Selzer - Your neighborhood gives me the creeps: true tales of an accidental ghost hunter

Prologue

O ne of the more popular stories on the ghost tours I run in Chicago is The Legend of Dillingers Ding-a-ling. Its not a ghost story exactly, but its too good a story not to tell.

When we run the tour on routes that go past the alley in which John Dillinger, the Depression-era bank robber, was shot, I usually tell people the popular urban legend that Dillingers twenty-three-inch penis is on display somewhere in the Smithsonian Institute. Then I show off the picture that started the legenda newspaper shot of Dillingers corpse on public display at the morgue, covered from the neck down by a sheet. Rigor mortis had caused his right arm to be bent at a ninety-degree angle, resulting in a large, tentlike protrusion in the sheet just about level with Dillingers crotch. It does look for all the world like Dillingers corpse is phenomenally well endowed and awfully happy to be there on the slab. Most of the onlookers surrounding the stiff (pun intended) in the picture look pretty impressed, except for one woman who looks distinctly unamused.

It is, in fact, just his arm causing the protrusion, not his wiener. No chunk of Dillinger is actually on display in the Smithsonian. One nursepresumably the unamused woman in the picturewho tended to the corpse claimed that she peeked under the sheet out of curiosity and found that there was nothing remarkable about ol Johnny in the crotch department. But the rumors inspired by the picture persist to this day, and the picture is usually a big hit.

However, every now and then, therell be a crowd for whom that story isnt particularly appropriatea crowd with a lot of young kids, for instance, or a crowd of insecure guys who might get jealous. Or sometimes the traffic keeps us from moving at normal speed, so the story is done before we even get to Diversey Avenue. Whichever is the case, it creates a few minutes of quiet time as the bus travels between Dillingers Alley and the old factory where Adolph Luetgert, the original sausage king of Chicago, murdered his wife. I have to kill time somehow.

Well, I ask, are there any questions? Even if its a totally off-the-wall question. This is Weird Chicago Tours, after all.

One person raises her hand, and I point at her with a flashlight. I already have a pretty good idea whats coming.

So, do you really believe in ghosts, or what? she asks.

I take a deep breath.

Thats a loaded question.

What, exactly, is a ghost, anyway? If I say I believe in them, are the people on the bus going to think I believe every story I hear about ghostly kids pushing cars over railroad tracks, every story about guys in white sheets who rattle chains and go Whoooo? Will they think I believe that a translucent version of me is floating around in my body, ready to fly free when I die?

I spend a lot of energy trying to keep from seeming like a total nut, and saying I believe in ghostsany kind of ghostswill make me look like a nut to many people right away.

When we say ghost, we usually think of the Hollywood model: a translucent version of a dead person that floats around wearing ghostly clothes that, while translucent themselves, still manage to cover up the ghosts hoo-hoos perfectly. According to the stories attached to ghosts, this is usually supposed to be the soul of the dead person; either the soul is unable to move on or its back from some celestial plane to sort out unfinished business. Do I have to believe in that stuff to believe in ghosts?

And what about the similar apparitions that we call residual hauntingsthese look like Hollywood ghosts, but they arent thought to be conscious entities. Theyre sort of like video recordings that play over and over again, no more aware of themselves than, say, the wind or the waves in Lake Michigan. Some theorize that these residual hauntings are caused by some sort of energy exerted at the moment of sudden, traumatic deaths, creating a sort of mental picture. If thats true, do these count as ghosts, too, or do ghosts have to be intelligent, thinking beings to qualify?