Fireside Restaurant and Lounge

A 1904 saloon directly across from Rosehill Cemetery, Chicago's largest graveyard. A former employee broke his neck falling down the basement stairs and wasn't found for days; his ghost still walks those steps. Cemetery spirits, including chain-rattling real estate mogul Charles Hopkinson, are said to drift across the street and into the dining room.

A former employee fell down the narrow basement stairs, broke his neck, and wasn't found for days. His ghost still walks those stairs.

That detail alone would be enough to earn the Fireside a spot on any haunted list. But the restaurant has a bigger problem: it sits directly across Ravenswood Avenue from Rosehill Cemetery, 350 acres of Chicago's dead dating back to 1859. Locals have long believed that spirits from the cemetery drift across the street and into the Fireside to cause trouble, which is a theory the staff doesn't exactly argue with.

Peter Eberhardt built the original saloon here in 1904. Back then, visiting a grave at Rosehill meant an all-day trip. Families needed somewhere to eat, rest, and drink before heading home. Eberhardt gave them two wooden buildings with a breezeway in between, and the business thrived on grief and proximity. The breezeway eventually became the main entrance, the wood got stuccoed over in an English Tudor style, and the place kept serving. It changed hands four times over the next century. The McLaughlin family bought it in 1943 and gave it the name Fireside. Joe Linoinni ran it through the seventies. Maggie Harper took over in 1983. Larry Staggs and Rich Wohn bought it in 1989, added a beer garden, and expanded the menu.

Through all of that, the ghost stories persisted.

The employee ghost is the most specific one tied to the building. Staff and regulars describe footsteps going up and down the basement stairs at hours when nobody is down there. The stairs are narrow and steep, built for function and not safety. Whoever the employee was, his death went unnoticed long enough that he wasn't found for days. Dying alone in a dark basement tends to generate a strong ghost story. Whether or not you believe in hauntings, the psychology of the place makes sense: a cramped, poorly lit staircase where someone actually died is going to feel wrong to anyone walking down it.

The cemetery ghosts are harder to pin down but more fun. Rosehill is Chicago's largest cemetery, home to retail moguls Richard Warren Sears and Aaron Montgomery Ward (buried in the same community mausoleum, still rivals in death if you believe the stories about Sears's ghost stalking toward Ward's crypt). Charles Hopkinson, a real estate investor who died January 7, 1883, has an ornate Gothic mausoleum that his widow had to defend all the way to the Illinois Supreme Court after neighboring plot owners sued to stop construction. On the anniversary of his death, visitors report moaning and the sound of rattling chains rising from the crypt. Frances Pearce, who died in 1853 at nineteen, is memorialized in a glass-enclosed sculpture holding her infant daughter. The glass case fills with a pale mist on the anniversary of her death, according to local tradition.

These are Rosehill's ghosts, not technically the Fireside's. But when your front door is 200 feet from 350 acres of graves, the line blurs. Patrons have described shadows in their peripheral vision, whispered voices in empty corners of the dining room, and cold drafts that don't track to any vent or window. WGN featured the Fireside on their Chicago's Best Haunted Restaurants segment, and ghost hunters regularly stop in for a drink on their way to investigate Rosehill.

The restaurant leans into it. Their own website mentions the lingering spirits and the cemetery connection. 122 years of continuous operation across the street from one of Chicago's most haunted cemeteries will do that to a place. The food is Cajun-accented, the bar stocks 60-plus bottles and 18 draft lines, and the weekend Bloody Mary bar features 120 hot sauces. The ghosts, if they're real, have good taste.

The basement stairs are still narrow. Staff still go down them every shift. And every so often, someone hears footsteps coming back up when there's nobody down there.