The Englewood Post Office and its dark past (7 photos)

Should a place retain its special energy if some bright or significant events took place there long ago? Lovers of mysticism believe that places where tragedies occur become cursed.





And skeptics are calm about such statements. And they build up scary places. The land should not be left empty; it is an expensive thing these days. For these reasons, a modest post office was built on the site of the famous castle of the murderer Henry Howard Holmes.

The Englewood Post Office was built on the site once occupied by the famous “G.G. Holmes."



Henry Holmes

The story commonly told is that during the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, Holmes built an elaborate hotel on the site for fairgoers, killing and robbing many of them. The house was designed as a death trap, with gas lines that he could manipulate to poison people in their sleep. And chutes, with the help of which he quietly dropped the victims into the basement, where he dissected them. Sometimes by selling bodies to medical schools, sometimes by simply disposing of evidence.





Holmes Death Castle

However, according to Holmes expert Adam Seltzer, the true story is not quite as spooky. When the conman Holmes was arrested for insurance fraud in 1894, people remembered that he had a three-story building on 63rd Street that was known to be full of secret rooms and passages.



They then realized that several of his employees had disappeared. And they wondered if these passages could serve not only to hide stolen furniture. Some of the missing were found alive and well, but about half a dozen were never found. Holmes eventually confessed to 27 murders. Although, strangely, some of those whom he admitted to killing were still alive at that time. Authorities believed the figure to be closer to 10.



A modest post office on the site of the Death Hotel

In the 20th century, various authors began to attribute hundreds of other victims to the criminal. Much of the "castle" would have been located on what is now a grassy hill east of the post office.



Whatever the truth about the Holmes case, the post office that stands today on the site of the controversial structure is unremarkable and provides routine services such as sending letters, issuing parcels and remitting money.



But, who knows, maybe the vengeful spirit of Holmes is still hanging around and waiting for favorable conditions to take revenge for the fact that his crazy project was liquidated, replacing it with prosaic and boring banality.