The Iroquois Theatre Fire & the Ghosts of Death Alley

Welcome to the premiere episode episode of Citegeist, the paranormal podcast that puts the "Ah" in bibliography.

I'm your host, Joshua Spellman.

On this podcast, we seek to find out the truth among our favorite tall tales.

In each episode, I'll recount a ghost story as it's typically told, and afterward we'll dive into the archives and have a ghoulish gossip sesh to learn what really happened, because oftentimes the true horror is misinformation.

The real history is scarier than any ghost. background on me if you don't know me or don't remember me.

I'm a librarian and archivist specializing in museum and special collections.

You might know me from my OG YouTube channel or the original Crimes in Witch Demeanors podcast.

However you found me or know me, hi, thank you for watching or because we're on YouTube now or listening, I'm happy to have you here.

But enough of my yapping, this premiere episode, I wanted something juicy, something dramatic, and something timely because we got to get that clickbait y'all.

It's hard out here.

And this story has everything.

The most devastating tragedy in theater history?

Check.

A wicked the musical connection?

Check.

I can see the theater girlies are already locked in.

You want political corruption?

We've got that too.

Scamming nuns, fake news, and the restless dead?

What more could you want?

And it all takes place in Chicago, where I just moved back from and where you may know or not know, Elle Frankbaum penned the famous Wizard of Oz novel.

Sit back, relax, and let's learn about the alleged history of Death Alley and the Iroquois Theater.

It was late December 2005 at Chicago's Oriental Theater, now known as the James M.

Nederlander Theater.

And the first act of Wicked the Musical was approaching its climax.

Anna Gasteier, starring as Elphaba, held out her broom and shouted, She has nothing to do with it.

I'm the one you want.

It's me.

And was hoisted into the air.

And on her descent, the iconic defying gravity, she began to notice something strange through the fog and strobing stage lights.

Standing in the wings were small groups of people watching from the sidelines.

It was odd.

These weren't the familiar cast and crew members she knew.

And there were far too many of them, situated in little groups.

They almost looked like families huddled together.

But this is show business and the show must go on.

She finished the song, raising her broom skyward as the stage lights went black and the curtain fell, the end of Wicked's first act.

Once lowered from the rig, Anna saw no signs of the people she had seen, but she shrugged it off.

Maybe they were crew members' families who were let backstage to watch?

It wasn't protocol, but it was still entirely possible.

But there wasn't much time to dwell on it.

Anna had to get ready for the big second act, and so she began to make her way through the labyrinth of tunnels and hallways and staircases to her dressing room.

On the way, she heard a child's voice behind her, and as she turned around, she saw a woman with two children standing at the foot of a stairwell. were dressed in period costume, standing silently unmoving.

Assuming that they were fellow actors, since they were in full costume, Anna nodded at them Wordlessly, the mother nodded back at her.

And then, nudging her children along, they shuffled off into the stairwell.

Anna started after them, but as she turned the corner and looked up the stairs, there was no one there.

They were gone.

But there was nowhere for them to go.

Rattled, Anna continued on to her dressing room.

A little confused by what happened, she decided to mention it to her dresser get into the second act's heavy, beaten costume. "There are a lot of people backstage today who shouldn't be," Anna said, and she went on to describe what she saw both on the stage and in the stairwell.

Her dresser looked at her and said simply, "Oh, honey, those people are probably from the fire." "The fire?" "Yes, today is the week of the 30th, you don't know?

It's the anniversary of the fire." "The Chicago fire?" "No, no, no.

The Irkoy Theater fire." And the dresser went on to tell Anna harrowing tale.

Wednesday, December 30, 1903 was a brisk, cold winter's day.

People milled about downtown Chicago, soaking in the holiday cheer.

It had been a rough year filled with labor strikes, economic downturn, and general malaise.

Amongst the city's crowds were families, mainly mothers and children, making their way to the newly built Irkoy Theater to enjoy a matinee performance of Mr.

Bluebeard, a musical comedy. crowded together shoulder to shoulder in the palatial lobby of the Irkoy Theater.

While the theater could comfortably sit 1700 patrons, this performance was so popular that it was standing room only, with over 1900 in attendance.

Excitedly clutching their playbills that read, "Irkoy Theater, absolutely fireproof," the families marveled at the extravagant marble floors and scarlet tapestries as they made their way to their seats.

If anything could warm their winter blues, it would surely be this performance.

The first act of Mr.

