The Irish Legend

The Irish Legend in Willow Springs sits across Archer Avenue from where the Willowbrook Ballroom once stood, and its own violent Prohibition-era history includes a bartender murdered on the basement stairs, a woman killed on the second floor (whose bloodstain keeps reappearing after being sanded), and a tunnel system connecting to the ballroom and forest.

There is a bloodstain in the dining room floor at 8933 South Archer Avenue. It has been sanded down multiple times. It keeps coming back.

The Irish Legend in Willow Springs was built between 1915 and 1918 as a roadhouse on an ancient Potawatomi trail near Chief Cagmega's Ridge. It sits directly across Archer Avenue from where the Willowbrook Ballroom stood until a fire destroyed it on October 28, 2016. That ballroom, originally called the Oh Henry Ballroom when it opened in 1921, is where Chicago's most famous ghost spent her last living evening.

But this story isn't about Resurrection Mary. It's about what happened inside the building she danced across the street from.

During Prohibition, the roadhouse ran illegal gambling in the basement and the attic. Prostitutes worked the smaller bedrooms on the second floor. Murder and robbery were routine, as drunken men became easy targets and the women working upstairs slipped into addiction trying to cope. The building had buzzers and alarm systems wired between floors so staff could warn each other during police raids. A hidden safe room behind a false wall had built-in seats. An ironing board concealed in the kitchen wall could swing out to block a doorway.

The deaths have specific locations. A bartender who'd fallen in love with one of the prostitutes (who also happened to be a gangster's girlfriend) was sent to the basement stairs by the manager. The gangster was waiting. The bartender's neck was broken, and his body lay at the bottom of the stairs. The gangster then killed his girlfriend. On the second floor, a woman was choked to death in the bathroom space. In a closet, someone had their throat slashed. On the private stairway, at least one person was pushed to their death.

The second floor still has a large stain on the wooden floor that persists no matter how many times it's sanded. Women who visit the bathroom up there tend not to linger.

Paranormal investigator Edward Shanahan ran tours and seances at the Irish Legend. During one session near the furnace and boiler area in the basement, he was hit with energy depletion so severe he was bedridden for three days afterward. He came to believe the boiler may have been used as a torture device. On another tour, a participant looked toward a floor drain and saw a bloody woman crawling across the floor. Shanahan also hosted "Circle of Energy" seances in the attic, which had served as a lookout tower during the speakeasy years and, according to local accounts, a place where violence happened as late as the mid-1970s. A large steel pull chain still hangs from a beam up there.

The building has had a series of owners with mixed luck. One fabricated a story about a ghost of a "little boy" and lasted only six months. The next ran the business into failure. Police shut down his ghost tour when the electricity was disconnected.

The basement has open stairs leading to a tunnel system that connected to the Willowbrook Ballroom and the nearby forest. The main floor windows sit low to the ground, designed to keep stray bullets from hitting patrons. There's a 22-caliber hole still visible in the restroom door. One tour participant took a photo in the bathroom without flash and captured what looked like the outline of a hooded figure. A woman entering a closet burst into tears, sensing what had happened there without anyone telling her.

Archer Avenue has been called one of the most haunted roads in America. The Irish Legend is one of the reasons.