A security guard at the Lincoln Park Zoo was making his rounds around 2 a.m. near the polar bear habitat when he saw a man sitting on a bench in a fedora, appearing distraught.
After asking if he was OK, the security guard told the man that the zoo closed hours ago. The man stood up, shrugged, then walked into the shadows. When the guard attempted to escort him out, the man had disappeared.
Another time, a woman approached an employee at the zoo’s visitor center, her soaking-wet son in tow. Apparently, she saw a hand come out of the lagoon and pull the boy in.
“What she thought member services could do about this I have no idea,” joked Adam Selzer.
These ghost stories are courtesy of Selzer, an author and historian who runs “Haunted History” tours at the zoo in October — past dark, of course. Observing animals isn’t the point of these hour-long tours. Rather, Selzer blends historical records and the occasional anecdote from a late-night employee for dozens to learn more about what may be one of the most haunted places in the city (allegedly). After all, it was partially built on top of a cemetery.
Selzer collects most of his notable ghost stories from near the visitor center, located at the zoo’s east gate entrance. The man in the fedora and the boy falling in the lagoon are just a few examples, he told about 50 people on a tour this week.
His best guess for their impetus is that right across the fence, from about 1891 to 1919, a 40-foot tall bridge called the “High Bridge” stood over the lagoon. It eventually earned the nickname “suicide bridge” in the media after roughly 100 people jumped off it in 30 years, Selzer found.
“Some estimates … was about a person a week would try to jump off the thing, and quite a few of them managed it too,” he said.
Sisters Emma and Clara Pontius
But one story from a security guard stood out to Selzer, he said. The guard believed he heard a little girl crying near the visitor center, and heard a little girl laughing the next year. He found that in 1907, two girls, Emma and Clara Pontius, who were just 12 and 10 years old, fell — or jumped, depending on who you asked — from the bridge into the lagoon.
Their father and stepmother speculated that one may have fallen, and the other girl jumped in after her. Their grandmother, on the other hand, believed the girls died by suicide after being upset over their mother’s death and the way their stepmother treated them. Apparently, they had visited Graceland Cemetery earlier that morning, and talked about going to the bridge.
“But this is one of these stories where every bit of data I get just makes it more confusing,” Selzer said. “I’ve been through the records at Graceland Cemetery. I’ve been through the coroner’s inquest reports. The records at Graceland indicated their father never remarried, so they didn’t have a stepmother.”
“And weirdly, when they were doing the coroner’s inquest, a little kid showed up and said, ‘Did they find the man, too?’” Selzer continued. “They were like, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘Well, the man dove in after them, and I never saw him come back up.’ They said, ‘Did you tell anybody about this?’ And he said, ‘No, I had to go to my violin lesson.’”
Sure enough, authorities dragged the lagoon and found a third body, later identified as John Duetinger. Duetinger, an avid swimmer who typically walked in the park every day, had previously saved another child from drowning, Selzer said.
Whether these are the identities of the ghosts frequenting the zoo, Selzer of course can’t say for sure, but one man told him that while he was driving by the Belden-Stratford apartments in Lincoln Park, two girls wearing vintage dresses jumped in front of his car, then disappeared. Some employees also named the apparent ghost in member services “Emma” before Selzer brought up his theory, he added.
Sightings of an underpaid bathroom attendant, skunk
Speaking of ghosts, Selzer has some other theories as well, including one that an off-duty cop supposedly spotted in the lion house’s bathroom. He likes to think she was the female bathroom attendant who was paid $5 less per month than her male counterpart when the zoo’s “men’s and ladies’ comfort station” opened in the 1880s.
“We walk around the zoo a lot and use those bathrooms, so to get to hear that they may be a little spooky, it was cool,” said Andrea Ingrande, 35, who joined the tour with three of her co-workers from Blue River PetCare. Ingrande signed up because she’s super interested in Chicago history, including cemetery history. Graceland Cemetery and Rosehill Cemetery definitely have a spooky, strange energy, she added.
“I’m glad I used the gender-neutral bathroom when we went to the lion house,” joked Missy Holz, 27.
Selzer also hypothesized that the skunk he sometimes spots at the zoo’s entrance is the ghost of “Sweet William.”
In 1950, Marlin Perkins, the zoo’s director at the time, appeared on the popular “Kukla, Fran and Ollie” show. He was supposed to bring a chimpanzee for show-and-tell, Selzer recounted, but the chimp had stage fright. Last minute, he opted to bring William the skunk instead. While William had an operation so he couldn’t spray, he wasn’t housebroken and ended up messing up the puppet show stage live on television, making a famous blooper.
“I like to imagine it’s the ghost of Sweet William, if only because I’d much rather see a ghost skunk than a real one,” Selzer said.
Finding a coffin under the barn
Many were also intrigued by the zoo’s cemetery ties, which Selzer recounted underneath dim light outside the main barn in the farm area. Starting with a pair of swans gifted from New York City’s Central Park, the zoo has been around for more than 150 years, making it one of the oldest in the country — and the longest-running free zoo.
Chicago City Cemetery, which was north of North Avenue along the lakefront and outside the then-city limits, was established in Lincoln Park in 1843. Many of the 35,000 bodies buried there were relocated to other cemeteries by the 1880s for a variety of reasons — city expansion northward and health risks due to the water supply’s proximity to the grounds. But not all were removed, something Selzer said former zoo director Lester Fisher learned in 1962 while supervising the construction of the Farm-in-the-Zoo.
While digging the foundation for the barn, workers found a fully intact coffin. Fisher called the coroner, who recommended he call the Department of Health. He then called the Department of Health, who recommended he call the coroner.
“They went back and forth like this for a while, and he finally decided, OK, I’ve done my due diligence, I guess we just put it back,” Selzer said. “So they put it back and built the Farm-in-the-Zoo right over it.”
“There were probably any number of other bodies buried here that are under our feet right now,” Selzer added.
