Mysterious Chicago

From Chicago historian Adam Selzer, expert on all of the Windy City’s quirks and oddities, comes a compelling heavily researched anthology of the stories behind its most fascinating unsolved mysteries. To create this unique volume, Selzer has collected forty unsolved mysteries from the 1800s to modern day. He has poured through all newspaper, magazine, and book references to them, and consulted expert historians. Topics covered include who really started the great Chicago fire, who was the first “automobile murderer,” and even if there was actually a vampire slaying at Rose Hill cemetery. The result is both a colorful read to get lost in, a window to a world of curiosity and wonder, as well as a volume that separates fact from fiction—true crime from urban legend. Complementing the gripping stories Selzer presents are original images of the crime and its suspects as developed by its original investigators. Readers will marvel at how each character and crime were presented, and happily journey with Selzer as he presents all facts and theories presented at the time of the “crime” and uses modern hindsight to assemble the pieces.

On November 14, 1885, a cold autumn day in the City of Broad Shoulders, an enthusiastic crowd of several hundred watched as three Sicilians Giovanni Azari, Agostino Gelardi, and Ignazio Silvestri were hanged in the courtyard of the Cook County Jail. The three had only recently come to the city, but not long after they were arrested, tried, and convicted for murdering Filippo Caruso, stuffing his body into a trunk, and shipping it to Pittsburgh. Historian and legal expert Elizabeth Dale brings the Trunk Murder case vividly back to life, painting an indelible portrait of nineteenth-century Chicago, ethnic life there, and a murder trial gone seriously awry. Along the way she reveals a Windy City teeming with street peddlers, crooked cops, earnest reformers, and legal activists--all of whom play a part in this gripping tale. Chicago's Trunk Murder shows how the defendants in the case were arrested on du bious evidence and held, some for weeks, without access to lawyers or friends. The accused finally confessed after being interrogated repeatedly by men who did not speak their lan guage. They were then tried before a judge who had his own view and ruled accordingly. Chicago's Trunk Murder revisits these abject breaches of justice and uses them to consider much larger problems in late nineteenth century criminal law. Written with a storyteller's flair for narrative and brim ming with historical detail, this book will be must reading for true crime buffs and aficionados of Chicago lore alike.

The life of Raymond Chandler has long been obscured by secrets and half-truths as deceptive as anything in his novel The Long Goodbye. Now, drawing on new interviews, previously unpublished letters, and archives on both sides of the Atlantic, Tom Williams casts a new light on this most mysterious of writers. The Raymond Chandler revealed is a man troubled by loneliness and desertion from an early age. Born in Chicago in 1888, his childhood was overshadowed by the collapse of his parents' marriage, his father's alcohol-fuelled violence eventually forcing the boy and his doting mother to leave for Ireland and later London. But class-bound England proved stifling, and Chandler, in his twenties and eager to forge a new life, returned to the United States where—in corruption-ridden Los Angeles—he met his one great love, Cissy Pascal, a married woman eighteen years his senior. It was only during middle age, after his alcoholism wrecked a lucrative career as an oilman, that Chandler seriously turned to crime fiction. And his legacy—the lonely, ambiguous world of Philip Marlowe—endures, compelling generations of crime writers to follow him. In this long-awaited new biography, Tom Williams shadows one of the true literary giants of the twentieth century and considers how crime writing was raised to the level of art.

The term anarchism derives from the Greek word ἀναρχία meaning ‘without ruler or leader, and without law’. Although the roots of the word can be traced back to Ancient Greece, anarchism as a political ideology is relatively new. Anarchism developed as a political ideology at the end of the eighteenth century at the time of the emergence of the modern State. And, as is well known, anarchism developed both a politics and a way of life that did not include the State as its compass, support and structure. In contrast to the extensive contemporary literature about anarchist politics and ideas, this book focuses on the practices and attitudes that constitute what the author refers to as an anarchist ‘art of life’. The book draws on archival material that records the life and actions of the anarchist Emma Goldman and her associates, legal documents and writings by classical (Pierre Joseph Proudhon, Peter Krotopkin) and contemporary anarchists (David Graeber, Saul Newman, Ciarra Bottici), as well as contemporary groups such as the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army and Occupy Wall Street. By studying the idiosyncrasies of this art of life, it argues, we are better able to appreciate how anarchism is not some future utopian oriented project, waiting to come into existence after a revolution, but rather exists in parallel to the life and politics offered by the State. Anarchism: An Art of Living Without Law will be of interest to graduate students and academics working on critical legal theory, political theory, sociology and cultural studies.

