to another tunnel. This is probably the only part of the basement that overlaps with the original “castle” basement footprint.   It’s not the same walls, but you’re in the same airspace, roughly in the place where Mr. Chappell told police they’d find a bleach tank (though they didn’t):

Now, a quick word about what the “Castle” basement was like – it wasn’t much more than an unfinished basement. They did find some bones down there, some of which were quite likely the bones of Pearl Conner, an early victim, but the others were likely soup bones. Stories about there being torture devices in there didn’t come around until the 1940s, the tank they said was an “acid vat” at first just had a bucket of crude petroleum in it, and if there was ever a crematory in there, it was gone by the time the investigations started. It was really just an unfinished basement full of junk that looked about like this:

But what’s neat is that when you turn the corner from Tunnel 2, you come to a large space under the front of the post office that looks a LOT like the basement did. It doesn’t photograph well, but here’re some shots:

Cement around the edges, articificial dirt of some sort (probably something to do with fireproofing) in the middle. I’d say it’s roughly the size of a tennis court, with a ceiling low enough that a person of average size has to stoop down a bit. No lighting, except from a couple of transoms leading outside.

Lots of rubble there, including old stone samples, industrial junk, window screens, and, my favorite – The Mop Wringer of Death:

This space is well outside the castle footprint, but poking around down there, you really DO feel like Detective Norton and the crew digging around in the dark, looking for “clews.” You see a pipe and think “murder weapon.” You see a bit of stained cloth and think “bloody dress.” Quite a bit of what happened in 1895 was like that, really – for a couple of weeks the new, vastly underqualified chief of police bragged that EVERYTHING was a clue and thought he’d solved every unsolved murder of the last few years. The chief, John Badenoch, had been on the job about two months; he was a political appointee with no experience or training in law, law enforcement, police work, forensics, or anything like that. He was a flour and feed dealer. Newspapers went along for the ride, though after a couple of weeks the papers turned on the cops after one theory after another had come out to nothing. A few people probably were killed in the building from 1891-3, but the cops found nothing that could have convicted him.

Beyond the “field” is another couple of tunnels roughly identical to the first two, with a similar wall of older bricks (which makes the other ones even less likely to be original, really), and more rubble, including a dead cat, some industrial equipment, and an empty Tropicana Twister bottle. According to a sign on the other side of the grate, this is the section that was intended for use as a bomb shelter during the cold war; the front door of the post office still has a fallout shelter sign.

Here’s a video walk-through:

Again  I can’t access the basement for tour groups .  But I know people want to see what it’s like down there. Hence the video!

Check out the upcoming Holmes tour – save a few bucks if you take the Unsolved Mysteries tour immediately following! Private tours available all the time. 

Here’s the video trailer for my Holmes tours:

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Site of the Murder Castle

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The most infamous site associated with any World's Fair was the "Murder Castle" of H.H. Holmes. It stood three miles west of the 1893 Columbian Exposition fairgrounds in Chicago. Holmes promoted it as a hotel for fairgoers, and apparently some of them went in and never came out. Investigators found it riddled with secret passages and hidden rooms. Estimates of Holmes' final murder toll range from 9 to 200; he confessed to 27. He was hanged in 1896 and the building was torn down in 1938. No monument stands on the empty lot, but people still like to visit it.

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Amidst Chicago's 1893 World's Fair, Dr. H.H. Holmes constructs a hotel as a facade for his Murder Castle - a labyrinth of horrors with deadly rooms and traps to lure unsuspecting guests to a... Read all Amidst Chicago's 1893 World's Fair, Dr. H.H. Holmes constructs a hotel as a facade for his Murder Castle - a labyrinth of horrors with deadly rooms and traps to lure unsuspecting guests to a grisly fate. Amidst Chicago's 1893 World's Fair, Dr. H.H. Holmes constructs a hotel as a facade for his Murder Castle - a labyrinth of horrors with deadly rooms and traps to lure unsuspecting guests to a grisly fate.

