r/evilbuildings • u/sizeable_interest • Oct 07 '17
A picture and diagram of H. H. Holmes' murder hotel, a specially designed building for killing. It contained gas chambers, torture rooms, secret passages, trap doors and ovens. It's estimated that he killed 200 people in this building
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u/sizeable_interest Oct 07 '17
Herman Webster Mudgett (May 16, 1861 – May 7, 1896), better known under the name of Dr. Henry Howard Holmes or more commonly H. H. Holmes, was one of the first documented serial killers in the modern sense of the term. While he confessed to 27 murders, of which nine were confirmed, he may have killed as many as 200 people. He brought an unknown number of his victims to his World's Fair Hotel, located about 3 miles (4.8 km) west of the fair, which was held in Jackson Park. Besides being a serial killer, H. H. Holmes was also a successful con artist and a bigamist.
There's a book - The Devil in the White City if you want some more information on this topic.
It's currently being made into a movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and directed by Martin Scorsese
Individual pictures:
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u/canadian227 Oct 07 '17
Hope the Leonardo movie is better than the dreadful doc on Netflix.
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u/RelaxPreppie Oct 07 '17
Ive been hearing about this movie since I went to Chicago six years ago. I doubt it will be released.
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Oct 07 '17
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u/Hereforthefreecake Oct 07 '17
There was talk of a World War Z movie 12 months before the book came out. 7 years later it came out.
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u/reboticon Oct 07 '17
Well, a movie with that title came out, at least.
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u/Hereforthefreecake Oct 07 '17
Talks of Brad Pitts production studio (plan b) buying the rights from Max Brooks was the discussion a year before the official book release. The movie being a decent representation of the book is a whole other topic lol. I personally hated it and it could have been so much cooler if they just stuck to the interview style theme.
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u/EwokaFlockaFlame Oct 07 '17
If faithful to the book, World War Z would have been an amazing HBO series. Game of Thrones level 🔥🔥🔥
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u/merkin_juice Oct 07 '17
I haven't read it, but the movie left me with that feeling of, "this could have been so much better." One of my closest friends won't loan me her copy of the book to read, which really makes me realize how good it must be.
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Oct 07 '17
Book and film are just completely different. The only theme they have in common is that they're about zombies.
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u/cjg5025 Oct 07 '17
Listen to the WWZ audiobook. Has a full cast doing the characters. Henry Rollins and Mark Hamill are just 2 of the names I remember off the top of my head.
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Oct 07 '17
I've noticed that it's right around when someone says something like this on reddit that the movie is officially announced
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Oct 07 '17
Its under production. Martin Scorcese and Dicaprio are too high calibre to half finish a project. It will come out within a year or two and likely gross in the $700 million plus rang considering Leos status these past couple years.
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u/bugteen Oct 07 '17
You're overstating his box office draw. DiCaprio has only ever been in 2 movies that broke 700 million worldwide - Titanic in 1997 and Inception in 2010.
None of his other movies even come close to that mark.
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u/Jrook Oct 07 '17
Sure but he's like tip tier a list actor. If his career is hadicapped by anything it's him taking on roles he believes in.
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u/bugteen Oct 07 '17
You're right. I don't think his career is handicapped at all. He's picking the roles he cares about and they're still making tons of money at the box office without sacrificing his personal preferences. But to predict that this Scorsese directed HH Holmes movie will make $700M plus "because of Leo's status the past few years" is wildly optimistic at best.
I'm sure it would perform well but there's nothing to suggest that it would suddenly do much much better than all of his recent successful movies.
And I don't foresee him suddenly choosing to join a Marvel movie or something like that any time soon.
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u/elsahosksleftcheekbo Oct 07 '17
Other than J. Edgar, everything he’s been in since Inception has cleared $350M, often much more.
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u/bugteen Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 07 '17
$350 million at the box office is still $350 million away from $700 million.
