Richard Crowe bills himself as a ghost hunter, but he really may be a storyteller in the tradition of such 19th Century writers as Nathaniel Hawthorne, Edgar Allan Poe and Henry James. Their stories “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Telltale Heart” and “The Turn of the Screw” contain the same elements of horror, suspense, mystery and moralization that Crowe captures in his supernatural spiel.
For more than two decades, Crowe, 49, of Oak Lawn has been leading his Chicago Supernatural Tours and exploring the unexplained–the legends, folklore and ghosts that make their homes in the city and suburbs.
An interest in history and geography, along with a degree in English literature from DePaul University, combined to set Crowe on his ghostly path. “I’m proof that there is life after a liberal arts degree,” he said.
“If not this, I’d probably be teaching. I always loved to tell stories,” Crowe said.
He conducted his first-ever tour in 1973 while still a graduate student. It evolved from a research project for the university’s Geographical Society and included two locations near the Lincoln Park campus: the site of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre at 2122 N. Clark St., and the Biograph Theater, where John Dillinger was gunned down.
Crowe has since documented nearly 100 supernatural sites in the Chicago area, and he is a storehouse of knowledge concerning local hauntings and recent sightings.
Walking among the ornate headstones at Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Crowe recalled the most recent appearance of the Southwest Side’s most famous ghost. Resurrection Mary is said to appear along Archer Avenue, wearing a flowing white dress. Last July 31, a young man rushed into a bar across the street from the cemetery, saying he had hit a woman in white with his car. Within minutes, another man came in and told the same story; both were frantic and searched desperately for the body. There was no evidence that either had hit anything–that is, anything solid.
Resurrection Mary has become Crowe’s “signature” ghost. Through Crowe, her story has been told across the globe; the ghost, who is hitchhiking, has appeared on “Unsolved Mysteries” and “Arthur C. Clarke’s Strange Universe.” Crowe has documented dozens of sightings, interviewing witnesses and gathering hundreds of documents and newspaper clippings about Resurrection Mary.
“I first learned about Resurrection Mary in high school,” Crowe said. Attending Quigley South Preparatory Seminary (now closed) on Chicago’s Southwest Side, he met Rev. John Nicola, an adviser for the film “The Exorcist,” who regaled his Latin students with tales about possession. Crowe later transferred to Gage Park High School and heard even more stories about the ghostly young woman and other hauntings from neighbors and relatives.
At DePaul, Crowe majored in English literature with a special interest in supernatural literature. His course work also included geography and urban history, resulting in a unique background for research. “You can’t study ghosts in isolation,” Crowe said. “You have to consider the context.
“I don’t make apologies for linking history to ghosts,” he added. “I am fascinated by history, and history is still living in the form of ghost stories.”
He sees himself as a chronicler of urban and ethnic folklore–not too big a leap from his former job as a neighborhood researcher with the City of Chicago Department of Planning. Crowe continued to conduct tours on the side and, in 1979, became a full-time ghost hunter.
“The tour concept really took off,” he said.
Crowe is interested in more than just ghosts; curses, jinxes, bad luck and other aspects of fate also tempt him. He has a massive library at his Oak Lawn home, with texts ranging from Alban Butler’s “The Lives of the Saints” and books on religious relics to census reports and police records. He sees a connection between his Catholic upbringing and his current occupation. “Traditional Catholicism is steeped in the supernatural,” he said.
He also collects antique postcards and has volumes of cards relating to shipping disasters, including the Titanic, the Lusitania and the Eastland.
More than 800 people died in the 1915 Eastland disaster; the excursion boat, loaded with employees of Western Electric and their families, foundered in the shallow waters of the Chicago River near LaSalle Street and Wacker Drive. The tragedy is one of the stories Crowe focuses on during his summer supernatural cruises on the Mercury Skyline Queen. The two-hour cruises, held Saturdays during July and August, begin at 11 p.m. and feature tales of ghost ships that sail the waters of Lake Michigan and turn-of-the-century sightings of a lake “monster” off the Evanston shoreline.
“It’s a lot of fun. Richard is a terrific storyteller,” said Holly Agra, owner of the Mercury Cruise lines. “The tour is really very different from anything else we offer our clientele.”
Whether by boat or bus, Crowe’s tours are designed to edify rather than terrify. “People are interested in the mysticism and mystery. They aren’t looking to be scared,” Crowe said.
Crowe tries to adapt his tours to his audience. In addition to regularly scheduled bus tours and the summer cruises, he is available for private, custom-designed tours. “I’ll try to include specific areas if I can,” he said. He has added two out-of-state tours: a Voodoo trip each spring to New Orleans and a witches festival each fall in Salem, Mass.
Crowe recently returned from Hong Kong, gathering information on Chinese folklore in preparation for a walking tour of Chinatown. “America is a smorgasbord of ghost stories,” he said. “Each ethnic group brings its own psychic baggage.”
With his booming baritone, Crowe entertains tourgoers with tidbits ranging from ghosts to gangsters. And he is amused when skeptics attempt to argue with him.
“They want to argue generalities, not specifics,” he said. “They’ll say, `There’s no such thing as ghosts.’ Well, I know differently.”
Mike Flores of Chicago is director of the Psychotronic Film Society (which specializes in B-movies with horror, fantasy or science fiction themes) and a fan of Crowe. He has taken both bus and boat tours and first met Crowe when he attended a lecture Crowe gave on the existence–or not–of leprechauns.
“Richard Crowe is just fascinating to me that he can make a career out of blarney,” Flores said, laughing. Yet the leprechaun lecture was intriguing enough to convince Flores to take the supernatural tour.
“You have a great time hearing the folklore and ghost stories,” he said.
Crowe, indeed, has seen his share of ghostly occurrences. The last time was Halloween night two years ago in Jackson Park behind the Museum of Science and Industry. According to lore, the ghost of Clarence Darrow haunts the area. Darrow was the defense attorney in the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case, and his were ashes scattered in Jackson Park after his death in 1938. Crowe was leading a tour when the group suddenly saw an older man dressed in a topcoat and homburg walking west to east along the lagoon.
“A couple of younger guys start running after him,” Crowe said. The remainder of the group urged them on while yelling to the older man to stop.
“I wasn’t sure if it was a hoax,” Crowe said. “But the two men get within a few feet of the old guy, and they freeze. Now here’s an old guy out walking in the park with two people running after him, and he is just ignoring us. You figure someone real would have at least walked a little faster. But this guy looks out over the water, and then just walks away.”
And the two tour members? “They said they were literally frozen with fear and were unable to get any closer.”
Crowe claims to have seen other ghosts but nothing to match that incident. “Mostly it’s wispy, smoky things in your peripheral vision,” he said.
But he expects ghosts to make more appearances as new developments and growth in the southwest suburbs disturb allegedly haunted sites, pointing specifically to a subdivision under construction along German Church Road near Willow Springs, where the bodies of the Grimes sisters were found in the late 1950s.
“Ghosts are the ultimate conservatives,” Crowe said. “Change bothers them immensely.”
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For more information about Chicago Supernatural Tours and Cruises, call 708-499-0300.