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The Enduring Mystery of H.H. Holmes, America’s ‘First’ Serial Killer

The infamous “devil in the White City” remains mired in myth 125 years after his execution

Meilan Solly

Associate Editor, History

Four days before H.H. Holmes ’ execution on May 7, 1896, the Chicago Chronicle published a lengthy diatribe condemning the “multimurderer, bigamist, seducer, resurrectionist, forger, thief and general swindler” as a man “without parallel in the annals of crime.” Among his many misdeeds, the newspaper reported, were suffocating victims in a vault, boiling a man in oil and poisoning wealthy women in order to seize their fortunes.

Holmes claimed to have killed at least 27 people , most of whom he’d lured into a purpose-built “ Murder Castle ” replete with secret passageways, trapdoors and soundproof torture rooms. According to the Crime Museum , an intricate system of chutes and elevators enabled Holmes to transport his victims’ bodies to the Chicago building’s basement, which was purportedly equipped with a dissecting table, stretching rack and crematory. In the killer’s own words , “I was born with the devil in me. I could not help the fact that I was a murderer, no more than a poet can help the inspiration to sing.”

More than a century after his death, Holmes—widely considered the United States’ first known serial killer—continues to loom large in the imagination. Erik Larson’s narrative nonfiction best seller The Devil in the White City introduced him to many Americans in 2003, and a planned adaptation of the book spearheaded by Leonardo DiCaprio and Martin Scorsese is poised to heighten Holmes’ notoriety even further.

But the true story of Holmes’ crimes, “while horrifying, may not be quite as sordid” as popular narratives suggest, wrote Becky Little for History.com last year. Mired in myth and misconception , the killer’s life has evolved into “a new American tall tale,” argues tour guide and author Adam Selzer in H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil . “[A]nd, like all the best tall tales, it sprang from a kernel of truth.”

The facts are these, says Selzer: Though sensationalized reports suggest that Holmes killed upward of 200 people , Selzer could only confirm nine actual victims. Far from being strangers drawn into a house of horrors, the deceased were actually individuals Holmes befriended (or romanced) before murdering them as part of his money-making schemes. And, while historical and contemporary accounts alike tend to characterize the so-called Murder Castle as a hotel, its first and second floors actually housed shops and long-term rentals, respectively.

“When he added a third floor onto his building in 1892, he told people it was going to be a hotel space, but it was never finished or furnished or open to the public,” Selzer added. “The whole idea was just a vehicle to swindle suppliers and investors and insurers.”

As Frank Burgos of PhillyVoice noted in 2017, Holmes was not just a serial killer, but a “serial liar [eager] to encrust his story with legend and lore.” While awaiting execution, Holmes penned an autobiography from prison filled with falsehoods (including declarations of innocence) and exaggerations; newspapers operating at the height of yellow journalism latched onto these claims, embellishing Holmes’ story and setting the stage for decades of obfuscation.

Born Herman Webster Mudgett in May 1861, the future Henry Howard Holmes—a name chosen in honor of detective Sherlock Holmes, according to Janet Maslin of the New York Times —grew up in a wealthy New England family. Verifiable information on his childhood is sparse, but records suggest that he married his first wife, Clara Lovering , at age 17 and enrolled in medical school soon thereafter.

Holmes’ proclivity for criminal activity became readily apparent during his college years. He robbed graves and morgues, stealing cadavers to sell to other medical schools or use in complicated life insurance scams. After graduating from the University of Michigan in 1884, he worked various odd jobs before abandoning his wife and young son to start anew in Chicago.

Now operating under the name H.H. Holmes, the con artist wed a second woman, Myrta Belknap , and purchased a pharmacy in the city’s Englewood district. Across the street, he constructed the three-story building that would later factor so prominently in tales of his atrocities. Work concluded in time for the May 1893 opening of the World’s Columbian Exposition , a supposed celebration of human ingenuity with distinct colonialist undertones . The fair drew more than 27 million visitors over its six-month run.