Discover all the mysteries, facts, and discoveries about ghosts that are creepy—and true—in the much-anticipated companion to Mummies Exposed! Do you believe in ghosts? Whether you’re a believer in things that go bump in the night or a firmly science-minded skeptic, there is compelling evidence to suggest that the veil between the living and the dead may be thinner than we think. Ghosts Unveiled! investigates spectral appearances, unsolved mysteries, and eerie hauntings around the world: the Vanishing Hitchhiker, the child-nabbing La Llorona, demon cats and dogs, haunted schools, and even wraiths in bathrooms! Examining eyewitness accounts from both contemporary interviews and historical records as well as physical signs of paranormal activity, this meticulously researched, well-balanced, and spine-tingling book will leave you wondering what is truly beyond the veil. The Creepy and True series explores strange phenomena, fun facts, and out of the ordinary discoveries. Read them all to uncover the creepy and true histories of mummies, ghosts, skeletons, and more!

A comprehensive guide to cryptozoology—the quest to identify animals that have not been officially catalogued by science and to place these unknown animals into their proper zoological categories. In this fascinating two-volume encyclopedia, author George M. Eberhart provides a comprehensive catalog of nearly 1,000 cryptids—unknown animals usually reported through eyewitness accounts and not yet described by science. Cryptids are the stuff of folklore, hoaxes, and genuine scientific breakthroughs. There are 400 now-classified cryptids once considered either extinct or pure fantasy. The cryptozoologist's job is to strip away the myth, misidentification, and mystery—and separate fact from fiction. Mysterious Creatures covers everything from dinosaurs and the emala-ntouka, an elephant-killing dinosaur-like animal of central Africa, to searches for the Loch Ness monster, Bigfoot, and other cryptozoological hoaxes. Entries about specific animals include the derivation or meaning of each cryptid's name, its scientific name, variant names, a physical description, behavior, description of tracks, habitat, significant sightings, present status, and possible explanations. Illustrations and photographs accompany many entries. The book also includes resources and references for further information.

This classic 1938 mystery could only have come from the fevered imagination of Harry Stephen Keeler! Behind That Mask is a direct sequel to his 1932 novel, Finger! Finger!—and although it concludes successfully the story begun in volume one, readers should definitely have finished Finger! Finger! before starting this one. You have been warned!

About the Book Looking for Picasso in All the Wrong Places by retired art dealer, Ivan “Googie” Parks Jr., is a memoir of how a Chicago cowboy became an art dealer! He shares his unique experiences of how his Chicagoland Cowboy upbringing prepared him to solve modern art’s oldest secret! For the first time ever, read the amazing story of a young horseman’s inadvertent discovery that paralleled the answers to Picasso’s unasked questions for the sources of the Master’s unknown mysterious models! Parks reveals Picasso’s own Communistic origins he claims to have discovered being used to compare to the murder scenes from Chicago connected events! He presents a collection of fifty-three photographs from his Cowboy life which he claims accidently helped him explain what the seemingly secret subjects Picasso selected for the unknown gifts for the 1968 “347 Suite Gravures” exhibit were developed from accrual events taken place as Picasso drew the subjects from newspaper accounts as they happened. A young Parks uses his early Chicago cowboy experiences to help illuminate the Equine characters populating the selected sequenced forty-eight serials constructed from Picasso’s artwork into Ivan’s arranged expose! He uses his uniquely devised new linking process for creating a devastating revelation in a new serialization technique which is formulated while finding out Picasso has borrowed serial events from Chicago’s historical past. His findings lead to the beginning of a better understanding of Picasso’s formerly mysterious Cubistic World as he struck a lucky deal to save his Rock n Roll Dude Ranch while selling art in the Merrill Chase Chicagoland Art Gallery chain! Ivan reveals the explicit reasons of how he helped remove the “Erotic Suite” from the “347 Series Gravures” Exhibit while discovering a surprise Chicago connection illustrating two Democratic Presidential Conventions of 1960 and 1968 silently selected by Picasso! You will marvel as he discusses the reasons explaining the heretofore unknown why Picasso gave the “Sculpture Puzzle”, the “Bizarre Etching Exhibit”, and the $100,000 “Commission Check” to the Art Institute of Chicago! Parks also divulges a curious set of parallel dimensions between the “Daley Plaza Sculpture”, the “Guernica Mural”, and a mock-up of a “St. Valentine’s Day Crime Scene Measurement Recreation” which has never been examined or explored publicly before! He also explores the timely similarities in the recreations from the April 4, 1968, murder scene used by Picasso for his own version of the day before and the day of the Memphis Motel “Balcony Crime Scene” about the murder of Dr. Martin L. King Jr. You will marvel at the intricate collection of evidence linking Picasso imagery to Capone Era Chicago Beer Wars events. He further connects other similar historical sneak attack and matching alibi models for the St. Valentine’s murders and aligns them with selected communist conflicts with fascist leaders matching Picasso Eras which Ivan implicates Picasso in stealing Chicago Connections for his seemingly unknown art subjects! You’ll decide if the evidence in Parks’s Crazy Chicago Cowboy Discovery Trail proves his findings or if Parks twisted Picasso’s imagery into his own new Secret Chicago Connections. Either way the events took place just before Picasso drew his seemingly unconnected version of the infamous imagery!