Chicago Hauntings: When the devil danced at Kaiser Hall in Bridgeport
"The devil went down to… Bridgeport?"
Look up that title and you might come across a YouTube video of a Blues Traveler concert from 2013. You'll also notice that it has nothing to do with the Chicago neighborhood of Bridgeport; it's just a cover of the Charlie Daniels Band song "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" with "Bridgeport" substituted in, because the concert was in Bridgeport, Connecticut.
But legend has it that the devil actually did go down to Bridgeport — specifically to a still-standing, but now unassuming building on Archer Avenue called Kaiser Hall — and a young woman even danced with him before he got caught.
Go to Kaiser Hall, at 2988-90 S. Archer Ave., and you'll find a home health care agency office and a car alarm and stereo installer on the ground floor.
Above the businesses are apartments. Above those apartments is a row of architecturally striking arched windows that have all been bricked over for reasons that aren't totally clear. Behind those windows, legend has it, the devil once danced.
The mystery of Kaiser Hall
Easy-to-find and vetted historical information about Kaiser Hall is limited. Real estate records indicate that it was built in 1888, and it operated in the late 19th and early 20th centuries as a community center and dance hall, with a ballroom behind the now-bricked-over windows.
In a search of the Chicago Tribune archives, Kaiser Hall, or Kaiser's Hall, at the Archer Avenue address comes up from time to time.
A March 28, 1891, Tribune article notes an occasion when Carter Harrison III, then between nonconsecutive tenures as mayor, spoke at Kaiser Hall. An 1898 news story has his son, then-Mayor Carter Harrison IV, speaking there. Parties and events thrown by groups such as the National Polish Alliance at Kaiser Hall are also documented.
On eBay, advertising cards for events at Kaiser Hall also turn up — the sixth grand reception and ball given by the Home Circle B.A. on Oct. 30, 1915; the third grand reception and ball given by the U.S. Ex-Soldiers and Sailors Aid Association on Feb. 3, 1917. The ad cards feature song lyrics on the back to songs like "Put Me to Sleep with an Old Fashioned Melody (Wake Me up with a Rag)": "Sometimes you find yourself hummin' tunes that were once near and dear. Memories will cling, ev'ry note you sing, brings along a little tear."
A 1937 book on the Poles of Chicago notes that the St. Cecelia Singing and Dramatic Club put on Polish-language plays at Kaiser Hall and other community halls in Bridgeport. The text refers to the building as "the old Kaiser Hall," indicating that it had been put to other uses by then.
But there's not too much sourced information out there about Kaiser Hall beyond that.
In his book, "Dead Lee's 2015 Guide to Haunted Chicago," writer John Petz claims that the Kaiser family that had the hall built owned the land until the 1970s. He claimed a butcher shop and restaurant were located on the ground floor with apartments on the second floor, and a "lavish" ballroom taking up the third.
Petz also writes that the Kaiser family was hit with a string of bad luck that some attributed to a curse, starting with unexplained illnesses and deaths. According to his book, the bad luck later strikes Kaiser Hall; businesses go under faster than new ones could be brought in, the apartments go vacant, and the ballroom falls into disrepair. Petz claims the ballroom was closed by city inspectors in 1940, and an infestation of rats took over.
Petz writes that the hall was purchased by District National Bank for back taxes in 1972, only to be hit by a rash of armed robberies. He writes the building was later bought by a Chinese construction company.
However, there are no other sources we could find to corroborate any of this narrative.
What we do know is that today, there are still apartments on the second floor at Kaiser Hall, accessible through doors fronting both Archer Avenue and McDermott Street. Along the McDermott Street side, there are more bricked-over windows on the third floor, but some windows with panes that still open close to the alley and the expressway embankment.
Medtec Healthcare & Private Duty on the ground floor of Kaiser Hall has Chinese-language signs on its window in front of an array of houseplants inside. During our visit in September, we stopped by and asked a couple of staffers there if they knew anything about the ballroom, when it was last used, or when and why its windows were bricked over.
They didn't. But maybe the devil does.
A visit from a hoofed Prince of Darkness
It's not clear exactly when the events in this tale are believed to have happened, but sources agree it was before World War I.
The story, as recalled by paranormal investigator and researcher Tony Szabelski of Chicago Hauntings Tours, goes that a beautiful young lady attended a dance at Kaiser Hall. She encountered a dashing young man she didn't recognize from the neighborhood. His sartorial tastes were spiffy, and when he asked her to dance, he whirled her around the dance floor so gracefully that everyone else couldn't help but stop and turn to look.
Suddenly, someone noticed the dashing young man had hoofed feet. When another man at the dance called out the hoofed Casanova, he jumped right out one of those now-bricked-over windows, landed on his feet, and took off running down the street.
Once the crowd got down to the street, the debonair devil was gone. But the crowd noticed two hoof prints on the ground, the legend says.
There have been some minor variations in the story as it's been told over the years. In one version, Petz writes, the room began to smell of sulfur and a mist formed at the devil and his dance partner's feet before he crashed out through the window. Petz also writes that the young woman — who had attended the dance during Lent in defiance of her devoutly Catholic family — went with him.
According to Petz, another version places the dance on Halloween night rather than during Lent, and has the young woman and the devil dancing their way right out the window as the band played a strange waltz at midnight. This version has the devil disappearing, but the girl being found dead below.
Szabelski points out that many say this is all just an urban legend going back many years, originally concocted to discourage women from dancing with strange men at ballrooms. But, he said, in the 1960s, an elderly man claimed he was there the night it happened and swore he saw the whole thing, including the hoofed stranger running off.
As documented in a review in the Chicago Reader, the Steppenwolf Theatre included the devil dancing at Kaiser Hall in their 1999 performance of "Great Chicago Ghost Stories," along with the Devil Baby at Hull House, the murderous sausage king Adolph Luetgert and his factory on Diversey Parkway, the 1915 Eastland ferry disaster on the Chicago River as retold by a juggling street performer who blames himself for it, and the legend of Resurrection Mary, who disappears into a southwest suburban cemetery after asking for a ride.
But you don't hear a lot about the devil dancing at Kaiser Hall compared with those other famous Chicago ghost stories.
There are also similar stories out about the devil going dancing, notably including one well-known tale in the Southwestern U.S. that sounds very similar to the Kaiser Hall story. As documented by the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, one version has a young woman going out dancing at a club called Boccaccio's in McAllen, Texas, on Good Friday night despite being warned by her parents not to, and encountering a caped man who asks her to dance. They reach the roof, and he drops her and disappears, with the smell of sulfur lingering.
Versions of this story also have the devil being found to have one hoof and one chicken's talon instead of feet. Some versions have the girl being left with burns where the stranger touched her, and some have her dying on the spot, while others have her losing her mind and still being alive today.
However, the story shared by UTRGV is purported to have taken place in 1979, 60 years or more after the story out of Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood.
But there are similar stories elsewhere in southwestern and Mexican American folklore that are much older. Also similar is the French-Canadian legend of Rose Latulippe, which dates back to the 18th century and typically involves a young woman dancing with a stranger at a ball, only for the stranger to reveal himself to be the devil at midnight and to whisk her away with him to hell.
Whatever the case, if you hear hoofbeats at the corner of Archer and McDermott, it may not be horses or zebras.