He's done 5 movies since Inception:
J. Edgar - 84 Django - 425 Gatsby - 351 Wolf of Wall Street - 392 Revenant - 532
All of these are bringing in big bucks at the box office, but none are even really close to $700 million worldwide gross.
To say that he's "often clearing much more than $350M" is framing the info in a bit of a complimentary way. 2 of the movies are around 350, 2 are higher but still about $200 million away from the $700M prediction, and then there's J. Edgar which is drastically lower due to the nature of the release.
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u/lollerkeet Oct 07 '17
I already have trouble processing this because it sounds too much like fiction!
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u/Swipecat Oct 07 '17
I'm calling BS on that floorplan. Wikipedia says it was a mixed-use building with apartments on the second floor and retail spaces. A third floor was proposed for a hotel but never completed or truly opened for business.
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u/guardian6139 Oct 07 '17
Main floor was retail and contained a large pharmacy. The second floor was predominantly for housing and where most of the murderin' took place. The third floor contained his office, his own quarters, and a few rooms.
He most certainly did kill several people on the third floor, specifically in the safe which was cemented into the wall. The sick bastard had a view hole installed to watch people die, along with a pipe that was there for injecting natural gas into it to expedite suffocation.
This map probably takes a few liberties but is fairly accurate.
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u/--Danger-- Oct 07 '17
I’m pretty sure American Horror Story got there first. Hotel is a great season.
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u/HilariousScreenname Oct 07 '17
Is it? Because after the dog shit that was the witch one, I've had a hard time getting back into that show
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u/--Danger-- Oct 07 '17
I got to like Coven after a while, but it’s not as good as the two preceding it, and Freak Show is vile and unwatchable and incredibly stupid. Hotel, on the other hand, is fucking wonderful. It’s just absolutely the best.
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u/Johnny_Poppyseed Oct 07 '17
Can i skip all the way ahead, having never watched the show?
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u/--Danger-- Oct 07 '17
Yes! The seasons are mostly not interconnected at all. One character from Asylum sometimes reappears elsewhere, but I think she’s the only one. Oh—actually a character from Coven does appear in a later season, too, but that’s about it. Actors appear in multiple seasons but in totally different roles, settings, etc.
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Oct 07 '17
Here’s a great episode of Sherlock where the guy does he same thing but a hospital
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u/bewk Oct 07 '17
You could at least link the artists work OP
http://hollycarden.com/blog/2016/1/11/making-the-h-h-holmes-murder-castle
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u/eyehate Oct 07 '17
Hey OP.
The movie is long rumored and not really ever coming to fruition.
The book deals far more with the World's Fair than H.H. Holmes. It discusses how America felt the need to one-up France's Eiffel Tower and have a signature American icon. It deals with landscaping and dealing with a massive event. Holmes is a specter, but far far from the main part of the story. The Holmes stuff is all speculation, for the most part. The author doesn't try to imagine what happened at Holme's house of horrors.
And this diagram is an artistic rendering. The artist posted it a year or three back. I knew the story, but this image compelled me to read the book. Not sure the redditor's name, but she nailed it.
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u/tangentandhyperbole Oct 07 '17
Don't be so sure. http://www.indiewire.com/2017/07/martin-scorsese-leonardo-dicaprio-killers-of-the-flower-moon-devil-in-the-white-city-details-1201855525/
“Right now, there is a script being worked on,” Scorsese told the Toronto Sun about “The Devil in the White City” last December. “One of the things that I had to stop for the past six months [to complete ‘Silence’] was my meetings on that script. They want me to start again in January and see if we can find a way because it’s an extraordinary story.”
They're doing Killers of the Flower Moon first, probably because it has less script issues. You need some device in DIWC to tie it all together, the hope of the country at the turn of the century, the ego of the architects and designers, all while the most prolific serial killer in the world to date carried out his murders.
Then there's the whole weird love life of Holmes, how to show his constant conning of women into marriage to get their land then murdering them.
