The Haunted Illinois Restaurant Housed In A Former Al Capone Hangout

Al Capone, the Chicago mobster whose bootlegging operation made him public enemy number one during the Prohibition era, casts a long shadow over American culture. So, it's no surprise that there's a thriving restaurant near Chicago where Al Capone used to hang out in his heyday. It's called The Great Escape, and it's located in Schiller Park, Illinois. What is a surprise, however (or maybe not, depending on how cynical you are), is that the restaurant is allegedly super haunted.

The Great Escape itself was founded in 1992 by successful local restauranteurs Al and Marie Great. Before it was a restaurant, the building served as a pool hall, post office, and barber shop, among other things. It was also a banquet hall that Al Capone often frequented (whenever he wasn't at the Luna Cafe on Route 66). In fact, the restaurant's bar is the very same bar — as in, the same slab of wood — where Capone once drank.

The restaurant's connections to the past don't end there. Even the skeptics among us can enjoy a good ghost story, and The Great Escape has plenty. There's the clipboard-toting man in a dark suit who walks into a storage closet and never comes out. There's music drifting up from the basement with no known provenance. There's even a report of a radio having played when, by all rights, it shouldn't have been able to function. Spooky! (For the record, Capone is not one of the ghosts reputed to be haunting The Great Escape, presumably because he's too busy splitting his time between the dozen other places where his spectre has reportedly been sighted.)

Whether or not you put any stock in these visions, having a restaurant with such a strong sense of history can only be a good thing in a world that seems determined to sprint blindly into the future. But, on top of that, there are plenty of things to recommend about The Great Escape that don't involve ghosts or Al Capone. Take the food, for instance. The menu is, generally speaking, filled with the kind of American fare you're likely to find in various restaurants all across the country, but the execution is what matters. The Greats are famous for their baby back ribs (which are not to be confused with spareribs) and their "broasted" (broiled and roasted) chicken. Thanks to the family's expertise, these dishes are real standouts. 

There's also the matter of how the restaurant is powered. Because our top scientists haven't yet found a way to turn ghosts into electricity, The Great Escape has turned to a more reliable source of renewable energy: a wind turbine. A single turbine powers the entire facility, reducing the restaurant's carbon footprint and ensuring it can operate independently without relying on municipal power. In other words, there are many reasons to dine at The Great Escape, and saying that you've eaten in a haunted restaurant is only one of them.