The Drake Hotel

The Drake Hotel holds three distinct ghost stories: the unverifiable Woman in Red who may have jumped on opening night 1920, the very real unsolved 1944 murder of socialite Adele Born Williams in her eighth-floor suite, and the lingering grief of Bobby Franks' parents who lived and died at the hotel after their son's infamous 1924 murder by Leopold and Loeb.

Somewhere between the tenth floor and the sidewalk, a woman in a red evening gown became Chicago's most persistent ghost story. Nobody can prove she existed.

The Drake Hotel opened on New Year's Eve 1920 with a gala for 2,000 of Chicago's wealthiest residents. Benjamin Marshall designed it, John and Tracy Drake bankrolled it, and the guest list read like a who's who of Gold Coast society. According to the legend that followed, a young woman arrived that night fresh off a Christmas Eve engagement, only to find her fiance dancing with someone else. She fled to the tenth floor. She jumped.

The problem is, no newspaper from 1920 covered a suicide at the Drake. Chicago historian Adam Selzer has spent years searching for documentation and found nothing. "If this suicide truly happened, it doesn't seem to have made the papers," he wrote. His team's investigations "have not yet turned up anyone who knew anyone who had actually seen the woman in red." One possible explanation: the Drake, branding itself "the finest in the world," may have suppressed coverage. A body landing on a setback roof rather than the sidewalk could have been removed quietly. Selzer did find that a woman jumped from a tenth-floor window at the Drake decades later, but she was described as "an older woman, once beautiful." Not exactly the glamorous figure of legend.

None of that has stopped the sightings. Staff and guests have spotted a woman in red near the Gold Coast Room where the original gala took place, drifting through the Palm Court, and standing at windows overlooking Lake Michigan. A ghost tour participant named Becky photographed what appeared to be a woman's silhouette seated in a darkened ballroom. "I just felt like the lady wanted to be seen," she told her guide. "I think she wants to be recognized and known."

The Drake's second ghost story has a body count and police records to back it up. On January 19, 1944, socialite Adele Born Williams and her daughter Patricia Goodbody returned to their eighth-floor suite to find the door ajar. A woman in a black Persian lamb coat and white wig stepped from the bathroom and opened fire. She missed Patricia twice, then shot Adele in the head. Adele died the next day at 58.

The murder weapon, a tiny antique pistol, was found shattered in a stairwell four hours later. A spare room key that had gone missing reappeared on the front desk that same evening. Investigators traced the gun's serial number to Walter Brown, an incarcerated felon whose sister, Ellen Bennett (also known as Ellen Murphy), worked the key desk at the Drake. Ellen owned a black fur coat matching the killer's description. Her sister Anna was known around Chicago hotels as a "hotel prowler" who targeted wealthy men. Both women were arrested twice. Neither was charged. The case file sits open more than 80 years later.

Then there are the Franks. Bobby Franks was 14 when Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb kidnapped and murdered him on May 21, 1924, in what newspapers called a "thrill killing." Bobby's parents, Jacob and Flora, sold the family's Kenwood estate and moved into the Drake. Jacob died at the hotel in 1928. Flora died there in 1937. Guests have described encountering their presence on upper floors, not as anything menacing, but as a kind of bottomless grief that lingers in the hallways.

The Drake has been the subject of paranormal investigations, including work by Ursula Bielski, who has written 12 books on Chicago's haunted history and founded Chicago Hauntings Tours. Investigators have noted cold spots on the upper floors and EMF spikes near the Gold Coast Room. Elevator doors open and close on empty floors. Electronic devices drain batteries without explanation.

The Woman in Red may be pure folklore. Adele Born Williams' murder is documented fact. The Franks family's sorrow is verifiable history. Three very different stories layered inside one building at 140 East Walton Place, each one feeding the next, all of them now part of what the Drake is. Paranormal investigator or not, that is a lot of sadness for one hotel to hold.