Bluebeard was an absolute delight.

Eddie Foy, dressed in drag, left the audiences roaring with laughter as a troupe of 300 fellow performers danced, sung, and played alongside him.

After intermission, the staged lights kicked back up and the orchestra began playing the opening song of the second act in the pale moonlight as the chorus girls made their way on stage.

However, unbeknownst to the audience or the performers, backstage, the scenery tapestries rushed against a hot reflector, igniting a small fire.

The tiny flame caught the eye of a stagehand by the name of William McMullen, who tried to take the stagehand and the fire spread with an alarming quickness.

While the chorus girls joyfully danced and sang on stage, behind them was a commotion as the on-duty firemen attempted to put out the fire with a powder, but the flames resisted their attempts.

And then, just as Eddie Foy made his second act debut, the overhead spotlight short-circuited and arced, showering the stage with sparks which immediately ignited the velvet show curtain and the flammable stage props below.

The orchestra continued playing as Eddie Foy tried to calm the now panicked audience, urging them to stay inside of their seats. "Everything is under control," he bellowed, as a large fireball landed at his feet. "Drop the fire, you little piece of shit!" The fire was lit up, and the fire was lit up.

The fire was lit up, and the fire was lit up. "Under control," he bellowed, as a large fireball landed at his feet. "Drop the curtain!" he yelled to the stage manager.

The stage manager attempted to drop the asbestos fire curtain that was supposed to stamp out any fire, so proudly of in its playbill.

However, the curtain snagged and jammed.

The actors backstage, seeing that the curtain would not drop to save them, threw open the rear stage door and scurried into the alley outside.

What the actors didn't know, though, was that this act of self-preservation would seal the fate of the audience trapped inside and set off a nightmarish chain of events.

The bitter December air rushed in, creating a draft of icy wind that that blew the flames on stage towards the audience in an unbelievable fireball that reached 50 feet from the ground and into the balconies. immediately igniting anything in its path.

Like a flock of scared birds, the audience As the stage burned and collapsed behind them, the patrons found themselves at the exits, but they found themselves also unable to escape.

Some of the exits were locked and gated, and those that weren't had an unfamiliar lever design, which while standard in Europe, completely unfamiliar to American audiences.

Some were successful at undoing the latches, but soon found that the doors opened inward and were crushed and trampled into the Even worse, fates befell those audience members who found themselves clawing in vain at ornamental doors that would never open and led to nowhere.

Countless people from the upper levels succumbed in the stairwells, with survivors climbing over piles of bodies to escape into the alley outside.

Those on the higher floors who didn't opt for the stairwells, but for the fire escapes, did not fare much better.

As the women and children made their way down the fire escape, whose ladder ended almost 10 feet from the ground due to an error in construction, a fire erupted beneath it, leaving them with no choice but to jump from where they were.

Some jumping from as high as 60 feet.

But it was too high to survive.

The first to jump died as their bodies hit the pavement, softening the fall of those jumping after them, and their bodies in turn cushioned those after them, and on and on.

Bodies in the alley below 10 high as women and children continued to leap from the floors above.

From start to finish, the event lasted only 15 minutes.

But in that 15 minutes, 575 died on the scene, with 20 or 30 more succumbing to their injuries later.

The overwhelming majority of those who perished were women, mothers, and their children.

Of the 300 performers and crew, only one tightrope artist perished who was trapped high above the fire.

The Iroquois Theatre Fire ended up being the deadliest accident in theater history and A new theater was erected on the site only a year later, and patrons and actors began to report strange happenings.

The ghost of a girl, Emma Dixon, is often seen searching for her mother and sister.

The alley outside where so many perished has become known as Death Alley or the Alley of Death.

Cries of women and children begging to be let out of the theater can be heard coming from inside or emanating from the sewer crates below. the shows inside captivated on the astral plane, in the stairwells and in the exits, the souls of the dead are still clamoring for their escape, forced to relive the night of the fire night after night after night.

Wow, just a fun, light little story to lift the mood.

I think one thing that we often forget about when we're talking about ghosts is that behind the specters and apparitions are the very real lives and deaths of people, in this case, very young children and their mothers.

Researching this story was devastating, and I even get chills it over again. (Silence) So everything I told you for the most part was factual, And in these archival sessions, depending on the type of episode, I'll usually try and debunk something or hunt for the identity of some unnamed ghost.

But this is one of the very rare cases where most of the work has been done for me, and my focus is to mainly flash out the story and uncover interesting tidbits in the history.

