How Will Ghost Adventures Investigate H.H. Holmes’s Murder House When It Doesn’t Exist?

When I first learned Ghost Adventures had locked down a special Serial Killer series for Travel Channel’s “Ghostober” programming, one of the locations immediately piqued my interest: H. H. Holmes’s Murder House.

Every Saturday throughout October, viewers will follow the Ghost Adventures crew as they investigate locations such as killer clown John Wayne Gacy’s prison cell, HH Holmes’ murder house and the Squirrel Cage Jail, which housed the vicious Jake Bird. The crew will also study the Anson Call House, an abandoned building that many believe has ties to Ted Bundy’s terror spree during the 1970s.

My first thought was, “Um, I thought that burned down? How can they investigate the H. H. Holmes Murder House when it doesn’t exist?”

Murder House Confused with Murder Castle

As usual, I jumped the sharked and raced to judgment before having all my facts.

The answer is simple: Because they’re not investigating that murder house.

You know, the actual one where H. H. Holmes conducted the majority of his killing? (Incidentally, Holmes did reside in that place too, but he also rented rooms there as a hotel.)

However, it wasn’t known as his “Murder House” so much as it was the “Murder Castle.”

Devil in the White City

As I wrote about in “Where to Take a Killer Tour…A Serial Killer Tour, That Is,” one of the best books I’ve ever read was The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America by Erik Larson.

It’s about two things:

1. The World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893 in Chicago, Illinois. How Chicago won the honor of hosting it, all the people involved in making it happen, etc…
2. How H. H. Holmes saw the exposition as way to make money and satisfy his darkest desire –murder.

I wasn’t expecting the book to cover the logistics and players of the fair as exhaustively as it did, but it was interesting to learn so much about it. Also, it really helped set the stage where Holmes unleashed his inner “devil.” (As he’s famously quoted, “I was born with the very devil in me.”)

At the end, Larson relates what happened to all the major players he covered in the book –from Holmes to the architects who built the structures that created the “White City” for the exposition to the lawmen who ultimately arrested Holmes and discovered just how nefarious and heinous his crimes were.

Death By Fire

But the building Holmes built and created as his murder lair is also a character of sorts. The author includes its fate too:

“On Thursday, August 19, Geyer learned that during the preceding night Holmes’s castle in Englewood, his own dark dreamland, had burned to the ground. Front-page headlines in the Chicago Tribune shouted, “Holmes’ Den Burned; Fire Demolishes the Place of Murder and Mystery.”

(Geyer was the Pinkerton Agent who tracked down Holmes when he was on the run.)

The fire appeared to be set intentionally, though no one was ever arrested for arson. (Some speculate that neighbors did it, to avoid it becoming a tourist destination for ghoulish gawkers –a.k.a. Haunt Jaunters like me. And perhaps yourself?)

The gutted building was eventually torn down. These days the site is allegedly home to the U.S. Post Office in Englewood.

So then what’s the house Zak and the Ghost Adventures crew will be investigating?

We’ll get there, but first let’s understand the path that leads there.

The Pitezel Murders

Holmes had an associate named Benjamin Pitezel, a carpenter and family man with a wife and five children, who became Holmes’s assistant. Not so much in helping Holmes kill his victims –although Holmes did use him to commit forgery.

But Ben took care of business matters, ran errands, and handled other day-to-day jobs that needed tending to –like taking care of the horses.

Pitezel and three of his children –Alice, Nellie and Howard– fell victims to Holmes’s murder-for-insurance schemes. In fact, it was the Pitezel murders that resulted in Holmes’s arrest.

It was sort of his M.O. to take out an insurance policy on someone, kill them and claim the money. Fidelity Mutual Life Association grew suspicious of a claim on Benjamin Pitezel’s life. At first they thought his death was faked. When they realized it wasn’t –that it had been real and three of Pitezel’s kids were missing and had last been seen with Holmes– Fidelity hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to find the children and Holmes.

Irvington, Indiana

A Pinkerton detective and a Fidelity investigator searched hotel records for any sign of Holmes from Indiana and Illinois to Ohio and Michigan. In Indianapolis, they branched out and searched all outlying towns. Well, except one. Irvington. After 900 leads, it was the last one to try.

That’s where they hit pay dirt. But not at a hotel. In a real estate office. The Pinkerton detective decided to start the search there. Sure enough, Holmes had rented a house. While sifting through ash in the house, they found teeth fragments and part of a jaw.

They also recovered a coat, scarf and toy that Howard’s mom, Mrs. Pitezel, identified as Howard’s.

This is the house the Ghost Adventures crew will investigate.

Darkness Within

If you’re a Ghost Adventures fan, you know they can’t investigate anywhere without a potential dark force present.

The current owner believes dark and sinister forces have overtaken the property, leaving her vulnerable to possession.

Who does she think the dark force is? Little Howard? Or is somehow H. H. Holmes’s energy still attached and manifesting in the house? Or is it something else?

Maybe all will be revealed in the series premiere of Ghost Adventures: Serial Killer Spirits, which airs on Saturday October 5, 2019.