Jane Addams Hull House

In the spring of 1913, word spread through Chicago's immigrant neighborhoods that Hull House, Jane Addams's famous settlement house, was secretly sheltering a "Devil Baby" in its attic — a deformed infant with horns, hooves, and a tail, said to have been born to punish an unfaithful or blasphemous parent. Thousands of people, mostly immigrant women, came to the door demanding to see the child. Addams spent weeks personally turning visitors away and published denials in newspapers and, in 1916, in The Atlantic — but the more she denied it, the more convinced people became she was hiding something. No such child ever existed; Addams herself viewed the rumor as a resurfacing of centuries-old European morality tales. The building is now a museum, and staff and visitors still describe an unusual atmosphere and occasional apparitions, though the museum's small, tightly controlled tour (no photography, no access to the upper floors) leaves little room for investigation. Ghost Files, the YouTube series with Ryan Bergara and Shane Madej, covered the museum in "The Devil Baby of The Hull-House Museum" (2022).