Hi, Fred (and everyone)! Adam from Weird Chicago here. The Congress, like any haunted place, seems to go in and out of being active. Months will go by where nothing happens, but, lately, weird things have happened there about half the times I've been there. The night Fred (and the demon lady) were there was the first nigh we heard the "gun shot" mentioned on the blog (weirdchicagoblog.com), which has since re-appeared but still hasn't been explained. That night there were also some strange, colored lights dancing on the ceiling in the lobby outside of the gold room. Never saw them before or since. If a lot of people were carrying drinks, I'd guess it was reflections from that, but I honestly don't remember if that was a "drinking" tour or not. [float=right]
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I never really hold anything up as evidence of the paranormal - there's really no such thing as "good" evidence, only "cool" evidence (a point I'll be making ad nauseum in YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD GIVES ME THE CREEPS: True Tales of an Accidental Ghost Hunter, which I'm writing for Llewellyn to be published next year). Orbs, in particular, are nice to get on tours, but I'm pretty upfront about the fact that the vast majority of them are going to be explained away in the morning (and even if they aren't, it's a big leap to say 'it's not dust, so it must be a dead guy'). In the Gold Room, in particular, there's a LOT of dust floating around. Just a lot. We don't get a lot of good photos there; my favorite is of this weird hand we found in a closet one ime. Probably just a glove that got plastered over by a construction worker with a weird sense of humor, but we call it The Hand of Drywall Dave:
Incidentally, over the course of this week there'll be a few posts on the blog about murders at the congress (goodness me, a lot of people died in that joint!)!
