Haunted Hull-House, Chicago: Jane Addams, the Haunted Room and the Devil Baby

Hull-House stands on Halsted Street on the Near West Side, now surrounded by the campus of the University of Illinois Chicago. Of the many buildings that once made up Jane Addams’s settlement, only two survive: the original Italianate mansion that Charles J. Hull built in 1856, and the residents’ dining hall of 1905. Together they are the Jane Addams Hull-House Museum, a National Historic Landmark.

It is one of Chicago’s most famous haunted buildings, and unusually, its ghost stories come with a paper trail. Addams wrote about the house’s haunted attic and the tenants who feared it, and she wrote at length about the Devil Baby rumor that brought crowds to the door in 1913. This guide tells the history, the stories and what the museum itself says about them.

History of Hull-House

Charles Jerald Hull, a real estate investor, built his Italianate mansion at 800 South Halsted Street in 1856, when the area was still on the edge of the city. His wife, Millicent, died of an illness in her bedroom in 1860, and two of their sons also died during the few years the family lived there; Hull then moved out. The house passed to his cousin Helen Culver, and the neighborhood around it filled with immigrant families and crowded tenements.

On September 18, 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr moved in and opened Hull-House as a settlement house, where educated residents lived among their working-class neighbors and helped newly arrived immigrant families. Culver gave Addams a 25-year rent-free lease. Addams became one of the most famous reformers in America.

Most of the complex was later demolished, and the University of Illinois Chicago campus now covers the old grounds. The mansion survived, and the 1905 dining hall, designed by Pond and Pond, was moved about 200 yards to stand beside it. The house became a National Historic Landmark in 1965, was listed on the National Register in 1966 and was made a Chicago Landmark in 1974. Today it is a museum dedicated to Addams and the residents who worked with her.

The ghosts of Hull-House

The haunted room

Long before Addams arrived, tenants on the second floor believed the house was haunted. Addams wrote that the attic had a half-skeptical reputation for being haunted and that tenants kept a large pitcher of water on the attic stairs, which she guessed came from the old belief that ghosts cannot cross running water. She admitted she might be eagerly finding folklore.

The museum says the ghost was believed to be Millicent Hull, who died in the house in 1860, and that she was thought to haunt the bedroom often described as Jane Addams’s own room. Tenants claimed to see her, but she was generally thought harmless. According to later retellings, Addams herself, who said she did not believe in ghosts, called it the haunted bedroom, heard footsteps and eventually used the room for storage.

CBS Chicago’s retelling adds that Addams described waking to see a woman standing over her bed and hearing conversations in the empty room, and that later guests reported the same figure. The Hull family’s losses give the story its weight: Charles Hull’s wife and two of his sons died during the four years the family lived in the house, and he moved out soon afterward.

The Devil Baby

In 1913 a rumor swept the West Side that a baby born with horns, scaly skin and a tail had been left at Hull-House. In the most common version, a man tore a picture of the Virgin Mary off the wall and said he would rather have the devil in the house, and his wife then gave birth to the devil’s child. For about six weeks crowds lined up down the street to see it, some from as far as Milwaukee, offering money to get in.

There was no Devil Baby, and Addams turned the visitors away. In a 1916 essay in The Atlantic she called it a legend and wrote about the hundreds of women who came, many of them humbled by hard lives. The museum’s education staff say Addams came to see the rumor as a way women talked about domestic violence and abuse.

The courtyard

The courtyard beside the museum has its own story. Some ghost hunters call it a portal, and author Ursula Bielski told the Sun-Times that mediums advise visitors to pray before entering; she says she did not, and woke at 4 AM with a headless man standing on her chest. A fountain there was said to appear in some photos and not others. The university later removed it, without giving a reason.

Other reports

The Lady in White, said to be Mrs. Hull, is still reported in the original building, and ghost tour companies collect other stories of lights and sounds. The museum itself describes the stories as fun, eerie snapshots of life at the turn of the century rather than proof of anything.

Where to look

• The second-floor bedroom: The room long called the haunted room, linked to Millicent Hull.
• The attic windows: Where people say the Devil Baby was kept and where some still look for a face.
• The courtyard: The so-called portal, and the spot where the vanished fountain once stood.
• The residents' dining hall: Moved about 200 yards to stand beside the mansion; the heart of daily life at the settlement.

Visiting Hull-House

The Jane Addams Hull-House Museum is open to visitors and sits on the UIC campus. Check the museum’s website for current days and hours before you go.

Each October the museum runs its own series of evening ghost tours, film screenings and family events built around the house’s folklore. It does not allow paranormal investigations or overnight stays. If you want a full night of ghost hunting, Haunted Rooms runs its own events at the Old Joliet Prison, southwest of the city.

The October program changes each year but has included evening ghost tours, film screenings and family trick-or-treating and story times. The museum says paranormal investigators and ghost tour fans contact it all the time about overnight stays; the answer is no, but the October tours are the next best thing, and they put the stories in the context of the people who actually lived and worked here.

• Visiting Museum open to the public, run by the University of Illinois Chicago
• Tours Museum visits; evening ghost tours each October
• Ghost hunting No paranormal investigations

Tips for your visit

• Book the museum’s October ghost tour early: it is the only way to hear the stories inside the house after dark.
• Read Addams’s own account of the Devil Baby before you go; it is more interesting than the legend.
• Look up at the attic windows from Halsted Street, where the Devil Baby was said to be hidden.
• Pair it with a walk to the Eastland disaster site and the Iroquois Theatre alley downtown.

More haunted places nearby

• Resurrection Cemetery and Resurrection Mary: Chicago’s vanishing hitchhiker
• Bachelor's Grove Cemetery: The abandoned pioneer graveyard
• Congress Plaza Hotel: Chicago’s most haunted hotel, on Michigan Avenue
• Old Joliet Prison ghost hunt: Our ghost hunts inside the 1858 prison
• Haunted places in Illinois
• Haunted places in Chicago

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the official website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as staff, visitors and investigators tell them, and we say where records contradict a story.

• Wikipedia: Hull House
• Jane Addams Hull-House Museum: Finding Folklore (2022)
• CBS Chicago: Chicago hauntings, Jane Addams Hull-House (2021)
• UIC Today: Radio listeners hear ghostly tales from Hull-House (2022)
• Choose Chicago: Chicago's most haunted places
• Chicago Sun-Times: Chicago ghost hunters' favorite locations (2016)
• DNAinfo: 8 haunted spots in Chicago (2015)
• Time Out Chicago: The most haunted places in Chicago (2025)