“The knowledge of the existence of the Devil Baby burst upon the residents of Hull-House one day when three Italian women, with an excited rush through the door, demanded that he be shown to them. No amount of denial convinced them that he was not there, for they knew exactly what he was like, with his cloven hoofs, his pointed ears and diminutive tail; moreover, the Devil Baby had been able to speak as soon as he was born and was most shockingly profane.”  

- Jane Addams, “The Devil Baby at Hull-House", 1916 

Folklore, fairy tales, and ghost stories are historically understood to be a reflection of the underlying principles, spiritual beliefs, and cultural fears of a given community in a specific place and time. In the wake of industrialization in the late 1890s and early 1900s, modern iterations of these stories have become urban legends, stories of cryptids and alien encounters, and perhaps most influential, encounters with ghosts and demons. Often these stories tell, in a roundabout way, the depths of the struggles faced by marginalized and disadvantaged communities.  

Hull-House has a long history of tales and reports of ghosts and demons. The site is known as one of the most haunted places both in Chicago and the United States, and is a frequent stop on Chicago ghost tours. This October, Jane Addams Hull-House Museum wants to celebrate Hull-House's haunted history and share ghost stories as they were related by Jane Addams and the people of the surrounding neighborhood. We seek to highlight these supernatural stories and the greater implications of those narratives. Through our October 2022 event series, we will touch on their psychological and sociological roots, the effects that Jane Addams saw them having on the people around her, and how we continue to see those effects today.