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Chicago Street Guide to the Supernatural | 
 enlarge | Authors: Richard T. Crowe, Carol Mercado
Creator: Joseph E. Troiani
Publisher: Carolando Press
Category: Book
Buy New: $53.99
New (2) Used (9) from $19.96
Avg. Customer Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 1209521
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1st
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 275
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 10.1 x 7 x 0.5
ISBN: 0940542064
EAN: 9780940542068
ASIN: 0940542064
Publication Date: October 2000
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
Chicago's Street Guide to the Supernatural by Richard T. Crowe is a personally guided tour to local haunts and mysterious sites. All areas of Chicagoland and suburbs are covered and exact directions and field notes compliment the history of each location.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
 Don't waste your money or book, tour or lectures October 4, 2008
I'm sorry, but listening to Richard Crowe is about as dull as a slug. I heard him "spin" his tales at a local community college and at $19.00 a head for 1 hour, all we got was mumble jumble (he is a terrible public speaker), exhaustion, sleep deprevation and thought he was going to drop dead and turn into a ghost. The man is obese and spending way to much time eating at his "haunts" instead of doing legitimate research or giving his audiences there money's worth telling his "tales of folklore in the spiritual world." He is rude, has an ego the size of his waistline, drops a bunch of names and has no slides after 1976 on his projector presentation. My 4 friends and I knew more about ghost "facts, fiction and tales of the supernatural" than he did, he presented nothing new, nothing interesting, nothing spine tingling and nothing worth spending $19.00 on. Skip this guy, research on your own or find someone who is at least 1% interested in what they are doing, it would be 1% more than Richard Crowe cares about his career!
 Chicago Ghost Tours: The Print Version April 6, 2004
6 out of 6 found this review helpful
The person who buys this book should be someone who has been on one of Richard Crowe's ghost tours and is purchasing the book as a kind of souvenir. Crowe isn't much of a writer: the text of "Chicago Street Guide to the Supernatural" is mostly a word-by-word duplication of the speeches he gives on his tours. That being said, Crowe really knows his stuff. He's been giving ghost tours in Chicago for years and could talk to you for hours about any of the haunted locations mentioned in his book. He's not a scientist and not exactly a historian, but Crowe specializes in legends, and that's what ghost stories are made of. This book contains summaries of Chicago's most famous ghost stories, including Resurrection Mary and John Dillinger. Crowe includes information that he obtained from interviews as well as many interesting photographs. It's an interesting and entertaining read, and anyone interested in learning more about Supernatural Chicago will enjoy it immensely.
Book mediocre, tour an unbelievable rip-off.....AVOID! March 17, 2004
7 out of 9 found this review helpful
This book presents an uninspired retread of the same stories you can get from any book on Chicago ghosts. There is really nothing new here; I would like to have seen a little more depth and research and not so much of the same tired tales I have heard since I was 8. As for the tour, my friend (almost former friend after this debacle) signed a bunch of us up. It was unequivocally the most boring, overpriced piece of tourist claptrap I have ever come across. It started out promising enough with a visit to the Biograph Theater and the death site of John Dillinger. I should have quit while I was ahead. The tour then spiraled downhill from there, eventually becoming almost comically bad (I say almost because of its ridiculously steep price). It was all over for me when we stopped at a Chinese grocery store where our "guide" obviously got some sort of kickback for parading a bunch of clueless tourists through the place. His monologue on Chinatown, which we were in for 45 minutes, was "Chinatown has a lot of ghost stories. Here is our next stop where you can buy candy and handbags." The tour was 4+ hours and, I kid you not, we heard at most 20 minutes of stories. That man should be ashamed of himself, I wish I had been mugged on the way there....I still would have lost my
money but at least I would have saved a few hours of time. AVOID AT ALL COSTS!!
 Get the Book - Skip the Tour December 3, 2003
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book is written in a concise and easy to read format. As a chicago suburb native, I enjoyed reading tales about places and areas that I am familiar with and have been to. AS FOR THE TOUR, I was completely disappointed. Imagine sitting on a bus for four hours listening to the "micro-machine guy" rattle through places where people have seen ghosts. Very little story telling actually took place on the tour. Basically, we'd drive past a store stuck between a subway and dunkin donuts and he'd say, "so and so died here...now it's haunted," and that would be it. He even had to nerve to tell us that his last bus driver quit because he saw a ghost, and that was the end of that story. Instead of hearing stories about China Town we stopped at a chinese grocery store and he tried to get us to buy knock-off Guchi bags. Anyways, get the book if you are local to Chicago, forget the tour.
Like the other books November 3, 2003
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
This book does nothing more than reprint most common "folklore" of the Chicago area. With the exception of a handful of comments in the book, it sounds the same as any other books out there on Chicago haunted sites. After attending one or two tours on Chicago's haunted sites, you would have the same information as this book offers. This book is nothing special. The Author's Chicago Ghost tours are nothing more than a shopping trip with stops at stores, pubs and resturants to spend money. No information about hauntings is give off the bus only shopping. I would recommend Dale Kacmarek's books on Chicago Ghosts because he is a noted researcher and investigator and not a "folklorist" who collects stories to retell. In fact most of the stories have already appeared in local newspapers for decades, and the folklore is famous before the author began his tours--example is Resurrection Mary.
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