And at the same time, it's also a very good reminder that newspapers, while a rich historical research for contemporary accounts of events, are not something that we can take as fact.

I know that we like to think that clickbait and AI videos are a product of the digital age that journalism was once some sacred pinnacle of art and truth-seeking, but old newspapers are notorious for sensationalizing or completely fabricating events just to get that exclusive. and many witnesses would lie to get their names published in a paper, which we will see today.

Like I said, with this being a major historical event, a lot of the core research has been done for me, and a great resource I found, is IroquoiTheater.org.

But I'm not you'll be able to find it now.

The entire website is slated to be completely removed from the internet in December of 2025, which is now.

So a lot of the research might be gone.

It's really sad, but it's also a good lesson I know you might not be here to learn, but digital works are at a greater risk for destruction than physical ones. preservation in particular is very tricky because things can be gone in an instant.

Yes, you have things like the Wayback Machine for websites, but the Wayback Machine can't capture every page, and it can't capture interactive elements, are vital to an authentic experience, like sites that used to use Flash or have a lot of images.

These are often not preserved, or they're not preserved in a way that's useful.

And yes, you can make copies of digital items, but electronic records, they degrade bit by bit, can quickly become corrupted or obsolete, and you can't open a file anymore.

Physical media, on the other hand, what we tend to think that is very fragile, can actually be treated with what we call benign neglect.

Although, you do need to prepare for things like fires.

And like a good archivist, the Iroquois Theatre should have been prepared for a fire.

Theatre fires were very common that time.

The Iroquois bragged that the building was completely fireproof.

So what happened here?

There were so many compiling factors I barely know where to begin.

But I suppose the logical thing would be to start with the inception of the building.

Chicago fashion, the theatre faced troubles and lots of corruption during its construction.

Work began on the theatre in spring, with the cornerstone being laid on Tuesday, July 28, 1903.

The inner ocean's coverage the next day had some photos, which is always exciting, since most newspapers at the time didn't have very many, usually maybe one or two on the front page.

But beyond the flashy photos, there was one part of the article that immediately caught my gay little eye.

Picture of D.Va buried.

Who is this D.Va and why are we burying her?

I need to know.

Apparently part of the cornerstone ceremony was to plaster a lead box into the cornerstone of the Iroquois Theatre.

Inside of this box were photographs, newspaper clippings, a city directory, and an old theatre program from the Illinois Theatre, who William J.

Davis, who was funding the Iroquois, also bankrolled.

However, in a dramatic fashion, just as the box was about to be sealed, the well-known globetrotter and theatrical man, Marcus R.

Mayer, manager of Madame Patti, not LePone, contributed the picture of the D.Va, which was placed in the casket.

Apparently this was a major coincidence.

As the cornerstone of the old Illinois Theatre a couple years prior, I had a picture of an American actress named Lillian Russell also rushed in and placed in the last minute by some overexcited theatre kid.

The newspaper said, "The two theatres now have in their cornerstones, respectively, pictures of the leading D.Va of the world and the leading American prima donna." I don't know much about these women, but I imagine they were like the Elaine Page and Patti LePone of the Industrial Revolution.

But behind the glamorous fun of the cornerstone ceremony, like any good D.Va, the rest of the project was getting messy.

As construction went on, it faced so many setbacks and barriers.

The August 11, 1903 interocean details how work was tied up, stating that there was "jurisdictional warfare" between the hod carriers and the carpenters.

Apparently there was an ongoing disagreement on who was allowed to put up the scaffolding and the false work of the building.

With the hod carriers saying it was their responsibility and the carpenters asserting the same.

They fought about it so long that eventually the carpenters just took it upon themselves and put up the scaffolding.

And the hod carriers had a fit and walked off the scene, which absolutely crippled the work on the building because without the hod carriers, the brick layers weren't able to do their work.

Somehow, despite all of this drama, the building was finished and it was finished very quickly.

Maybe too quickly?

And due to the corruption and bribes to city officials, it got done even faster by cutting corners. after the fire, it was uncovered that complimentary tickets were given out to inspectors to ignore fire codes and building violations that would have prevented the theater from opening on time. noted in the coverage after the tragedy that the fire inspector Edward McLaughlin's report stated, "Building completed.

Okay." Which it should have been.

