The World’s Fairs Hotel is a place where if you open a door, it can lead you to a dead end that leaves you “once you go”. Only one person knows how to get out of that nightmare: the hotel owner.
HHholmes real name is Herman Webster Mudgett , born on May 16, 1861 in Gilmanton, Wisconsin, New Hampshire. From an early age, Herman showed a love for “surgery” of small animals.
Raised to attend a medical school, but Herman was soon expelled for cheating insurance and stealing corpses for experiments. Then, Herman went to Chicago to study and become a pharmacist.
With an elegant, charming appearance, he quickly became rich and well known.
In 1887, Holmes used the money he had to buy a plot of land and built it into a massive hotel with more than 100 rooms and 3 floors, considered the most magnificent hotel at that time.
This hotel was built in the joy and welcome of the people of Chicago, but no one expected that this would be a screen for the murderous “interest” of a sick owner.
HHholmes real name is Herman Webster Mudgett.
The first floor is for shops, the third floor is for bedrooms, and the second floor and basement are hiding places that only HHholmes knows.
Holmes is really smart and sophisticated when it comes to changing the structure of the hotel, one room at a time. He was constantly changing employees as well as building contractors, so no one could doubt Holmes’s true intentions.
Holmes’s hotel is very specially designed. Holmes used the upper floors as his private residence, containing many small rooms suitable for torture and murder.
Some rooms have holes in the ceiling used to spray poison into the rooms and are soundproofed so that no one can hear what’s going on inside.
Others have installed heating systems, capable of turning the room into a giant oven, quickly toasting the poor customers sleeping inside.
Some rooms contain slides used to move corpses down the stairs, where there are crematoriums, lime pits and acid baths used to dispose of bodies.
Holmes’s hotel is very specially designed.
Some rooms can be connected to other rooms thanks to partitions that are secretly hidden in the walls. There are rooms with large troughs running straight down to the basement, which is not a trough used for washing clothes, but actually to bring the corpse straight to the basement where Holmes dissected for experiments.
All doors are connected to a very complex alarm system. Whenever someone stepped into the hallway or down the stairs, the siren would sound in Holmes’ bedroom.
In the basement where Holmes’s bedroom is, there are bones scattered everywhere, most of which are of animals and there are also… human bones.
The bloody operating table he used to dissect victims for his sick pleasure. Nearby were equipment for cremating the body, torture instruments and a vat of acid for disintegrating the corpse.
After dropping the victim through the gutter, he would dissect and sell the organs or bones to medical facilities or the black market.
Holmes did not have certain criteria for selecting victims. His victims are the elderly, children, women, or simply customers attracted to the magnificent hotel and walk to their deaths.
Holmes seduced women from prestigious families and some of them were no longer allowed to return to their families.
The corpses in Holmes’s anatomy basement.
He lured several rich women to marry him and before he killed them, he forced them to write a will so that he would inherit all of his property.
In the basement where Holmes’s bedroom is, there are bones scattered everywhere, most of which are of animals and there are also… human bones.
The bloody operating table he used to dissect victims for his sick pleasure. Nearby were equipment for cremating the body, torture instruments and a vat of acid for disintegrating the corpse.
After dropping the victim down through the gutter, he would dissect and sell the organs or bones to medical facilities or on the black market.
Increasingly, Holmes killed more people and appropriated more properties to maintain a mysterious life and solve his large debts.
However, in a conversation with a train robber named Marion Hedgepeth, Holmes accidentally revealed that he was “conspiring to cheat”.
As a child, he showed a love for “surgery” of small animals.
Marion Hedgepeth denounced Holmes and the arrested murderer as part of a large-scale insurance fraud in Boston on November 17, 1894.
When the police searched The World’s Fairs Hotel for more evidence, they discovered all his murders.
When searching the hotel, the police discovered a secret tunnel leading down to the mysterious basement with a limestone pit and a table full of dried blood stains.
The hotel has many special doors that can only be opened from the outside and safes used to accommodate people. Scattered around the fourth floor of the hotel, police also found clothes, bones and hair of the victims.
He told police he had killed 27 people, but police think the number could be more. The number of victims cannot be corroborated because Holmes’ hotel basement is equipped with acid tanks to decompose body parts and a crematorium to burn bodies.
Hotel design by Holmes.
According to the missing record, it is thought that Holmes’s ill-fated victims may have numbered as many as 200. He told everyone that when he looked in the mirror he only saw the face and form of the devil, not himself.
HHholmes was found guilty and executed by hanging on May 7, 1896 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. After 20 minutes of struggling in pain, the killer ended his “evil” life.
Not long after that, the people involved in Holmes’s case encountered many extremely bad luck. The warden at the prison where Holmes was held is killed. The office of the lawyer handling the famous case burned down. The only thing that remained from the fire was a photograph of Holmes.
Most famously, Patrick Quinlan – who looked after the hotel after Holmes died, as well as knows most about the haunted building – committed suicide in 1914. Before his death he left only one sentence, that: “I can not sleep”.