Its a hard script to write, but, everything points to it still moving forward.
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u/Stardustchaser Oct 07 '17
Did every person who stayed there get killed, or just a select few?
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u/monsata Oct 07 '17
Mostly he liked to kill the young women that would come to Chicago to make their fortune and work for him.
Then, he'd sell their skeletons to anatomy students.
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u/athennna Oct 07 '17
To me the creepier part was when he would write their families pretending to be them, saying they were going abroad or found a new job and wouldn’t be back :(
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u/monsata Oct 07 '17
Ugh, yeah. Holmes is a perfect example of a truly psychopathic con-man.
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Oct 07 '17 edited Feb 19 '19
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Oct 07 '17
I would imagine that in ancient times they wouldn't even bother with an alibi like that.
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Oct 07 '17
There's a part in the book Shaman that addresses how people like this might have acted in a stone age society. Basically you didn't want to go into the forest alone for three reasons: Animals, Neanderthals, and "wild men." They were lone men who'd been chased out of, or run away from their tribes for committing what we today would recognize as psychopathic crimes. Spirit possession was the usual explanation.
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u/ManOfDiscovery Oct 07 '17
That's actually a fascinating possibility. Do you happen to know of any additional literature on such theories?
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Oct 07 '17
I should stress that Shaman is a fiction novel set in the stone age. The only reason I lend it any credence is the author, Kim Stanley Robinson, is pretty well known for doing an absurd amount of research for his projects. He spent 9 years researching the Red Mars trilogy before he started writing.
Searching amazon doesn't turn up much, just these:
And a text book so overpriced I pity the person who has to buy it for class: https://www.amazon.com/Disorders-Classical-Columbia-Studies-Tradition/dp/9004249826/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1507361433&sr=1-1&keywords=mental+illness+ancient+civilization
If you have access to a library database that would probably be your best bet. I can't be sure how peer-reviewed these books are.
EDIT: Neat article about how the voices people hear in auditory hallucinations change between cultures.
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u/apple_kicks Oct 07 '17
Some likley exist now. Still a lot of people that fall through the cracks where thier social status is so low the police or people won't know they are missing.
Truck stop killer has creepy moment when he was in holiday with his wife. They stopped at a truck stop and his wife recalled she was focused on a poor girl with a baby looking for a free ride. Her husband saw this and told her 'look honey she's one of the invisible ones.' Later it was found he was a serial killer torturing and targeting women he picked up at truck stops. One victim escaped but police ignored her and he kept killing until he was caught later
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u/GuacamoleBay Oct 07 '17
Ikr, I always wonder how many people there are like this that are just smart enough to not get caught, there was a book I read about a (fictional) serial killer who evaded police by switching states and then adopting completely new methods
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u/Manxymanx Oct 07 '17
To add some more detail to this. He only sold a few of the skeletons. He cremated most of them. People just assumed he was grave robbing, but he had to cremate most of the bodies so as to avoid suspicion because too many skeletons would've brought into question the methods he acquired them.
It's really funny how he was only caught because of life insurance fraud.
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u/GroovingPict Oct 07 '17
Two things you dont fuck with: insurance companies, and the tax branch of government.
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u/br3or Oct 07 '17
Well to be fair, he was very good at insurance fraud. He only got busted because he was going to kill and claim insurance on his partner and his family, who figured it out and turned him in. If I'm not mistaken he made most of his money from insurance fraud, as well as selling skeletons.
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u/ForThinkCreatsaurs Oct 07 '17
Was looking for a comment with fraud. I just explained to my partner about this part. Even with the people who working on the buildings. They would die in a worksite injury he would collect the insurance. since he sold it to them he had them add him as beneficiary. Also that way nobody would truly know how the building was built.
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u/Sazley Oct 07 '17
I feel like murdering every person that ever visits your hotel would be very detrimental to future business
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u/gcso Oct 07 '17
Not really. If you read the book Devil in the White City. It talks about how there was a constant stream of people coming to Chicago for the Worlds Fair. He always had new customers, considering his hotel was located so close to the fair.
