For Adam Selzer, spooky season is his Super Bowl. During October, the popular Mysterious Chicago tour guide and prolific author is hard to keep up with due to commitments that take him around the city. Want a haunted walking tour? He’s got one.
Prefer to see scary sites by bus? Selzer has that too. You can also catch Selzer broadcasting live from his living room, or out and about on what he calls a daily “mini” tour . A subscription to his Patreon provides fans with photos of cemetery coyotes and access to his archival files.
Selzer rounds out his busy days this month working on his next book, which he expects to be about “antique” serial killers in the city’s history. We joined him as he looked for grave locations in Graceland Cemetery, 4001 N. Clark St.
The final resting place for prominent Chicago families , Graceland has been Selzer’s muse for years and so many visits that he’s lost count. The history buff compiled his findings in the 2022 book, “Graceland Cemetery: Chicago Stories, Symbols, and Secrets.” The book includes deeply researched insights into some of the 175,000 lives — both famous and not — behind the names inscribed on the grave markers and cenotaphs placed there since 1860.
In order to learn the tales of the dead, however, takes time, patience and a bit of luck, as we learned following him earlier this week. The subject: Henry Meyer. The Tribune’s archives have limited details about the early murderer, but Selzer worked with Gracel.