Because the most frustrating thing is that the Iroquois Theater actually did have a lot of things going for it in terms of fire safety. the fact that it had more exits than any other theater in Chicago and perhaps even the country at the time, I know, you're probably like me and asking, "So why didn't these exits work?" The 30 exits in the theater were supposed to to allow the building to be evacuated in 5 minutes or less. they had some major issues, For one thing, exits weren't clearly marked, there was no emergency lighting, and many doors had Basque-type European latches that Americans didn't know how to use.

One man only knew how to open the lock because he had a similar latch on his icebox at home.

Other exits were straight up locked and gated prevent people from sneaking in without tickets, and some ushers during the fire refused to let people out.

Meanwhile, other exits were completely hidden behind draperies, and some doors were only decorative.

One of these ornamental doors left over 200 people in one passageway, all trying to get out of a false door that would never open.

During my pre-fire research, I stumbled upon quite a few stories that caught my attention, which is one of the occupational hazards of this podcast.

I can easily get sucked down a rabbit hole of stories that have nothing to do with the topic because I find them so fascinating.

I'm a sucker for a juicy, gossipy headline, and there were two headlines that stuck out during this research One was "Her Southern Home Left for Gay Revels, Disgrace for Historic Name," tells of a story of a woman named Mary Little who, and I quote, "was a southern belle turned social outcast," who was related to President Harrison and left Tennessee High Society after being caught up and she ended up killing herself.

I can't get into it because it's not relevant to our story, it was too juicy not to at least share the headlines. second story that sucked me in actually has something to do with today's topic relevance to the Iroquois Theatre.

The second headline appeared in the December 12, 1903 issue of The Inner Ocean, and it came up while I was looking for stories about the theatre before it burned down but after it opened to see how the theatre was being received and if there was anything interesting going on. like a moth to a flame, the headline drew me in. "Takes ride in cab with wife's body.

Romance ends with poison." Okay.

I'm sold.

Tell me more.

What do you got?

Okay.

I'll level with you.

While this story is juicy, it's somber.

An 18-year-old girl named Rosa Ganka, formerly Miss Rosa A.

Bemis, was wed to her husband Frederick Ganka, an allotment three years earlier.

Not only was this marriage a scandal because she was only 15 at the time and Frederick was 20, but probably what bothered people more at this time was that he was nothing but a lowly shoe clerk while she was a wealthy heiress.

Fred and Rosa eventually had a baby but separated in 1902, with Rosa filing for divorce, asserting abuse.

However, the Wednesday before the story ran, she had called Frederick under the pretense that her baby was ill, but she later admitted it was all a ruse to get back together with Fred because she wanted to fix things and that she loved him.

Elated, Frederick asked Rosa if she would like to go on a date to the Iroquois Theatre, which she happily agreed to.

While Frederick was getting ready, Rosa said she had a run to the drugstore, and she came back with a small blue box, which she told Frederick was a new face powder she wanted to try.

And we love a makeup girlie.

The couple enjoyed a night out at the Iroquois Theatre and had dinner at the Wellington Hotel.

They were having such a good night that they decided instead of going home that they would book a room at the Saratoga Hotel.

Frederick soon found out, though, that the blue box Rosa had bought was not a Tacha face powder, but was in fact rat poison.

Rosa took it that night while they were getting ready for bed, and she immediately fell ill.

Concerned for his love, Frederick called for a doctor, and the doctor arrived and Rosa appeared to fully recover from the effects of the poison. she grew worse, causing the doctor to return immediately.

Sadly, though, she passed away not long after.

But that's not where the drama ends.

It's actually not even begun.

Now, the hotel management a fit after she found out that Rosa had passed away in the room, and they demanded that Frederick remove the body from the hotel because they didn't want the bad press. is how Frederick ended up propping up Rosa's body in a cab like weakened at Bernie's, and carting her across town to her uncle's house.

Ironically, as one would imagine, this cab ride was the very reason that this story ended up being so popular and gaining so much press. it gets more intriguing.

After their departure, hotel management found a letter in the hotel room from Rosa that That was addressed to Frederick. read, "Goodbye, Fred.

When you read this, I will be dead.

Be a good boy and be kind to the baby and mama.

You are not to blame for this.

Goodbye.

Goodbye, all." Drama.

I love it.

But even juicier.

Apparently, before she had died, she had mailed several letters to different people in her life.

But what did they say?

I don't know, because they were to be presented at the inquest, but I had already paid too much attention to this fringe case that I had to abandon this drama mid-season.

