It’s spooky season! So we asked one local historian to tell us where the bones lie — specifically skulls.

Adam Selzer is an expert on the evil and nefarious in Chicago history. The author, Mysterious Chicago tour guide and co-host of the “Tomb Snoopers” podcast will be in local graveyards, at the Lincoln Park Zoo and even on a haunted bus tour through early November, if you’d like to explore the city’s ghostly history.

Here are a few of Selzer’s favorite headcases — and a few others that have been profiled by the Tribune through the decades.

Jean (John) LaLime

The French-Canadian trader LaLime purchased the property along the Chicago River (today’s Pioneer Court Plaza) in 1800 that was previously owned by Jean Baptiste Point DuSable, Chicago’s first permanent non-native settler. LaLime later sold the land to John Kinzie.

In 1812, Kinzie and LaLime were neighbors, but historical accounts do not portray their relationship as neighborly. There was “bad blood” between them, according to a Tribune article from 1942.

While Kinzie’s name triumphed over LaLime’s in Chicago lore, historical portraits of him aren’t all flattering. A Tribune article from 1966 paints Kinzie as an “aggressive” trader who clashed with some American soldiers stationed at Fort Dearborn. Ann Durkin Keating, a history professor at North Central College in Naperville, describes Kinzie as a “volatile and violent character.”

Tensions between Kinzie and LaLime came to a head June 17, 1812, when the two men met outside Fort Dearborn, LaLime armed with a pistol and Kinzie with a butcher’s knife. Keating describes the murder that ensued as “premeditated” in her book “Rising Up from Indian Country: The Battle of Fort Dearborn and the Birth of Chicago.”

The reasons for the fatal dispute are unknown. Kinzie fled the area afterward and didn’t return until authorities ruled the slaying was in self-defense. Historians do not know whether Kinzie attacked LaLime first or the other way around.

In 1891 — 79 years after the slaying — a partial skeleton thought to belong to LaLime was excavated at Illinois Street and Cass Street (now Wabash Avenue) and given to the Chicago Historical Society, which put it on display for a time. The remains have never been confirmed to belong to LaLime, whose legacy remains nearly as anonymous as his skeleton.

Some say LaLime’s ghost haunts TAO Chicago at 632 N. Dearborn St., which is formerly the site of the Chicago Historical Society and Excalibur night club.

Whitechapel Club

One of the city’s most eccentric private organizations, according to the Tribune in 1890, was the Whitechapel Club. The hangout off Newsboys’ Alley on Calhoun Place between Washington and Madison streets took its name from the grisly Jack the Ripper murders in London’s Whitechapel district.

The club consisted of mostly young reporters but also included author Finley Peter Dunne, playwright George Ade and Chicago flag creator Wallace Rice.

The Whitechapel was most renowned for its gleefully morbid obsession with death. Members could drink spirits out of skulls. A hangman’s noose adorned the club’s walls and ceilings. A huge coffin-shaped dining table, its lid embellished with large brass nails that each bore a member’s name, dominated the main assembly room. “Leave Everything Behind, Ye Who Go Hence,” was the club motto.

But the club’s glory was short-lived, its life snuffed out by one of its own members — who robbed the club and plunged it into debt. Rather than borrow money to pay the debt, the Whitechapel men paid it off themselves and decided to call it quits in 1895, thereby ending a unique chapter of Chicago history.

‘Cow’s skull with calico roses’

The 1931 painting by Wisconsin native Georgia O’Keefe was displayed in the Art Institute of Chicago for the first time in early 1943. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago before entering the advertising field — but soon abandoned it.

“Dissatisfied with what she had done so far, she destroyed all her pictures and decided to give up painting as a career,” the Tribune reported. “It was not until she came under the influence of Arthur Dow, the American educationalist, that her interest in painting revived and she entered upon her life work in which she has discovered herself to be an outstanding individualist.”

The painting hangs in the Art Institute’s Arts of the Americas, Gallery 265.

Esther Granger

In November 1978, a skull was found behind the wall of a home in the 200 block of East Wilson Street in Batavia. James Skinner, who was remodeling his house, immediately called the Batavia Police Department, which launched an investigation into the person’s identity, he said.

In 2024, the Kane County coroner’s office determined its identity — a 17-year-old woman who died after childbirth in 1865. Granger was born Oct. 26, 1848, and got married at age 16 to Charles Granger, Kane County Coroner Rob Russell said. She was originally buried in Merrillville, and it is not known how exactly her skull ended up in Batavia. However, a “common-sense theory” supported by records and “good reason” is that she was the victim of grave robbing, he said.

Batavia Mayor Jeff Schielke, who has also co-authored books on local history, said there are no records of anyone in town knowing Granger or having any relation to her.

The skull somehow ended up in storage at the Batavia Depot Museum, but neither police nor museum records explain why it was sent there, officials said. Batavia police Chief Shawn Mazza said a detective spoke with several investigators who would have worked on the case in the 1970s, but none remembered how or why the skull would have been sent to the museum.

Employees of the museum found a box holding the skull on March 10, 2021, and they immediately called the Batavia police to report the finding, Russell said. DNA testing found a living relative.

Granger’s partial skull was cremated and laid to rest Aug. 22 at West Batavia Cemetery with the permission of her family. It is unclear, however, where exactly the rest of Granger’s body is located.

Del Close

Before his death in March 1999, the improv legend willed his skull to the Goodman Theatre for use in stage productions. But the donation couldn’t be done. Instead, a skull purchased from the Anatomical Chart Co. in Skokie was used.

Charna Halpern, co-founder with him of iO Theater and executor of Close’s will, maintained for seven years that the cranium she donated to the Goodman belonged to Close — even after some suspected it was not his. The skull even was a final question on an episode of “Jeopardy!” in 2000.

Halpern stuck to her story in a Page 1 Tribune investigation published in July 2006.

In an issue of The New Yorker, however, Halpern said she tried to carry out Close’s wishes, but pressure from the morgue caused her to buy a skull instead.

Why did Halpern decide to come clean?

“Because the Tribune had already exposed it and I was getting snide responses,” Halpern said.

Sue the T. rex

In August 1990, Sue Hendrickson found the largest, most complete and best preserved T. rex to date in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

The Field Museum bought the T. rex named Sue at auction in 1997 for $8.36 million. It went on display in 2000, and moved into new digs upstairs at the museum in 2018.

Sue’s real skull is not mounted atop the body because it became a little deformed over the eons, in part because it is the most frequently studied part of Sue and constant removal would be a burden.

Other famous skulls on display at the Field Museum include the Tsavo lions.