About this Event
Diamond queens, runaway brides, flappers who worked hard to "confound the stuffy," robber barons with dark secrets, and heroes who risked it all escaping from slavery... the stories in cemeteries are a unique lens for viewing history. They say that everyone has a story, and most people have many of them. But some of the best ones are hidden in unmarked graves!
Tour guide Adam Selzer has made a career of uncovering those stories, poring over microfilm newspapers, crumbling paperwork, and old ladies’ diaries (just, a LOT of old ladies’ diaries), with an aim not just to identify interesting people in the cemeteries where he works, but to find out what they were like, what it was like to know them, and how they interacted with each other and with history. He has spent the winter on volume 2 of Graceland Cemetery: Chicago Stories, Symbols, and Secrets, and can't wait to share what he's been finding!
Nearly all of his 75-90 minute Graceland tours include the famous Inez and Eternal Silence statues, but each one is a little different; routes may include the first sportswoman to grace the cover of Time magazine, the only confirmed revolutionary soldier buried in Chicago, people who inspired some of literature’s most colorful characters, firebrand feminists and abolitionists, a man so comically dull that people were still poking fun at him decades after his death, or victims of the city’s earliest serial killers. This tour to kickoff the season in style will focus on stories around both sides of the pond, including many that have never been told on a tour before!
This tour is part 1 of a two tour day - Adam's tour will focus entirely on the south end of the cemetery. Mandy Crypt will cover the north half after a lunch break - book her tour first for a 20% off code on Adam's! Mandy's 2pm tour:
Adam is the author of Graceland Cemetery: Chicago Stories, Symbols and Secrets (University of IL Press, 2022) (and the upcoming second volume), as well as Graveyards of Trinity Church and St. Paul’s (Arcadia 2025), HH Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil (S&S 2016) and the brand new Chicago’s Serial Husband: The Marriages and Murders of Johann Hoch (Arcadia 2025). He is a regular on the History Channel, the Travel Channel, and PBS.
Praise for Adam's Graceland Book:
"Tantalizing... A prolific and stylish writer, tireless tour guide, and passionate researcher." - Rick Kogan, Chicago Tribune
"A truth-seeking research glutton....(the book is) an adept melding of the tours, the research, and the writing." - Chicago Reader
"Emblematic of...hipster tour guides. Selzer goes beyond mere trivia. He turns up fascinating individual stories of cemetery residents without leaning too heavily on the big names." - Third Coast Reviews
What You Need to Know:
- Meet a bit before the start time inside the gates. We'll be at the newly renovated main entrance at Clark and Irving Park! Look for Adam with the white glasses and headset mic.
- There is parking in the cemetery, and more in the nieghborhoods nearby. Parking along Clark Street is harder now, as they've changed it to a bike path!
- - Tour runs rain or shine!
- The cemetery is near the red line (get off at Sheridan or Addison and it's a few blocks), the 22 Clark bus, and the Irving Park bus.
- The walk covers about 1.5 miles over the course of around 90 min. Some of the walking veers off the paved paths. You'll get about 3k steps!
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Graceland Cemetery, 4001 North Clark Street, Chicago, United States
USD 22.50
