Chicago in 1893 was basically the center of the universe. The World’s Columbian Exposition—better known as the 1893 World’s Fair—was this massive, glittering "White City" that looked like a dream. But while everyone was staring at the first-ever Ferris wheel or tasting Juicy Fruit gum for the first time, a guy named Herman Webster Mudgett was busy blocks away. You probably know him as H.H. Holmes. He was the serial killer 1893 World's Fair history can't seem to stop talking about, though honestly, most of what we "know" today is a mix of 1890s yellow journalism and modern urban legends.
He was a charming guy. Creepy, but charming.
People flocked to Chicago by the millions. Young women were moving to the city for jobs, looking for independence, and they needed places to stay. Holmes saw an opportunity. He built this massive, three-story building in the Englewood neighborhood that the locals called "The Castle." It had retail shops on the bottom, but the upper floors? That's where the nightmare lived. Or so the story goes.
Separating Fact From Fiction in the Murder Castle
If you’ve read The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, you’ve seen the layout. Soundproof rooms. Gas lines controlled from Holmes’s bedroom. Kilns in the basement. Trapdoors.
But here’s the thing: historians like Adam Selzer, who literally wrote the book H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil, have pointed out that a lot of the "Murder Castle" details were exaggerated by newspapers trying to sell copies. Was Holmes a monster? Absolutely. Was he a prolific serial killer 1893 World's Fair visitors should have feared? Yes. But he was mostly a con artist who happened to kill people when they got in the way of his money.
The "Castle" wasn't necessarily a labyrinth designed for mass slaughter from day one. It was a construction project that Holmes used to defraud suppliers. He’d hire a crew, fire them without pay, and hire a new one. This meant nobody knew the full layout of the building except him. That’s smart, in a twisted way. It wasn't just about hiding bodies; it was about hiding his debts.
✨ Don't miss: Bed and Breakfast Wedding Venues: Why Smaller Might Actually Be Better
He was a doctor by trade. He had a weird obsession with skeletons. He'd actually bleach the bones of his victims and sell them to medical schools. That’s not a legend—that’s a documented fact. He was running a literal human remains business on the side.
The Victim Count: 27 or 200?
You’ll see numbers all over the place. Some reports say he killed 200 people during the fair. That is almost certainly a lie. Holmes himself confessed to 27 murders while he was sitting in jail, but even that list was weird. Some of the people he "confessed" to killing were actually still alive and well. He was a pathological liar until the moment the rope snapped around his neck.
Most serious researchers put the "confirmed" number closer to nine. These include the Pitezel family—three children and their father—who were his final undoing. Ben Pitezel was Holmes’s partner in crime, and Holmes killed him for insurance money, then took the kids on a gruesome cross-country trip before killing them too. It’s devastatingly bleak.
The timeline of the serial killer 1893 World's Fair connection is tight. He was active during the fair, but many of his victims weren't random tourists. They were his employees, his mistresses, and his business associates. He killed people he knew. People who could testify against him for his various scams.
Why the World's Fair Was the Perfect Cover
The Fair was chaos. Pure, unadulterated chaos. Over 27 million people visited Chicago in six months. Think about that. In an era before fingerprints, DNA, or even reliable long-distance phone calls, disappearing was easy. If a girl from a small town in Indiana went to the Fair and never came home, her family might not even know where to start looking.
🔗 Read more: Virgo Love Horoscope for Today and Tomorrow: Why You Need to Stop Fixing People
Holmes took advantage of this anonymity. He opened his "World's Fair Hotel" to the public, but it’s unlikely many people actually stayed there as guests. It was mostly a front.
Imagine walking into a pharmacy—which Holmes actually ran on the first floor—and meeting a handsome, well-spoken doctor with blue eyes. He offers you a room. You’re tired, the city is loud, and you trust him. That’s how it happened. No flashy movie villain stuff. Just a guy offering a place to sleep.
The 1893 World’s Fair was supposed to represent human progress. Electricity! Architecture! Culture! And yet, just down the street, you had the ultimate regression of humanity. The contrast is why we’re still obsessed with this story 130 years later.
The Investigation and the End of the Castle
Holmes didn't get caught because of the murders. He got caught because he was bad at horse theft and insurance fraud. A guy named Frank Geyer, a Pinkerton detective, was the one who finally tracked him down. Geyer’s investigation is one of the most famous pieces of early detective work. He literally tracked Holmes across the U.S. and Canada, eventually finding the remains of the Pitezel children.
When the police finally went into the Englewood Castle, they found the stuff of nightmares. They found a vat of acid. They found a large stove that looked suspiciously like a crematorium. They found piles of human and animal bones in the pit.
💡 You might also like: Lo que nadie te dice sobre la moda verano 2025 mujer y por qué tu armario va a cambiar por completo
The building itself didn't last long. It was gutted by a fire in 1895—some think by an arsonist who wanted to stop it from becoming a macabre tourist attraction. Later, it was a post office. Today, it’s just a grassy lot and a post office branch. No plaque. No monument. Just a quiet spot in Chicago where something terrible happened.
What Most People Get Wrong About Holmes
We like our monsters to be geniuses. We want them to be Moriarty-level masterminds. But Holmes was kinda messy. His "Castle" was a structural disaster that was never fully finished. His scams were often transparent. He was caught because he owed money to too many people.
People also think he was the first American serial killer. He wasn't. But he was the first one to be "packaged" for a national audience. The sensationalist newspapers of the time—the ancestors of today’s clickbait—turned him into a supernatural boogeyman. They called him "The Arch Fiend."
It's also worth noting that Holmes claimed he was literally turning into the devil. He told people his face was changing. He was a master of self-mythologizing. If he were alive today, he’d probably have a creepy YouTube channel and five million followers.
Actionable Steps for History Buffs and True Crime Fans
If you're actually interested in the real story of the serial killer 1893 World's Fair era, don't just rely on the legends. The reality is much more interesting than the ghosts.
- Read the right books: Skip the sensationalist stuff. Pick up H.H. Holmes: The True History of the White City Devil by Adam Selzer. He spent years digging through actual trial transcripts and property records to debunk the myths.
- Visit the Chicago History Museum: They have an incredible collection of 1893 World’s Fair artifacts. Seeing the scale of the fair helps you understand how someone like Holmes could operate in the shadows.
- Check out the "Devil in the White City" tours: There are walking tours in Chicago that take you to the Englewood site. Even though the building is gone, seeing the geography of the neighborhood makes the "Castle" layout make way more sense.
- Look into the Pinkerton records: If you’re a research nerd, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency records are a goldmine for seeing how 19th-century investigations actually worked.
The H.H. Holmes story is a reminder that during times of massive technological and social change, it's easy for the darker parts of humanity to go unnoticed. The 1893 World's Fair gave us the future, but it also gave us a glimpse into a very specific kind of American darkness. Holmes wasn't a ghost or a demon; he was a man who used the "progress" of the era—the trains, the insurance companies, the massive city growth—to destroy lives for a few bucks. That's the part that's actually scary.