If ghosts are real, then surely every city in America is haunted. But really though, if ghosts are real, Chicago’s ghosts are a bit more frightening that your average run-of-the-mill specters. Almost the entire city burned down in the Great Chicago Fire in 1871, and the city’s past is littered with many other tragic fires to boot. Disease, the human cost of modern industry, and shady social practices have all taken their fair share of lives over the past century and a half. Beyond that, Chicago’s history is drenched in gang violence, police violence, civilian violence–just…a lot of violence, okay? If there are any phantom drifters about town, they deserve to be a little angry.

In case you’re trying to avoid any encounters with the spirit realm, or maybe you’re even trying to get closer to it, here are five places where you’re most likely to have your own ghostly encounters. Just in time for Halloween, too! (Okay, yeah, Halloween is over a month away, but tell that to the Boo-Berry cereal I just bought this morning. 'Tis the season, friends.)

First on our list is Uptown, home to the infamous Graceland Cemetery. While more well known cemeteries like Bachelors’ Grove and Resurrection Cemetery (home to famed hitchhiking ghost "Resurrection Mary," grandmother of all urban legends) lie beyond the city limits, Graceland Cemetery is nestled right in the heart of Uptown Chicago. While the graveyard is the resting place to many artists, architects, and more than a few former Chi-town mayors, it is most known for one resident in particular: six-year-old Inez Clarke.

Inez Clarke was killed by a bolt of lightning in 1880. Desperate to cling to their young child’s legacy, her parents erected a lifelike sculpture of Inez over her own grave and protected it in a glass case to shield it from deteriorating from the elements. The statue has been known to go missing from its case during thunderstorms, and has been seen frolicking about the cemetery on stormy nights. Yikes.

Next is the cozy northwest neighborhood of Dunning. Today, it’s home to Eli’s Cheesecake Factory (mmmmmmmmmm….cheesecake….), but Dunning got its start as land designated to be a poor farm, insane asylum, and orphanage for Cook County. Oh, and there’s a cemetery. There’s always a freakin’ cemetery.

While Dunning was established originally as a poor farm (think Victorian-era workhouse, but plus vegetables and outdoor manual labor), along with the asylum, over 40 acres were set aside for settlers to come and build homes for cheap. The presence of the asylum, however, deterred anyone from setting up house for long. A literal “crazy train” (seriously, that’s what they called it) transported mentally ill patients to the Cook County Asylum from all over the Midwest. At one point the asylum also admitted tuberculosis patients. Thousands died in Dunning as the result of poor working conditions, overpopulation, and disease. Not exactly a picture-perfect start for a well-to-do neighborhood.

Now you’re probably thinking “all of these are so far from home! Surely I’m spared from all terrors from beyond the grave!” Well, if you live in Lincoln Park, you’re dead wrong. Get it? Dead Wrong? Sheesh…

Yes you probably thought your three story brownstone in a safe neighborhood was impenetrable from danger, but you also probably didn’t know that your junior year apartment was built right over a smallpox mass grave. See, back in the day, when the land that eventually became Lincoln Park was still far beyond Chicago’s limits and covered by forests, the seclusion offered the prime location for….a huge freakin’ cemetery. Like I said earlier, there’s always a cemetery. If the thought of going to classes at DePaul just 6 feet above a few unclaimed smallpox victims doesn’t freak you out enough, just remember that The Saint Valentine’s Day Massacre, as well as the FBI killing of gangland megastar daddy John Dillinger also went down just a mere few blocks away! Cursed bricks/street corners included! Everyone loves a good curse. They should include that in the DePaul brochures.

Then there’s Englewood. All Chicagoans alike have every right to fear Englewood (it is, after all, one of “the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago”), but in 1893 the area should have been avoided for entirely different reasons. During the World’s Fair, it’s where America’s first serial killer, H.H. Holmes, built his murder hotel — something that sounds like it was almost intended to inspire American Horror Story since day one.

The inspiration behind Devil in the White City, H.H. Holmes would lure World’s Fair guests back to his hotel, which he had built as an almost Winchester Mystery House level of mazes, hallways to nowhere, and rooms all connected to a vent which he would pump poisonous gas into (Seriously! Wikipedia the sh*t out of this!). Then he would sell countless organs and skeletons on the black market for cold hard cash. In total, H.H. Holmes was found guilty of 27 murders, but investigators believe it to be up to 200. While the murder hotel no longer remains, you can imagine how such evil infected the location.

Last, but certainly not least, is the urban legend of the Hull House “devil baby” in Chicago’s Near West Side. While the Hull House still stands as a museum, it was initially used for housing immigrant workers —many of them women—at the turn of the century.

Legend has it that, after a man claimed that he would rather have the Devil in his house than a picture of The Virgin Mary, his wife gave birth to an infant with “pointed ears, horns, scale-covered skin, and a tail.” The mother was said to have taken the baby to Hull House, where it was baptized and locked in the attic. Reported hauntings in the attic happen to this day, even though there was probably no devil baby, just rampant xenophobia (the west side was known for its diverse population of immigrant workers). Still scary, though.

Whether you believe these local tales or not, you may be surprised at what your own neighborhood’s past has in store for you. The ghosts of history live on, and they can be downright terrifying. Happy Hauntings.