The Haunted Drake Hotel, Chicago: The Lady in Red and Other Ghosts

The Drake sits where Michigan Avenue meets Lake Shore Drive, a pale limestone palace that has been the Gold Coast’s grand hotel for more than a century. Royalty, presidents and film stars have stayed here, the Palm Court has served afternoon tea for generations, and Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio left their initials carved in one of its bars. It is now a Hilton hotel, and it is still one of the most elegant places to stay in Chicago.

It is also home to one of the best-known ghost stories in the city. The Lady in Red is said to have died on the hotel’s opening night, and guests still report her on the 10th floor, in the Gold Coast Room and in the Palm Court. Other stories link the hotel to the grieving parents of Bobby Franks and to a mysterious Woman in Black. This guide sets out the stories, what can and cannot be confirmed, and how to plan a stay.

The ghosts of the Drake Hotel

The Lady in Red

The Drake’s opening gala on New Year’s Eve 1920 was one of the society events of the decade, with Chicago’s wealthiest families dancing under the chandeliers. The legend says a young woman in a blood-red dress was among them. Close to midnight she realized her fiance had left the ballroom, went up to their room on the 10th floor to find him, and found him with another woman.

In the version most often told, she ran down the corridor, rode the elevator to the roof and jumped. Other tellings say she jumped from a 10th-floor window. Either way, she is said to have never left. Guests report a woman in red walking the 10th-floor hallway, and she has been described near the Gold Coast Room, where the gala was held, and in the Palm Court.

There is no record of a death at the opening gala, and the woman has never been named, so the Lady in Red belongs firmly to legend. She is part of a wider American tradition of ‘ladies in red’ said to haunt grand old hotels, but the Drake’s is one of the most famous.

Jacob and Flora Franks

In 1924, 14-year-old Bobby Franks was murdered by Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy University of Chicago students, in one of the most notorious crimes in American history. Bobby’s father, Jacob Franks, was a wealthy Chicago businessman.

Chicago ghost lore says that after the trial Jacob and his wife Flora sold their home and moved into the Drake, where they lived out their lives. Guests and storytellers say their grief never left: a sad older couple is said to be seen in the hotel, and some believe it is the Franks still mourning their son. Time Out Chicago lists the Franks among the Drake’s ghosts. We could not confirm the details of where the couple lived from the sources we checked, so treat this one as a story.

The Woman in Black

The third story is a murder mystery. It tells of a wealthy Chicago widow, named in some accounts as Adele Born Williams, who returned to her suite on the eighth floor with her daughter and surprised a woman in a black fur coat. The intruder fired a gun, killed the mother, ran down the hall and vanished down a stairwell, and was never identified.

The story says the Woman in Black still runs the eighth-floor corridor. We could not confirm the details of the case in the sources we checked, so it is presented here as the story is told, not as a documented crime.

Frank Nitti and the Gold Coast's gangland past

The Drake has one solid gangland connection. Frank Nitti, who ran the Chicago Outfit after Al Capone went to prison, is reported to have kept an office in a suite at the hotel in the 1930s. There is no ghost story attached to him here, but it adds to the hotel’s reputation as a place where glamour and Chicago’s darker side shared the same corridors.

The most haunted rooms and places to look

• The 10th floor: Where the Lady in Red is most often seen walking the corridor. Ask for a room on this floor when you book.
• The Gold Coast Room: The ballroom tied to the 1920 opening gala and to the Lady in Red’s last dance. Usually reserved for events.
• The Palm Court: The hotel’s famous tea room, open to the public for afternoon tea and one of the places she is reported.
• The eighth floor: Said to be the scene of the Woman in Black story.

History of The Drake Hotel

The Drake was the project of brothers Tracy Drake and John Drake Jr., who bought the lakefront site from the Potter Palmer estate in 1916. They hired Benjamin Marshall and Charles Fox, the firm behind many of Chicago’s grandest buildings, to design an Italian Renaissance hotel with views straight up the lake. Families including the Palmers, Armours, Swifts and McCormicks helped finance it, and it cost about $10 million. The hotel opened on New Year’s Eve 1920.

It became the Gold Coast’s social center. WGN radio began broadcasting from the hotel in 1924. The Cape Cod Room became a famous seafood restaurant, and Marilyn Monroe and Joe DiMaggio carved their initials into its bar. The Coq d’Or was the second bar in Chicago to receive a liquor license after Prohibition ended. Frank Nitti, head of the Chicago Outfit in the 1930s, is reported to have kept a suite here.

The Drake family lost the hotel during the Great Depression. Guests over the decades included Winston Churchill, Eleanor Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Walt Disney, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Judy Garland and Elizabeth Taylor. Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Diana both came for tea, and Diana stayed in 1996. The hotel was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

Hilton International began operating the Drake in 1980 and bought it in 1996, then spent about $45 million restoring it between 1998 and 2003. Today it has 535 rooms including 74 suites, and the Palm Court is still the place for afternoon tea in Chicago.

Tips for a haunted stay

• Ask for a room on the 10th floor when you book. There is no named haunted room, so this is the best request to make.
• Book afternoon tea in the Palm Court: it is the easiest way to spend time in one of the Lady in Red’s reported haunts, even if you are not staying.
• Dogs are welcome for a $50 fee, up to two per room and 75 pounds each.
• The Gold Coast Room is usually booked for events, so look in only when it is open and empty.
• Walk south down Michigan Avenue to the Congress Plaza Hotel, the city’s other great haunted hotel, about two miles away.

More haunted hotels nearby

• Congress Plaza Hotel, Chicago: Room 441, the sealed 12th-floor room and Peg Leg Johnny
• Hotel Baker, St. Charles: 1928 riverside hotel with a lovelorn chambermaid ghost
• The Pfister Hotel, Milwaukee: Wisconsin’s famous haunted grand hotel, 90 minutes north
• Haunted hotels in Illinois
• Haunted hotels in Chicago

Sources

Facts on this page are checked against the hotel’s own website, historic records and news coverage. Ghost stories are reported as guests, staff and local historians tell them. Read how we rate haunted hotels.

• The Drake, a Hilton Hotel (official)
• Wikipedia: Drake Hotel (Chicago)
• Wikipedia: Lady in Red (ghost)
• Time Out Chicago: The most haunted spots in Chicago
• Wikipedia: Leopold and Loeb
• The Drake Hotel (official site)

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