I am thinking about doing filler episodes with interesting things that I find during my research, like this story that may not be relevant and just calling them Citebites. historic gossip like this.

Let me know if that's something you'd want, because there are so many interesting things hiding in these newspapers. these stories likely be forgotten and never heard of again, like this one.

Anyway, despite this detour, it did let us learn something, and that was that the Iroquois theater was attached to tragedy before the fire even started.

Not last happy night at the Iroquois, it would be the place where many families spent their last happy night.

Now, when I first read about the fire, I was skeptical of a few facts, including that the theater had bragged that it was fireproof. seemed too good and poetic to be true, right?

But then again, it does seem to be a pattern for the era.

I mean, look at the Titanic.

I actually see a lot of parallels between the Titanic and the Iroquois theater fire, like the performers continuing to play as tragedy erupts around them, or bragging of a building or a ship that's unburnable or unsinkable.

This is exactly what happens, and being woefully underprepared for a completely avoidable tragedy, not having enough exits, not having enough lifeboats.

But I think the biggest similarity between these two stories was that profit and influence far outweighed the safety of the people inside. much to my shock, I got my hands on a couple digital copies of the playbill, and indeed, at the very top, it boldly introduced the theater as absolutely fireproof, and they credited the asbestos curtain as the main fire deterrent.

While this curtain was expertly crafted and it was beautiful, that fire curtain may have actually stopped the fire.

If it was made properly, was expected the asbestos curtain would have survived heat far more intense than the flames inside of the theater.

And I know we hear a lot about asbestos and we know that it's bad, but what is it exactly?

Does anyone really know? is the name for a group of toxic, carcinogenic fiber silicates that humans have been using for various purposes dating back to the Stone Age.

Although now know it's dangerous, it's a fantastic insulator and is extremely fire resistant, so it's been used in building materials, insulation, for things like pipes and electrical boxes, and even in household items like shoes and drywall.

It was everywhere. pure asbestos fibers themselves do not burn and can withstand temperatures of around 1200 to 1600 degrees Fahrenheit or between 650 and 900 degrees centigrade.

And While temperatures about 1800 degrees Fahrenheit or 1000 degrees Celsius can cause certain types of asbestos to degrade or transform, but it still won't completely destroy them.

Now, those upper limits the typical range of a building fire, although the fireball at the Iroquois would have reached those temperatures, but not for a sustained amount of time and not enough to completely disintegrate the fire curtain. it appears that the Iroquois asbestos curtain was not woven with asbestos fibers, but instead it was a painted canvas curtain that was impregnated with wood pulp and had an asbestos coating.

So what happened was the organic fibers in the curtain ignited and burned rapidly, fueled by things like the oil paint used to decorate it, and once that canvas was consumed, the asbestos coating was left behind.

Now, without any kind of structural support, it could just crumble and flake away, which is what happened the front page story of the inner ocean, asbestos curtain in theater death trap annihilated by blast of air. fire chief Schutler said that was no curtain of any kind in the theater when I entered.

There was nothing but bare walls." Which is slight hyperbole, as you can see in this photograph.

There are actually a lot of curtains on the walls of the theater, just not on the stage.

And you look closely, you can see these eerie people in the balcony, which look like ghosts.

However, it was likely that they were just curious rubberneckers or people searching for their loved ones. article, the alderman said, "I obtained a piece of the supposed asbestos curtain today.

I pulled it to pieces easily with my finger and thumb. or four at least." And was likely due to the fact that the canvas part of the curtain had burned away, had completely disintegrated in his hands. the book Chicago's Awful Theater Horror, published in 1904, just a year after the accident, Bishop Fallow sums up the confluence of events that made the fire so catastrophic. the crowding of the aisles.

They were filled from end to end, until almost every inch of standing room was taken up.

The unusual number of exits was boasted of.

Most of them were unseen or actually bolted and locked.

The alleged fireproof curtain was a flimsy sham, and it was resolved in almost a moment of time into scattered fragments of the surging flames." scenery was of the most combustible material loaded down with paint and oil.

And while not mentioned by Fallows in this book, conduct a single fire drill before opening the theater.

And so when the chaos erupted, the ushers had absolutely no idea what to do.

Eyewitness accounts from the newspapers, quite honestly, are absolutely horrific, and I don't want to dwell on them too much.

One headline in the St.

Joseph News Press reads, "Strong men trample down helpless women and little children." Where a Mr.

Keith Pickrell describes the scene. "The men in the audience were the worst.

