Murder Castle — Chicago, IL
It’s Chicago, 1893. A one Dr. Henry Howard Holmes is prepping the grand opening of his hotel, which sits a scant two miles from The World’s Fair. This isn’t any ordinary hotel, no, this is a hotel that he designed himself with a very specific purpose. Its opening is planned to coincide with the launch of the World’s Fair, and its placement in the South Side Englewood neighborhood is ideal for luring in unwitting travelers. Nary a soul has any idea that Holmes has built it from the ground up as a macabre playground that will eventually claim the lives of an estimated 200 people.
The top two floors of the three-story hotel held a labyrinthine network of over 100 windowless rooms, doorways that opened up to brick walls, and stairways that led to nowhere. He wanted to be the only person who was familiar with its layout, so to accomplish this, Holmes changed builders multiple times during the hotel’s construction.
He hired help, mostly women, who he would have take out life insurance policies of which he would be the beneficiary. Asphyxiation was one of his favorite methods of murder. He had special soundproof guest rooms that could be filled with gas when Holmes needed a new corpse to drop into the basement through the hidden chute he had had built to remove the evidence.
It’s in the basement of the hotel where Holmes would dissect the bodies, strip them of their flesh and either keep them for himself or send them off to be sold to medical schools.
Holmes is widely considered to be one of America’s first documented serial killers. The hotel he once owned has since been demolished and in its place a post office was built.
This story is ripe for a video game adaptation. I imagine it’d have a similar vibe to the Spencer Mansion from the first Resident Evil — a massive building filled with maze-like hallways, traps and a killer who would very much like to add you to his collection. Like The Collector, but on a grander scale.
