Haunted Chicago: Paranormal Investigator Names 5 Of The City's Most Haunted Hotspots

With Halloween almost here, the time is ripe to revisit Chicago's past -- a history that, like any major city, is filled with many tragedies some say continues to linger in the air via a ghostly presence.

But some parts of the Chicago area, of course, are more susceptible to a paranormal run-in than others.

Vincent Sheilds, co-author of "Chicago Haunted Handbook" and founder of Chicago Paranormal Investigators, recently stopped by WGN to reveal his picks for some of the city's spookiest, spirit-filled sites -- including one Ravenswood restaurant that might come as a big surprise.

According to Sheilds, the Fireside Restaurant & Lounge, 5739 N. Ravenswood Ave., was formerly used as an inn for individuals visiting their loved ones at Rosehill Cemetery, the city's largest and oldest graveyard, which is located just across the street.

"It's dimly lit and people are very friendly in kind of a creepy way," Sheilds said of the Fireside.

Evanston's Calvary Cemetery also made Sheilds' shortlist of haunted hotspots. According to the ghost hunter, an apparition called "Seaweed Charlie" often wanders in from the lake late at night.

There might be something about Chicago that makes it particularly susceptible to hauntings.

According to Ursula Bielski, who founded the Chicago Hauntings ghost tour and has written many books on the subject, the city being on Lake Michigan is a major factor in reports of paranormal activity because of the theory that large bodies of water are "a great conduit" for hauntings.

Also, she told HuffPost, the city has a history of "trying to sort of rewrite history and forget about tragic events that have occurred" in a way she says can anger the dead.

"Here in Chicago, you can go from site to site to site where huge tragedies took hundreds of lives and there's no plaque, statue or memorial of any kind there -- and that's done on purpose," Bielski said in an interview last year.

Where in Chicago do you get the creeps? We've rounded up a number of other Windy City spots that are allegedly haunted below.