They seemed to lose their heads, and they fought with everybody, trampling down the women and the children. calmest.

Which seems very accurate to life, I know women to be very astute in emergency situations." And I was honestly so surprised to see a man at this time in the Industrial Revolution acknowledge the emotional fortitude that women have. before I got too proud, he said in the next breath, "But it must have been because they were the weakest and could not help themselves." there it is, folks.

Because surely women cannot be better than men at anything, or especially in emergency situations.

No.

They reacted rationally because they're weak.

Yeah, that makes sense, Keith.

Whatever you need to tell yourself to know that you ran like a little pussy bitch. on the topic of misogyny, there was another headline that made me chuckle, and that was "Chorus Girls Escape Partly Glad," which details how the women in the chorus were on the seventh floor changing the fire broke out, and they rushed into the elevator without finishing getting dressed or grabbing their coats.

And was honestly a very welcome break the horrific stories I was reading. us right now, it's where the frivolity ends. accounts of the fire speak of people being dragged out, not from the rubble of the building, but from underneath piles of bodies.

The inner ocean stated "When the firemen working across the ladders between the Iroquois and the Northwestern Dental School penetrated beyond the terrible barrier of human dead that choked the exits, a weird spectacle was presented to them." inanimate bodies sat stark in the balcony, a ghastly audience of corpses smitten in their seats, apparently still watching the play.

A squad of policemen filling blankets with human loads huddled in one corner several people alive under a pile of dead bodies. protected the living, and the current of air along the floor prevented their suffocation." was a truly gruesome scene, which unfortunately attracted gruesome people and ghouls of all kinds. morbidly curious observers, but there were many reports of people robbing the bodies of the dead, stealing jewelry and wallets, both in the alley and in the makeshift morgues that popped up all over the neighborhood.

Now passage I just read mentioned the Northwestern Dental School, which leads to an interesting story of a different kind of ghoul.

A ghoul's ghoul, if you will. a couple of painters working on the dental school across from the theater who ran planks of their scaffolding across to the fire escape, which allowed those who were trapped on it to get safely across instead of jumping 60 feet down, but as we know, many opted to jump instead. 50 people who were brave enough to cross the planks as the rest ended up dying of smoke inhalation and other injuries.

In an account of this particular event, the inner ocean ran a single line about a nun, Sister Rachel Gorman, who crept out upon the boards that span the alley holding to the window and helped people across to safety.

Except that there was one problem.

Two problems.

Sister Rachel Gorman wasn't there.

As a nun, she wouldn't really have much reason to be hanging out in the dental school.

And in fact, this brings us to the second problem.

She wasn't a nun at all.

She was, however, an alcoholic scam artist, but she mainly targeted the wealthy.

She was like the Anna Delvi of the Industrial Revolution, if you will.

Beginning in 1900, Rachel Gorman worked as a nurse for a sham hospital called William Held's Home for Abileptics, patients out of their money, leaving them completely bankrupt.

But she eventually realized that she could do better, and she left Held's home to create her very own con.

Rachel's new operation involved scamming the wealthy for bogus charity donations under the guise of being a nun.

Rachel eventually trained a half dozen other women in the art of charity solicitation and dressed them in green nuns robes and gave them crucifixes to wear around their necks.

These nuns would case bars and restaurants and trains for their targets, while Rachel preferred to hang around racetracks and gambling houses where she knew that the money was.

Rachel's specialty was partying it up with her marks getting them a little lubed up until they started to brag about their money or their winnings at the racetrack that day, which is when she would cinch that donation from them.

And she would meticulously record all of these marks in a little black book of hers so she can wring them dry again and again.

And again, most of these people were people in high society who had money, and she mainly scammed the rich this time instead of the sick, which I can respect.

She garnered a lot of these donations from politicians politicians and businessmen, including former Secretary of State and presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan.

Good for you, Rachel.

Low key rooting for Rachel.

Rachel and her girls called themselves the Sisters of Charity, Chicago law enforcement dubbed them the Green Sisters they caught on to their act. operation grew across the state and eventually she opened up her own hospital in Blue Island where she kept patients, along with three servants who would put on what they called Caesar shows on the front lawn to really sell that she was running a legitimate epilepsy treatment center.

In addition to this hospital, Rachel had offices downtown in Chicago where her growing troop of women could change into their costumes.