To furnish his enormous “castle,” Holmes bought items on credit and hid them whenever creditors came calling. On one occasion , workers from a local furniture company arrived to repossess its property, only to find the building empty.

“The castle had swallowed the furniture as, later, it would swallow human beings,” wrote John Bartlow Martin for Harper’s magazine in 1943. (A janitor bribed by the company eventually revealed that Holmes had moved all of his furnishings into a single room and walled up its door to avoid detection.)

Debonair and preternaturally charismatic, Holmes nevertheless elicited lingering unease among many he encountered. Still, his charm was substantial, enabling him to pull off financial schemes and, for a time, get away with murder. (“Almost without exception, [his victims appeared] to have had two things in common: beauty and money,” according to Harper ’s. “They lost both.”) Holmes even wed for a third time, marrying Georgiana Yoke in 1894 without attracting undue suspicion.

As employee C.E. Davis later recalled , “Holmes used to tell me he had a lawyer paid to keep him out of trouble, but it always seemed to me that it was the courteous, audacious rascality of the fellow that pulled him through. … He was the only man in the United States that could do what he did.”

Holmes’ probable first victims were Julia Conner , the wife of a man who worked in his drugstore, and her daughter, Pearl, who were last seen alive just before Christmas 1891. Around that time, according to Larson’s Devil in the White City , Holmes paid a local man to remove the skin from the corpse of an unusually tall woman (Julia stood nearly six feet tall) and articulate her skeleton for sale to a medical school. No visible clues to the deceased’s identity remained.

Larson recounts Julia’s final moments in vivid detail—but as historian Patrick T. Reardon pointed out for the Chicago Tribune in 2007, the book’s “Notes and Sources” section admits that this novelistic account is simply a “plausible” version of the story woven out of “threads of known detail.”

Other moments in Devil in the White City , like a visit by Holmes and two of his later victims, sisters Minnie and Anna Williams , to Chicago’s meatpacking district, are similarly speculative: Watching the slaughter, writes Larson, “Holmes was unmoved; Minnie and Anna were horrified but also strangely thrilled by the efficiency of the carnage.” The book’s endnotes, however, acknowledge that no record of such a trip exists. Instead, the author says, “It seems likely that Holmes would have brought Minnie and Nannie there.”

These examples are illustrative of the difficulties of cataloguing Holmes’ life and crimes. Writing for Time Out in 2015, Selzer noted that much of the lore associated with the killer stems from 19th-century tabloids, 20th-century pulp novels and Holmes’ memoir, none of which are wholly reliable sources.

That being said, the author pointed out in a 2012 blog post , Holmes was “certainly both … a criminal mastermind [and] a murderous monster.” But, he added, “anyone who wants to study the case should be prepared to learn that much of the story as it’s commonly told is a work of fiction.”

Holmes’ crime spree came to an end in November 1894, when he was arrested in Boston on suspicion of fraud . Authorities initially thought he was simply a “prolific and gifted swindler,” per Stephan Benzkofer of the Chicago Tribune , but they soon uncovered evidence linking Holmes to the murder of a long-time business associate, Benjamin Pitezel , in Philadelphia.

Chillingly, investigators realized that Holmes had also targeted three of Pitezel’s children, keeping them just out of reach of their mother in what was essentially a game of cat and mouse. On a number of occasions, Holmes actually stashed the two in separate lodgings located just a few streets away from each other.

“It was a game for Holmes,” writes Larson. “... He possessed them all and reveled in his possession.”

In July 1895, Philadelphia police detective Frank Geyer found the bodies of two of the girls buried beneath a cellar in Toronto. Given the absence of visible injuries, the coroner theorized that Holmes had locked the sisters in an unusually large trunk and filled it with gas from a lamp valve. Authorities later unearthed the charred remains of a third Pitezel sibling at an Indianapolis cottage once rented by Holmes.

