[This was the last piece I wrote for the Elmhurst College
Leader. It was fun because I got to interview Richard Crowe, a well-known
Chicago ghost hunter. I remember that after the interview, he sold me a VHS
copy of his special on ghost hunting. I bought it from his trunk. Ah, those
were the days! A few years after that I ran into him again, this time at the
Elmhurst Public Library, where I worked for 10 years. He didn’t remember me,
but he remembered the lecture. He was at the library to make a presentation on
his new book, the one he said he was working on when I first met him. He has
since passed away, and he is missed. He really did have a childlike enthusiasm
for his work. He made you want to be a part of it. From the August 18, 2000
issue.]
He stands at the lectern, a screen to his right loaded with
images of the Chicagoland area. His bass voice booms throughout the room as he
speaks of Allan Pinkerton’s guards and the moving statue of Inez Clarke,
gangsters buried in Mt. Carmel
Cemetery that are still occasionally seen whether it be by railroad tracks or
streets, a stop sign that bleeds ketchup on rainy nights, and many other
strange things.
In the interview afterwards, sitting on a bench with his
legs crossed, his words echoing down the halls of Moraine Community College’s
Fine and Performing Arts Center, he is happy to hear from a ticket counter that
his “Weird Chicago” lecture had sold out.
Oak Lawn resident and ghost
hunter Richard Timothy Crowe, born on Jan. 10, 1948, has been giving these
Weird Chicago lectures as well as bus tours of the haunted Chicagoland area for
26 years as of Oct. 31, 1999.
The first tour he gave was for DePaul’s Geographical Society
in 1973, and has been doing them ever since.
He started giving the Chicago Supernatural Tours not because
he had a desire to experience the haunts himself, but because he was interested
in the people who experienced them; he was interested in their accounts.
“It’s the fascination of living history,” Crowe said,
grinning. “I love history.”
He also loves gothic and classic literature, most notably
Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Bram Stoker, and HP Lovecraft.
He harbors a love for architecture to the point where he has
peppered architectural facts throughout his lecture. His taste in literature
matches his taste in architecture.
“The gothic look certainly appeals,” he said. “It should
have a ghost story if it doesn’t.”
Mostly, he likes to study artifacts. In fact, he owns a
number of interesting items including a piece of the Haymarket Bomb, a pinch of
dirt from Mary Alice Quinn’s grave (one of the sites on his tours; the dirt
supposedly brings one in touch with Quinn’s healing abilities), a John
Dillinger death mask, and even a brick from the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
(these bricks are supposedly cursed; Crowe keeps his in the garage “just in
case.”).
“Holding an artifact from the past is a thrill for me,” he
said.
In addition, he collects stamps, coins, and (most notably)
ghost stories. True ghost stories? That’s what he’s trying to figure out.
“You have to dissect each case on its own merits,” Crowe
said, “and be careful because there are indeed wandering folk tales. You have
to make sure there’s really something to it rather than just a folk tale that’s
attached to the location.”
He tries to find independent firsthand accounts of
historical documentation. This implies there’s more to ghost hunting than
merely staking out allegedly haunted locations.
“It involves history, literature, folklore, and many other
disciplines,” he said. “It’s not just going out there and hunting ghosts,
you’ve got to find out the rationale for it, which means you’ve got to study
the occurrence from all angles.”
According to Crowe, there are three angles to work from, as
a ghost hunter. Some go in a psychological direction, earning degrees in
parapsychology. Others go the electronic routes, relying on sound detectors,
cameras, and other devices. Still others go the route Crowe does: literature.
He gives Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes and investigator
into the supernatural, as another such example.
Crowe tries to keep that level of variation in his tours.
They are each five hours long with 13 stops (although, he admits, there are
occasionally more stops) with a mix of material and geographical variety. “I do
it so people will be interested at least in one story,” he said. “If one
doesn’t do anything for them, then there’s other stuff along the line. It’s a
something-for-everybody type of approach.”
He also likes to keep a fast pace, so no one has time to get
bored or fall asleep. Even the skeptics can have a good time.
“I’m not trying a real hard-sell,” Crowe said. “If you want
to believe in ghosts and the supernatural, fine. If you’d rather just take in
the history and the surroundings for just a night out, then that’s another way
of doing it.”
In the past, skeptics have been a problem for him, mostly
because they wouldn’t give him any credibility, but that’s getting easier every
day.
“I think the younger generations are much more open to the
supernatural,” he said.
He has had some experience himself. He has seen the glowing
light at Maple Lake more than once, although not since
1986.
He has smelled non-existent roses at Mary Alice Quinn’s
grave (even across the street, in his car with the windows up) and in Robinson
Woods at the Robinson family burial ground. In the mid-‘Seventies, Crowe and
his computer man captured 200 ghostly images on film at Bachelor Grove
Cemetery. These
experiences have not merely made him a believer; they have left him with more
questions.
“I’m still searching for the answers,” he said.
His The Ghosts of Chicago video is still available, and he
is working on a few projects, which may include a book.
For more information on Crowe’s Chicago Supernatural Tours,
call (708) 499-0300.
