Today I Learned …

In 1903, butcher Jacob W. opened a meat market at 2359 Wentworth Avenue in Chicago. Shortly afterward his whole family died and Jacob committed suicide. Jacob’s clerk Fred K. took over the business. In short order his daughter fell into a pickling vat and was scalded to death. A week later Fred died “under mysterious circumstances.”

Then a man bought the house and was murdered there. A few weeks later an Italian committed suicide under the porch.

The house was destroyed on March 19, 1913, in a fire that killed a woman and her two children. Happy Halloween! (From Horror in the Heartland: Strange and Gothis Tales From the Midwest, by Keven McQueen)