In 1929, Chicago gangster Al Capone arranged a special St. Valentine's Day delivery for his favorite arch enemies: a massacre. Seven North Side mobsters were left dead. Yet random killings and bizarre murders were not unfamiliar in Chicago. Tales of the city's most violent and puzzling murders make this gripping work truly hair-raising: a deranged stalker kills his love object and then himself; a sausage maker uses the tools of his trade to rid himself of his wife; and a meticulous serial killer cleans his dead victims' wounds before taping them closed. Through accounts dripping with mystery, gory details and suspense, Troy Taylor brilliantly tells the twisted history of the worst of Chicago's North Side.

Blazing from the West Side, the Great Chicago Fire left nothing but ashy remnants of the developing city leveling its landscape but certainly not its spirit. While the West Side was home to the infamous O'Leary Barn, it was also where the news of some of the city's most gruesome and horrific crime reverberated throughout the state and across the country. Read about the bloody end of Robert 'the Terrible' Toughy, who undoubtedly lived up to his name, met an ill-deserved fate. Troy Taylor also delves into the life of John Wayne Gacy the depraved man masked by the clown costume and yet again proves to be a master storyteller and historian of Chicago's criminal underworld.

New Orleans--the Big Easy, the birthplace of jazz, home of Cafe du Monde and what some call the most haunted city in America. Beneath the indulgence and revelry of the Crescent City lies a long history of the dark and mysterious. From the famous "Queen of Voodoo," Marie Laveau, who is said to haunt the site of her grave, to the wicked LaLauries, whose true natures were hidden behind elegance and the trappings of high society, New Orleans is filled with spirits of all kinds. Some of the ghosts in these stories have sordid and scandalous histories, while others are friendly specters who simply can't leave their beloved city behind. Join supernatural historian Troy Taylor as he takes readers beyond the French Quarter and shows a side of New Orleans never seen.

"Since as early as the 1700s, New Orleans has been a city filled with sin and vice. Those first pioneering citizens of the Big Easy were thieves, vagabonds and criminals of all kinds. By the time Louisiana fell under American control, New Orleans had become a city of debauchery and corruption camouflaged by decadence. It was also considered one of the country's most dangerious cities, with a reputation of crime and loose morals. Rampant gambling and prostitution were the norm in nineteenth-century New Orleans, and over one-third of today's French Quarter was considered a hotbed of sin. Tales in this volume of streets of the Crescent City in the early 1900s and Kate Townsend, a prositute who was murdered by her own lover, a man who later wass awarde her inheritance. Troy Taylor takes a look back at New Orleans's early wicked days and historic crimes" --Back cover.

Hauntings lurk and spirits linger in the Show Me State Reader, beware! Turn these pages and enter the world of the paranormal, where ghosts and ghouls alike creep just out of sight. Author Troy Taylor shines a light in the dark corners of Missouri and scares those spirits out of hiding in this thrilling collection. From a headless ghost who stalks the aptly named "Murder Rocks", to a large hairy monster that roams the banks of the Missouri River, there's no shortage of bone-chilling tales to keep you up at night. It's even rumored that the devil himself came to St. Louis in 1949, but nobody knows for sure if he ever left. Around the campfire or tucked away on a dark and stormy night, this big book of ghost stories is a hauntingly good read.

Hauntings lurk and spirits linger in the Prairie State Reader, beware! Turn these pages and enter the world of the paranormal, where ghosts and ghouls alike creep just out of sight. Author Troy Taylor shines a light in the dark corners of Illinois and scares those spirits out of hiding in this thrilling collection. From a gallows tree in Greene County where an apparition can still be seen hanging, to the lingering spirits of warring mobsters at the site of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre, these stories of strange occurrences will keep you glued to the edge of your seat. Around the campfire or tucked away on a dark and stormy night, this big book of ghost stories is a hauntingly good read.

Do places where violent deaths occur somehow absorb the horror, only to conjure up images that haunt the living for generations to come? Many people believe that this can indeed happen; above all, in the context of that manmade phenomenon that reaps so great a toll in so short a time: War. Haunted U.S. Battlefields takes us on a spine-tingling tour of America's most legendary spectral scenes of human struggle-from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War, from the Indian Wars to World War II and beyond. As America's bloodiest conflict, the Civil War has yielded the greatest number of ghostly sightings. Hence, most of the twenty-five battlefield legends this book relates are from this era-whether the myriad strange spectral happenings associated with Gettysburg, or this war's lesser known but equally tragic events. Summing up the eerie essence of wartime scenes across America-many of which today host popular ghost tours-Haunted U.S. Battlefields is a must for students of the paranormal, Civil War buffs, and all others interested in a spine-chilling realm of military history that the history books don't dare tell.

The mysterious and often violent history of Illinois has made the state a haven for restless spirits. This volume explores the supernatural side of the Prairie State, with stories on the horrors of an old slave house, the numerous spirits of Alton's McPike Mansion, the cemetery where the dead walk, the Spring Valley Vampire, the ghosts of the Bartonville Asylum, Chicago's famous Resurrection Mary, and the spirit world of Abraham Lincoln.

"Something terrible has happened here..." Those were the words uttered by Ross Moore after discovering the bodies of his brother, his family and two houseguests in Villisca, Iowa in June 1912. That horrifying discovery created a legend that became both an unsolved mystery and a haunting that continues to this day. The small town of Villisca received an unwelcome visitor on that dark night and the town was touched by a horror unlike anything that it had seen before - or has seen since. Over the years, the brutal murders committed that night have earned a place in infamy and they remain the most famous in a series of murders that were committed across the prairie during that era. But that night in June was not the first time that the monster who committed the "Villisca Ax Murders" had tasted blood. He blazed a terrible trail across the region in the years before and after the Villisca murders, using the railroad lines to carry out his horrific deeds. This book will bring you the story of the Villisca Ax Murders, along with the history and the hauntings that followed, but it tells another story as well. It is a tale of madness, murder, horror and blood and the story of the "transient butcher" who wreaked havoc in the American Midwest and then vanished into history, his name and face forever unknown. Only his dark legacy lingers behind with us today and it remains a chronicle of one of the bloodiest unsolved murders sprees in our history. The small towns of the American prairie were never the same again.

Illinois was in many ways born in blood. From the early days of piracy to twentieth-century mob massacres, the state has been plagued with some of the worst crimes in history. This book begins with a general overview of crime in the state and then focuses on its headline stories. Included are the cases of the "Murder Castle" of H. H. Holmes, the intellectual thrill killers Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the bloody St. Valentine's Day Massacre involving Al Capone's South Side mob and Bugs Morans North Side gang, the eight nurses brutally butchered by Richard Speck, and the horrifying rape and slaughter of 33 young men by "Killer Clown" John Wayne Gacy.

Ever wonder what happens "behind the scenes" of paranormal investigations, ghost tours and haunted overnights? Ever wonder what happens when ghost hunters visit places that are so haunted that even they get scared? If so, then delve into the further adventures, and misadventures, of author Troy Taylor and the American Ghost Society's Len Adams as they recount their own personal experiences with ghosts, hauntings, haunted places, ghost tours and more. Discover these fascinating, often humorous and usually chilling first-hand accounts of some of the most haunted places in America, including the Villisca Ax Murder House, Eastern State Penitentiary, the Illinois town of Alton - one of the most haunted small towns in America, Lemp Mansion, Bell Witch Cave, Myrtles Plantation, Waverly Hills Sanatorium and many others! It's another look at the "confessions" of ghost hunters and the perfect addition to your library!