Quote from Angela on February 3, 2022, 9:43 pm

As an ode to Valentines Day we are dedicating the weekend to yours truly, bringing you factual Valentine tales with a paranormal twist. But don't expect romance, this tale involves blood drenched walls, mobsters, death and ghosts.

February 14th 1929.

In the 1920s mob culture was at its most sinister with much contention between the most notorious mafia in history.

Frequent killings between north and south side districts were all too common. Dion O'Bannion, leader of the North Side, had been gunned down which ignited a deadly hatred towards the South Side.

Johnny Torrio was leader of the South Side and good friend of Capones. It was Torrio who ordered the killing of O'Bannion.  Subsequently, Torrio narrowly escaped death himself, and was almost shot down in front of his own home. Soon after, Torrio handed over operations to Al Capone.

George 'Bugsy' Moran, a North Side rival, would taunt Capone, and gunned down one of his men, namely Pasqualino Lo Lordo and Johnny and Capone swore on imminent revenge. The two plotted to have a 'special' valentine gift delivered to Bugsy. They would claim it was a shipment of whisky on the haulage note as bootleg liquor was in high demand.

On February 14th Moran and good friend Johnny May (an ex safe cracker) had even boasted to colleagues that they were waiting on a delivery of luxury liquor. They made their way to the designated meeting place, a warehouse on North Clark Street and upon approaching the haulage truck were soon set upon by a myriad of police officers who lay in wait and opened fire instantly killing seven people. Sadly one of those victims was an innocent young lad who just wanted a glimpse at real life mobsters. What is historically known as one of the bloodiest gangland massacres ensued, a local landlady reporting that the scene was 'like something from a horror movie'.

Capone was imprisoned but released on good behaviour. Upon his return to Chicago he realised he had become top of the most wanted lists by cartels. He stayed at the Lexington Hotel (pictured below) where he frequently rented the whole fifth floor for business dealings. The hotel no longer exists, yet it was here that Capone claims he was tormented by an angry ghostly spirit.

He would tell how he often heard unexplained voices as if shouting at him in the room and witnessed an apparition which would appear near the window which would peer from behind the curtains. Staff searched the room and confirmed it was unoccupied. Nobody could explain the eery phenomena.

Capone, still adamant that he had encountered something supernatural, contacted a psychic as he feared this may be the vengeful spirit of one of the men who had been killed at the massacre.

Amazingly, it was later discovered, the hotel was built with bricks from the very warehouse where the massacre had taken place! Could the very bricks themselves have manifested a vengeful entity? When the hotel was demolished later on, the owners were ordered to state to tradesmen that the bricks may possibly be contaminated with 'bad energy' from past events.

I don't know about you, but i personally believe Al Capone had better things to do with his time than to fabricate ghost stories. This leads me to believe there may be some truth to his paranormal encounters.

What do you think?

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