Rosehill Cemetery Walking Tour

Rosehill is full of fascinating heroes, villains, and pure eccentrics - as well as some of the city's most stunning artwork. A few names are known to any Chicago history buff, but many of the best stories are hidden deep behind ordinary headstones, or even in unmarked graves.  There are strange eccentrics, pioneers, actors, statesmen, artists, and even a few regular villains.

Tour guide Adam Selzer of Mysterious Chicago Tours is the author of several published books on Chicago history, Including Mysterious Chicago, the Amazon Best-Selling HH Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil, Ghosts of Chicago, and the upcoming authorized Who's Who book for Graceland Cemetery. His research has been featured in Rolling Stone, The New York Times, the Washington Post, and more. He's a regular on the History and Travel channels, appearing on such shows as American Ripper, Haunted History, Mysteries at the Museum, and many others. 

His Rosehill cemetery tours are incredibly informative, surprisingly hilarious, and endlessly fascinating. Believing that "a great story is more interesting than a familiar name," his tours often include tales of a brewer who sparked the biggest sex scandal of 1862, the M**der that inspired the founding of the cemetery,  the first journalist killed in the Civil War, John Wilkes Booth's sister-in-law, the hapless police chief who investigated the H.H. Holmes "M**der castle," and more, as well as some of the more famous monuments on the Eastern side of the cemetery. Drawing on years of deep research, Selzer tells the stories, including information that has only recently been discovered, and shows how the Rosehill residents' lives interesected with each other and with American history.

WHAT TO KNOW:

- Meet just inside the gates off 5800 N. Ravenswood a bit before 11am (not the gates at Western and Bryn Mawr - the big stone ones on the other side). Adam will be checking people in. Look for the guy with the headset mic.

- You won't need a paper ticket, just the name on your eventbrite order.

-The tour runs roughly 75-90 minutes, sticking mainly to the older part of the cemetery on the Eastern side. Much of the tour is on the paved portions, but the route does require a great deal of "off road" walking to get to some of the featured graves.

- The tour is in the safe outdoors, but we -strongly- request that patrons be fully vaxxed against Covid 19 (really, we hope you have all your shots!). If you have questions about the vaccines, the Mayo Clinic has an excellent page to answer them. The vaccines are the reason we can do in-person events at all.

- There is no bathroom mid tour. Cemeteries don't generally have facilities set up throughout!

- There is limited parking available right inside the gates, or tons of street parking nearby.  

- Tour runs rain or shine. The cemetery has a "no dogs or bikes" sign that we can't overrule. 

Event Venue

5800 N Ravenswood Ave, 5800 North Ravenswood Avenue, Chicago, United States