Eventually Rachel's operation grew so large she had about 20 different troops across the state, all who had their own robe color, like some deranged con artist sailor scouts. feel like I could do an entire episode on Rachel Gorman and her endeavors because crazy and these are just the highlights and I promise there is a tie in with the Iroquois theater in a way.

But one of my favorite bits of this story is when Chicago law enforcement finally showed up at her Blue Island hospital, which was actually her grand private residence in 1906.

They found Rachel on the porch in a chair with crutches by her side and she explained to the officers that she had fallen through a defective sidewalk and became permanently paralyzed.

I don't know how far this sidewalk went, did it go to hell?

I don't know.

But regardless, the police began to read the search warrant they had brought with them.

Before they could even finish the first line of the warrant, she picked up the crutches and threw them at them and bolted into the house, threatening to "brain" them, which I don't know if that means like shoot them in the face or just like beat the heck out of them, but honestly, low key icon behavior.

Chicago police had been a victim of her charity scam she used over $3,000 the police gave her to put the down payment on the house that they were now searching.

The saga went on for a long time and eventually concluded a little anti-climactically in 1907 where Rachel and her goons got off with warning.

They said, "Hey, you never solicit fake charity again." And she said, "Okay." And her and the sisters of charity were never seen again.

Okay, I know.

Another long tangent.

You're here to learn about the fire, but I can't help it.

I'm weak.

There is something about a villainous woman that will always pull me in. ghosts, we are here for ghosts and I'm now going to talk about the fire and the ghosts.

I want you to remember, we have the name of one ghost in all of this story, and I wanted to look into her.

And her name was Emma Dixon.

Windy City Ghosts mentions that the apparition of a little girl named Emma is often seen around the theater and they say that she died during the fire alongside her mother Annie and her sister Leah.

Or Leia.

Or Lay.

I never know how to say that name.

Regardless, I find it odd that of the 600 dead or so that we would just decide that the first ghost we see is Emma Dixon.

Even though hundreds of children died there, but let's go with it.

While searching for the identity of Emma, I found the story a different little girl that really stuck with me This was about an 11 year old girl named Winnie Gallagher who was watching the show with her mother from the third row.

When the fire broke out, her mother fled the seat, leaving Winnie completely abandoned. totally alone, Winnie was stranded as the crowd stampeded around her.

Eventually, she gathered up the courage and eventually got up and climbed on the back of her seat and hopped from chair to chair to the closest exit, where she was promptly trampled by the crowd.

But luckily, she survived with a couple of injuries and was later reunited with her mother.

And I'm telling you right now, that little girl had lifelong trust issues.

I swear, my brother never recovered from getting lost at the grocery store one time and there was no immediate threat to his life.

Get over it, James.

Get over it.

But anyways, back to finding our Emma.

I looked through newspapers and lists of the dead and I saw no Emma Dixon.

However, I did find her mother Annie and her sister Leah a little girl Edna Dixon, not Emma.

I their names in the paper as well as their graves and their photos on Find a Grave.

I know when we tell stories by word of mouth, things change and Edna sounds just like Emma.

But come on, guys.

You have all of this research at your disposal.

People have put in so much work and it's almost just a Google away.

For the love of ghosts, I'm begging you paranormal websites to cross-reference just one primary or contemporary source.

I'm begging you my sanity.

I digress.

The fire left the Dixon's father, Arthur Dixon, a widower and childless.

And it illustrates the real devastation caused by the fires were that families were wiped out in an instant, leaving hundreds of fathers and husbands to grieve.

This is beautifully illustrated by by a Pulitzer winning political cartoonist John T.

McCutcheon in his Sunday dinner, a cartoon wherein a despondent father sits at a dinner table with one of his children in four empty seats, one of them being a high chair. fathers like this one and Arthur Dixon were grief-stricken this event, but it didn't take long for that grief to turn into outrage.

They are men, after all.

An inquest into the disaster was immediately opened with fathers and husbands demanding justice and answers.

The investigation into the fire exposed the corruption involved in the theater's construction, given to the fire inspectors. inquest lasted from January 6th until January 25th of 1904.

George Williams, the Chicago Building Commissioner, Fire Chief William H.

Musham, Building Inspector Edward McLaughlin, a fireman named William Salers, William J.

Davis, the owner and manager of the Iroquois, William McMullen, the light operator we mentioned who initially saw the fire start, and finally James Cummings, a carpenter. grand jury trials extended all the way until 1907.

