Today on the Grave Talks, a conversation with Chicago paranormal investigator, Tony Zebelski.

Tony is a long time Chicago paranormal investigator. He's worked with several

paranormal groups in the area and loves sharing the haunted history of the

city. He also hosted the Chicago haunting video series for CBS Chicago.

I'm Carol Hughes in for Tony Bruski and on this episode of the Grave Talks

we're going to talk about some of the windy city's most haunted locations with

Chicago haunting's tour guide Tony Zebelski. Tony I would love to start with the Iroquois Theater because on December 30th,

1903 had only been open for a few weeks. They had a fire, a huge fire. The theater had been advertised as absolutely fireproof.

Obviously that wasn't the case. The real claim was that it had this theater-length fireproof curtain, which theoretically if like a fire broke out in the theater, the curtain would have divided the theater in half if it came down, hung from the ceiling initially.

And then because it was fireproof, the belief was that the fire would have just been contained on one side of the curtain.

It wouldn't have spread to the other.

So that would have made it easier to put it out.

So those are the reasons why they were saying this theater was fireproof.

And the fireproof curtain, by the way,

was made of wood pulp and asbestos.

That was the combination they used to make that.

So yeah, getting the theater open on time, it really was not ready to be opened on November 23rd.

The building was still far off from being completely constructed.

But to get the building open on time, the owners of the theater end up paying off city inspectors.

Telling inspectors, you let us open right now,

you pass us through, even though we don't have the fire alarms set up yet,

or the sprinkler system set up yet or the fire escape is completed things like that.

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