Ghosts of Chicago's Tribune Tower

To celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Chicago Tribune, the newspaper held a design contest for the plans to create their new headquarters and there was a $50,000 first prize to the winner. Two architects out of New York won the prize with their neo-gothic design and the building was completed by 1925. For decades, this world-famous Chicago structure was the home of the Chicago Tribune , Tribune Media, Tribune Publishing, as well as WGN Radio. 

I was invited to conduct an overnight investigation here at the Trib Tower alongside the crew from a late-night radio show, “Pretty Late with Patti Vasquez.” Their investigation started right in that room there; the street-level showcase studio opened in 1986. The belief among the crew at the moment was that if Bob Collins was going to haunt any location, it would be that studio right there. Some of you may remember Bob Collins, a WGN morning show staple from 1974 to 2000, when he died in a plane crash. While in that room, a number of subtle knocking sounds were heard, but nothing super definitive was observed.

We next headed up a couple floors to what looked like a nice board room. However, that was really where Tribune reporters played their hard ball. This is where the big and powerful throughout Chicago history faced tough questioning from journalists. Who knows how many careers took a hit in that room? It wasn't long before activity began picking up. We observed a sharp cold spot that quickly vanished, measured an energy spike on their EMF meters, as well as heard disembodied whispers. They couldn’t understand what was said, but there was definitely a voice, perhaps even a hushed conversation, heard by everyone in the room.

My favorite moment of the night was a sign of paranormal activity but wasn’t actually paranormal. Makes no sense, right? Well, in the middle of the night, having run of the place, the investigators needed the security guards to unlock the requested parts of the building. As we all know, if you want to know if a building is haunted, you ask the security guards. They’re the ones who are there all night, oftentimes alone & in complete silence. So, they asked them if they’ve ever seen anything or if there is any part of the building where they feel uncomfortable. Their response was definite: The 24th floor. According to security guards, it was here where someone jumped to their death, and their overwhelming negative energy still makes its presence known. Security guards basically avoid that floor, and it was made very apparent to the investigators as the guards unlocked the door, pushed it open, and then let the investigators in while they retreated back to the guard station—never even setting foot on the troubled floor. We did a little researching, and the most recent suicide by jumping from the Tribune Tower happened in 2011, but the article did not mention the floor the victim jumped from. Still, it’s not surprising that a building constructed before the great depression would see some suicides attributed to it.

Why else might the Tribune Tower be haunted? In addition to the more conventional reasons, including a place people might want to return to after death and the site of sudden deaths, there are also artifacts literally embedded in the walls. There's a chunk from the Great Pyramid, a rock taken from the site for the Lost Colony of Roanoke, pieces of the Taj Mahal, the Parthenon, Angkor Wat, Lincoln's tomb, Notre Dame, and, much more recently, a piece of the World Trade Center tower. There's more than a hundred more pieces, and in the lobby there are even small rock samples taken from the site where Christ was born. They used to have a chunk of moon rock too, but NASA recovered it since it wasn’t supposed to be here anyway. So, if you go along with the idea that a place can hold a spiritual energy, a charge of sorts, this location has collected all sorts of different energies from around the world and throughout time into one location. Maybe that’s turning the Trib Tower into a paranormal lightning rod.

The building is in a state of flux in the moment as the longtime main tenant of the building, the Chicago Tribune, moved out in summer of 2018 with the intent to convert the building into some of the most exclusive living in the Midwest. Sometimes renovations and construction make an already haunted location more active. Time will tell if the same happens here.

Haunted Halls: Inside Chicago's Gothic Tribune Tower

Journey into the haunted halls of Chicago's majestic Tribune Tower, where paranormal activity lurks behind every neo-gothic archway—from the tragic 24th floor to the whisper-filled boardroom where disembodied voices echo through time. Join American Ghost Walks' most chilling downtown Chicago ghost tour, where ancient artifacts embedded in the walls create a paranormal lightning rod unlike any other historic location.

Check out our Chicago ghost tour reviews on Google to see why this tour is a must-experience.

Dive deeper into the mysterious world of hauntings with our curated collection of paranormal investigations and ghostly encounters. Read more stories like this in “Ghosts of Lincoln Park: A Chicago Hauntings Companion” by Ursula Bielski, a book of downtown Chicago ghost stories written by our own American Ghost Walks team. Click here for more.

Dive deeper into the mysterious world of hauntings with our curated collection of paranormal investigations and ghostly encounters. Read more stories like this in “The Original Chicago Hauntings Companion” by Ursula Bielski, a book of Chicago ghost stories written by our own American Ghost Walks team. Click here for more.

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