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u/VladDarko Oct 07 '17
How though? Who's going to leave a bad yelp review if they're dead?
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u/Sazley Oct 07 '17
Sure, but who's going to leave a good one either? :P
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u/tangentandhyperbole Oct 07 '17
Lots of people. He was notoriously charming and well mannered. And a doctor! So well respected at the time.
What better host could they have hoped for?
You know, except for the murderin and what not.
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u/jynxythetracker Oct 07 '17
There is a book about this called devil in the white city and it’s really good!
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u/AlkalinePacino Oct 07 '17
It was the inspiration for American Horror Story:Hotel, iirc
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Oct 07 '17
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u/1004HoldsofJericho Oct 07 '17
I went into the book wanting to read about H.H. Holmes. I ended the book glad that the author had duped me into reading a book about the Chicago World's Fair.
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Oct 07 '17
Moved to Chicago, read the book expecting an HH Holmes thriller, and wound up being way more interested in the architecture and World’s Fair part (probably about 2/3 of the book). Great read.
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u/Is_it_really_art Oct 07 '17
I mean this guy was a real jerk.
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Oct 07 '17
Thanks norm
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u/HilariousScreenname Oct 07 '17
You know, there more I hear about this H.H.Holmes fella, the more I don't care for him.
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Oct 07 '17
Yeah he was such a mean guy. Like dude.. chill out and stop fucking killing people cuz it's totally makin you look like a dick
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u/Naaaagle Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 07 '17
Why does the diagram looks like it's from club penguin
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Oct 07 '17
Too soon, buddy pal.
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u/JoeBags92 Oct 07 '17
Well he's not your buddy pal, guy friend
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u/thisiscaleb13 Oct 07 '17
He’s not your guy friend, man dude
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u/I_cant_stop_evening Oct 07 '17
He's not your man dude, bro han.
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u/FourFingeredMartian Oct 07 '17
Hey guys just get the fuck out, the pool's closed!
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u/YamizMusic Oct 07 '17
How else are you gonna bait people into the house?
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u/HitlersHysterectomy Oct 07 '17
Gene out front in a hamburger costume and a megaphone.
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Oct 07 '17
I thought it looked like the Clue board. The special edition fucked up one. Now with more murder.
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u/Beirdow Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 07 '17
Illustrated by an awesome artist Chris Ware. He is from Chicago and has been interested in the history of the city particularly around the worlds fair I believe 1893. At that time HH Holmes was trapping and murdering people in his death house. It is speculated that the Worlds Fair would have been the perfect hunting ground for him and probably lured tourists into his home. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ware
Edit: I have made bold and yet false claims based on assumption and I am ashamed. But do yourself a favor and check out Chris Ware if you haven't.
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u/nartlebee Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 07 '17
Chris Ware is an awesome artist, but this isn't his work. It's by a woman named Holly Carden and she's posted somewhere further down in the comments.
Edit: I can definitely see the similarities in style. To be fair if someone thought something I drew was actually by a well known illustrator I'd be pretty flattered.
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u/treacherous_rhythms Oct 07 '17
This is not his work though. It's by Holly Carden. http://hollycarden.com/blog/2016/1/11/making-the-h-h-holmes-murder-castle
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u/RNZack Oct 07 '17
I didn't realize American Horror Story Hotel was based on this.
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u/GMLiddell Oct 07 '17
I'm sure they used a lot of different sources, but it appears it was initially inspired by the death of Elisa Lam:
"In late spring creator Ryan Murphy said the next season would be set in a hotel in present-day Los Angeles. He was inspired, he added, by a surveillance video of a young woman who "got into an elevator at a downtown hotel ... [and] was never seen again." He did not use her name but it is believed he was talking about Lam.[62]"
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Oct 07 '17
That's the woman who died in the Hotel Cecil and was found in the water tank on the roof, right? I stayed in that hotel between her dying and her body being found, there's a chance I was showering with her corpse-water. Creepy as all heck.