A Philadelphia grand jury found Holmes guilty of Benjamin’s murder on September 12, 1895; just under eight months later, he was executed in front of a crowd at the city’s Moyamensing Prison. At the killer’s request (he was reportedly worried about grave robbers), he was buried ten feet below ground in a cement-filled pine coffin.

The larger-than-life sense of mystery surrounding Holmes persisted long after his execution . Despite strong evidence to the contrary, rumors of his survival circulated until 2017, when, at the request of his descendants, archaeologists exhumed the remains buried in his grave and confirmed their identity through dental records, as NewsWorks reported at the time.

“It’s my belief that probably all those stories about all these visitors to the World’s Fair who were murdered in his quote-unquote ‘Castle’ were just complete sensationalistic fabrication by the yellow press,” Harold Schecter , author of Depraved: The Definitive True Story of H. H. Holmes, Whose Grotesque Crimes Shattered Turn-of-the-Century Chicago , told History.com in 2020. “By the time I reached the end of my book, I kind of realized even a lot of the stuff that I had written was probably exaggerated.”

Holmes for his part, described himself in his memoir as “but a very ordinary man, even below the average in physical strength and mental ability.”

He added, “[T]o have planned and executed the stupendous amount of wrongdoing that has been attributed to me would have been wholly beyond my power.”

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Meilan Solly | | READ MORE

Meilan Solly is Smithsonian magazine's associate digital editor, history.

Whatever Happened To H.H. Holmes' Murder Castle?

H.H. Holmes has gone down in history with the dark distinction of being one of the United States' first serial killers. Originally born in Gilmanton, New Hampshire, he completed medical school at the University of Michigan and then moved to Chicago, where he would commit most of his most grisly crimes, according to Biography . While working at a pharmacy, Holmes used the 1893 Chicago's World's Fair as the perfect cover to construct an elaborate, three-story house, which was dubbed the World's Fair Hotel. However, this was no ordinary hotel. 

Inside, an elaborate maze of confusing hallways, trapdoors, secret passages, and stairways to nowhere hid Holmes' horrific deeds. When young people sought a room at the hotel, he would lure them into the disorienting labyrinth, eventually trapping them in his basement, where he tortured and murdered his victims. Although he confessed to 27 murders, some historians believe that number may be even higher (via Biography ). Holmes was finally caught and put to death in 1896 for his crimes. But what happened to the infamous murder castle where he took so many lives?

Holmes' murder castle is now the site of a Post Office

The fate of H.H. Holmes' creepy murder castle wasn't much better than the fate of the man himself. One night in 1895, while Holmes was in prison, the deadly hotel burned down, possibly set on fire by two unidentified men who were seen entering the building late that evening, according to History . However, the structure itself remained standing for another 40 years. 

The remnants of the building were finally torn down in 1938, but not before at least one Chicago Tribune reporter wrote an article describing the unsettling place. "O, what a queer house it was! In all America there was none other like it. Its chimneys stuck out where chimneys should never stick out. Its stairways ended nowhere in particular. Winding passages brought the uninitiated with a frightful jerk back to where they had started from. There were rooms that had no doors. There were doors that had no rooms. A mysterious house it was indeed — a crooked house, a reflex of the builder's own distorted mind. In that house occurred dark and eerie deeds," read the report, which was published in 1937 (via Biography ). Now, in the very spot where these eerie deeds were committed, sits an ordinary U.S. Postal Service building.

Escape H.H. Holmes’ Murder Castle In VR

Navigate a booby-trapped hotel while evading the ‘Devil in the White City’ himself in this horrifying VR game.

Next year will see the release of Martin Scorsese’s Devil in the White City , a film adaptation of Erik Larson’s 2003 novel detailing the horrendous activities of H.H. Holmes, America’s first recorded serial killer. Starring Leonardo Dicaprio as the depraved killer, the film will follow Holmes’ beginnings as a medical professional, all the way to his infamous ‘Murder Hotel’ in which he tortured and killed over 200 individuals during the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.