But unfortunately, just like in the case of Rachel Gorman, cases were settled with warnings or dismissed on technicalities, using loopholes, and only one person served a jail sentence from the whole investigation.

And who was that, you may ask?

Was it the owner or someone who had a responsibility for all the dead?

No.

It was Lewis Wits who was a nearby barkeeper, and his saloon was used as a temporary morgue after the fire.

His conviction?

Robbing the dead.

A doctor on the scene struggled to resuscitate 50-year-old Helen Trask and had the waiters of the saloon help him remove her bodice.

Helen unfortunately could not be revived, and Wits and his waiters found $210 in the bag, modern equivalent of about $5500.

When Helen's body was picked up from the saloon, they handed over a gold pendant watch and a small portion of the money, I believe $11, claiming it was all that was on her.

Wits and his goons were found out, and Wits was found guilty in February of 1904.

However, his sentence and the verdicts of his waiters were never reported on, for his petty crimes, those responsible for the death of nearly 600 innocent lives got off scot-free to their privilege and their influence.

Then, to add insult to injury, 252 liability lawsuits that were filed by survivors and their families dismissed on November 12, 1906, when Judge William Lanning declared that the Iroquois Theatre Corporation was bankrupt and couldn't pay them. a single family of the deceased nor any of the survivors received any compensation from the Iroquois Theatre Company.

Not a single cent.

However, some families did end up getting lucky 7 years after the accident in 1909 when a lawsuit against the construction company, Fuller Construction, was settled.

This decision paid out a measly 35 settlements to victims and their families.

But I suppose it's better than nothing at all. it's depressing.

I know we like to think that things have changed over history, but in all the research I've done, I've learned that people 100, 200, even 2000 years ago are pretty much the same as you and I.

People are motivated by things like greed and love, and people love a good dirty joke.

But even with the depressing end to the trials, some good did come of it, even if it was a little too little too late.

Harrison shut down 170 venues for a string of months-long inspections.

While these inspections left over 6,000 people unemployed, new laws and regulations were set including clearly marking exit doors with lights, mandating that fire curtains be made of iron, and that all exit doors had to open outward.

Additionally, fire drills became mandatory for theaters, so they knew what they would do in case of a real life accident.

So became of the Iroquois theater?

Like I said, the real devastation was the lives that were lost, and despite this unimaginable death toll, the interior damage of the theater itself was actually quite minimal, and the Iroquois was repaired and opened just over a year after the accident as the Colonial Theater, where it stood until 1926 it was torn down to The Oriental Theater was later renamed the James Needleander Theater in 2018, which is the theater that stands there today, Gasteyer saw her ghosts.

And let me just say it now that Anna Gasteyer was a great Elphaba.

She played Elphaba in both Chicago and then later on Broadway as well.

I think she took over for Eden Espinosa.

Just search up some of her clips.

The Divine Gravity I used in this episode is a good one, but it's not the first one that comes up, which is really annoying because the first one doesn't do her justice at all.

And I'm also a very big fan of her no-good deed, Anyway, enough of my queening out.

This pretty much brings us to the end of the episode.

I feel like before we end things, because this is the internet, I need to make the disclaimer that this episode, and no episode of this podcast is meant to be an exhaustive history on any topic.

I'm not a historian, I'm a librarian and a researcher, and my goal is always just to give a more historically accurate depiction of ghost stories and legends and let you get a peek into what it's like to research.

Hence my meandering tangents.

I kind of want to take you with me on the journey of what it's like to research in such an anti-intellectual age.

You may find it annoying, you may find it charming, but what I love about these journeys that you probably never hear some of these stories anywhere else because they're buried and forgotten among these larger historical narratives. thank you so much for listening or for watching. and don't forget to subscribe.

If you're listening on a podcast platform, please leave a review if you can.

Any little bit helps.

And if you're on YouTube, please give me a thumbs up and subscribe if you haven't. asking for these stupid little things.

But please also leave a comment.

I want to take your feedback into account.

The next two episodes were recorded before this one, so it may be a little bit before you see any of your feedback implemented. also, if you visit the podcast website, citegeistpod.com, you can actually leave a voice note tell me about your own paranormal encounters or you have a topic you'd like me to share or investigate. episodes will be released biweekly or every two weeks starting in 2026, but as a little treat, I'll be releasing episodes weekly in the month of December, just to celebrate this relaunch in this new era. until next time, make sure you always know where the nearest fire exit is, cite your sources, and I'll see you in the stacks.