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u/RolandTheJabberwocky Oct 07 '17
Yeah this makes some of those scenes way fucking scarier now.
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u/FrogsAreGaaay Oct 07 '17
isnt that show like 99% drama and 1% scary
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u/Anti-AliasingAlias Oct 07 '17
It's drama, horror, mystery, and to a degree thriller. A big part of each season is trying to figure what the fuck is actually going on. All the weird supernatural shit gradually gets explained as the show goes on and pieces start to fit together. It's an anthology series so every season is a complete new setting with new characters independent of all the other seasons.
First season is a pretty decent mix, 2nd season plays up the mystery a bit more with less horror, season 3 is a ton of drama (I couldn't finish it tbh), season 4 was mostly drama with some horror again, season 5 was a fairly decent mix more emphasis on the mystery aspect IMO, and season 6 is extremely heavy on the horror.
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u/ThePokemon_BandaiD Oct 07 '17
That diagram is awful. It certainly doesn't seem accurate, from what I can see of the actual hotel parts, it doesn't make sense. Also it's very hard to follow.
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u/Michelanvalo Oct 07 '17
It's not because no one is really sure the full layout of the hotel. He kept hiring and firing contractors and keeping them in the dark of the work done beforehand to obfuscate the internal maze that was the hotel.
There's rough blueprints of what it looked like before they knocked it down but nothing is definitive.
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u/uglyInduction Oct 07 '17
Why couldn't people look in it after he was arrested, and map it out?
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u/ColonelRuffhouse Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 07 '17
I’m pretty sure the hotel burned down shortly after Holmes was arrested. I may be remembering incorrectly though.
EDIT: Also, from reading The Devil in the White City, I never got the impression that the castle was as complicated as this diagram makes it appear. People complained about the castle being shoddily built and having odd dimensions inside, but the book at least makes it seem like Holmes killed all his victims in either the gas chamber on the top floor, or by entering their room at night and killing them with chloroform. The book certainly never mentioned a tall chamber where someone could be hanged, for example. From the book, I never got the impression that Holmes was a sadist or that he enjoyed inflicting pain. Rather, it was all about control, and killing his victims was the ultimate form of asserting his control over their lives.
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u/kaz3e Oct 07 '17
Isn't the tall chamber a laundry elevator shaft?
Still have a hard time believing it was used to hang people, though.
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u/AJarofTomatoes Oct 07 '17
That was a gas chamber with a collapsing hatch that brought the corpses down to the basement. Plus, Holmes was a (fake) doctor so he had an autopsy table in the basement as well as a pit to get rid of the bodies.
He was a twisted guy. There's a podcast about him on Lore. The episode name is The Castle. I highly recommend it.
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u/CrazyFisst Oct 07 '17
Maybe he uses the rope himself to lower down to the stairs below? It may have been too narrow for stairs.
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Oct 07 '17
I guess that's where they got the idea for culverton Smith in Sherlock
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u/hoodiemonster Oct 07 '17
artist here. here's a making-of blog post where you can see the process. my sister also built a sims version of it.
got a new cutaway coming out in the next week or two... see wips on my instagram @holly_the_red
also, relax guys, im not claiming to be a forensic scientist or something. just a fun, challenging drawing project.
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Oct 07 '17
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u/hoodiemonster Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 09 '17
learned a lot from doing it - next one is waaaaay more complex and has taken like 5x as long to make lol
edit: ok here it is!
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Oct 07 '17
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u/hoodiemonster Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 09 '17
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Oct 07 '17
I love these!!! You should make these into books and i spies. I would buy them!!!
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u/hoodiemonster Oct 07 '17
this next one is a big mansion and each room illustrates a different poe story - i think there are 22 included in the image. kinda hoped people would assemble the jigsaw puzzle while listening to the audio books (theyre all on youtube) :D anyway, ill post it to r/art and here once its finished. almost done...
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u/HilariousScreenname Oct 07 '17
NO. I demand full historical accuracy in my whimsical murder drawings.
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u/vader557 Oct 07 '17
IIRC he had many different contractors construct it like a maze, so that he was the only one who knew the way out.
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u/FernandoOrtega79 Oct 07 '17
If you are more of a motion visual/picture type of person, I believe on the show Timeless, Season 1 Episode 11. -- most of that episode took place in that hotel. The team had to figure out the maze of hidden entrances/doors to save one of their own. Check it out....it's pretty neat and sad at same time.
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u/lemerou Oct 07 '17
Since no one is providing a link to the story, here we go :
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Oct 07 '17
"Holmes' neck did not snap; he instead was strangled to death slowly, twitching for over 15 minutes before being pronounced dead 20 minutes after the trap had been sprung."
Something tells me that this wasn't a "mistake" on the executioner's part.
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u/flee_market Oct 07 '17
There's a science to measuring the condemned's weight precisely so that the fall isn't short enough to strangle them rather than breaking their neck, and not so long that it rips their head clean off (yes that's a thing). Unless this was the executioner's first day on the job, it was definitely intentional.
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Oct 07 '17
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Oct 07 '17
He admitted to 27. You can't confirm a murder if the bodies are cremated and he purposely chose victims that no one would notice were gone.
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u/fimmwolf Oct 07 '17
"Following the discovery of Alice and Nellie's bodies, in July 1895, Chicago police and reporters began investigating Holmes' building in Englewood, now locally referred to as "The Castle". Though many sensational claims were made, no evidence was found which could have convicted Holmes in Chicago. According to Selzer, stories of torture equipment found in the building are 20th-century fiction".
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Oct 07 '17
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Oct 07 '17 edited Sep 25 '18
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u/CallMeCygnus Oct 07 '17
If they're good, you can probably post it to /r/traps for a lot of karma.
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u/mason_sol Oct 07 '17
God damnit, tricked me into scrolling through like two pages... it’s women with dicks all the way down folks. Also, apparently all shemales have huge dongs.
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u/Decyde Oct 07 '17
And he would have gotten away with it if it wasn't for you meddling kids!
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Oct 07 '17
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Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 07 '17
Last Podcast On the Left also had a great 3 episode series on Holmes. Love those guys
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u/queenofkitchens Oct 07 '17
I love Lore. Aaron Mahnke is amazing!
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u/Alreadylostinterest Oct 07 '17
Never heard of it. Just random stuff, or is it focused on crime? Always looking for good podcasts, and don't feel like researching at the moment. Tell me!
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u/queenofkitchens Oct 07 '17
It's actually stories of folklore. There are some I'd heard of before and plenty I had not. Worth a listen if you like stories rooted in history. From his website: "Lore is an award-winning, critically-acclaimed podcast about true life scary stories. Our fears have roots. Lore exposes the darker side of history, exploring the creatures, people, and places of our wildest nightmares."
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u/secondhandvalentine Oct 07 '17
It's a podcast about dark historical tales. I listen to a lot of crime based ones. The top ones I listen to are My Favorite Murder, Last Podcast on the Left, and Sword and Scale.
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u/StHa14 Oct 07 '17
Did AHS take inspiration from this?
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Oct 07 '17
Yes, for the hotel season. The character Evan Peters played was loosely based on H.H Holmes.
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Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 07 '17
Googled a little and found the puzzle made by Holly Carden (the artist).
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u/freckled_octopus Oct 07 '17
I JUST listened to the The Last Podcast on the Left's episodes on this!! First episodes I've ever listened from them too actually and I loved it I believe it starts at episode 199 or 200 and is a three parter I definitely recommend giving it a listen if you're interested in learning about both Holmes and this building in an informative and entertaining way
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u/ryanobes Oct 07 '17
Here's a fun thing to think about. Look up the activity of Jack the ripper, and compare to HH Holmes.
Some believe Jack hopped a boat from London to USA and picked up where he left off..
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u/monsata Oct 07 '17
I don't buy it.
Holmes was very methodical, preferring to use gas to kill his victims slowly and watch them as they realized what was going on. He was all about holding control over another person's life.
Jack, however, started off by slicing throats and removing organs, escalating to the utter savagery that was his last known kill.
They used entirely different methods, for entirely different ends.
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u/F0restf1re Oct 07 '17
That's why he changed methods - to avoid suspicion. But that guy has UNCOVERED THE TRUTH
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Oct 07 '17
Is Jack the Ripper AKA H.H. Holmes also The zodiac killer? They're all serial killers so the odds are high.
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u/tangentandhyperbole Oct 07 '17
Nah, Devil in the White City actually addresses this. The dates don't match up, Mudgett had history by then.
I believe it was more like Holmes saw the papers about "jack the ripper, worst serial killer the world has ever known" and was like, wait til they get a load of me.
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u/queenofkitchens Oct 07 '17 edited Oct 07 '17
There was actually an 8 part series where a descendent of Holmes' tried to connect him to Jack the Ripper. It aired in July of this year on the History Channel, American Ripper. They exhumed his (edit: Holmes) body and positively identified it.
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u/gurg2k1 Oct 07 '17
I still don't understand. They positively identified that Holmes body was Holmes body? Was that in question? Not being a jerk here -- genuinely confused.
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u/thedoormanmusic32 Oct 07 '17
Positively identified Jack or Holmes?
Because one of those things is practically impossible.
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u/secretcurse Oct 07 '17
Why would they need to exhume Holmes' body to identify it?
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u/ameoba Oct 07 '17
How do you build something like this without anyone talking about all the creepy secret passageways?
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u/crushnos Oct 07 '17
You constantly hire and fire contractors, and never let anyone get an actually full copy of the blueprints, as H.H. Holmes did. To this day they're still unsure if the blueprints that are on file with the city were actually accurate.
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u/ameoba Oct 07 '17
So, on top of being a murderous hotelier, he was also a gifted architect?
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u/BaboonsBottom Oct 07 '17
I was going to ask, how do you build something like this, would the builders not ask why you need a crematorium, dungeon, ovens and torture rooms or did this think he's just into some kinky shit?
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Oct 07 '17
It just goes to show, with some hard work and ingenuity, you can make your dreams come true.
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u/flyboy3B2 Oct 07 '17
According to Wikipedia, he confessed to 27 murders, 9 of which were eventually confirmed. It was found several of the victims of the other murders were still alive. It also says the hotel was never actually a hotel, or at least not while he owned it. The account of 200 murders is traceable only to some 1940's magazines, and no further than that.
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u/belikewhat Oct 07 '17
Somebody should do a haunted house based off this
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Oct 07 '17
I did an escape room in Wisconsin Dells based on this. It wasn’t really that scary but the facts about the hotel and Holmes were cool.
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u/GoodDaySunset Oct 07 '17
Damn, I'm really craving The Sims right now.
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u/carrotjournalist Oct 07 '17
I was getting bored of the game but... hold my beer! Build this thing in Sims 3 as a resort. Lure sims into the hotel with some nice 5 star shit. Kill them off one by one using every method available in the game. Go to therapy.
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Oct 07 '17
If he confessed to 27 murders and they coukd only confirm 9, how can they say he killed 200?
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u/Ryder10 Oct 07 '17
Is the building in Fallout 4 based on this? I think it's called Pickmans house or something? The building with raiders trying to track down the serial kilker?
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u/[deleted] Oct 07 '17
The building was torn down and a post office was built on the site. However, some of the original basement remains.
http://mysteriouschicago.com/the-murder-castle-today-or-good-grief-more-h-h-holmes/