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Anyone who grew up in the western suburbs since the 1920s knows about “Peabody’s Tomb,” as Mayslake was referred to for decades. The sprawling, wooded estate was built by coal baron Francis S. Peabody who died suddenly on the property while hunting in 1922 and was buried in an ornate chapel built right on the spot where he fell.

Peabody’s thirty-room Tudor mansion became a Catholic retreat house run by the Franciscan order called the Mayslake Retreat Center. But the mansion and surrounding property was considered haunted and it became a common dare to sneak onto the property and get a glimpse of Peabody in his glass coffin, urban legend said, with his money surrounding him, but not to be caught by the monks who monitored the property and who would make trespassers pray on their knees on a cold floor all night in the chapel.

“Searching for Peabody’s Tomb” takes all of this local lore and turns it into an interactive tour through the memorable mansion itself in search of the tomb of the man who occupied it some ninety years ago now.

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After its debut performance last year at the Odeum Sports & Expo Center in west suburban Villa Park, the Asylum Xperiment is back for a second jaunt in what is shaping up to be an annual Halloween tradition.

The Asylum Xperiment is a post-millennial incarnation of the short-lived but never-to-be-forgotten Asylum Experience in Berwyn in the late 1990s, a haunted house unlike any other that was steeped not in shock and gore, but in imagination and creepiness. The lines would run around the block at this time of year, surrounding the Victorian tower with a hearse in front of it as the lucky elite who were ushered in were slowly treated to disturbing and eye-popping scenes from room to room that were exquisite in their macabre detail, courtesy of Dave Link. Read the rest of this entry »

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At the opening of this onstage haunted house you’re at a foreign train station late at night, the sound of trains in the distance and buzzing flies nearby. Early on you realize you’re just in the anteroom and will actually have to board the train by walking down a dark, eerie hallway. This is where the true frights kick in, with a well-developed story penned by Jeremy Menekseoglu that mostly unfolds around you but involves you too, offering plenty of uncomfortable chills from a gory plot that leaves you feeling helpless and disturbed. Immersion is key. Read the rest of this entry »

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As the earnest narrator Geest, Brian Pastor proves himself to be an engaging storyteller, injecting a fair amount of humor into his careful recounting of the familiar story of Ichabod Crane and the Headless Horseman. Director Stephen F. Murray has Pastor make elaborate use of the various props lying around the cluttered basement-like set (designed by Matthew Cummings) throughout what is essentially a one-man show.

But the live original music (composed and performed by Matthew Bivins) and sound effects (Shawn Goudie) create the ambience that makes this show truly noteworthy, with memorable interpretations of passages from Bürger’s “Lenore” and Poe’s “Annabel Lee,” and an especially grim version of the spiritual “Dem Bones”—paced to the sound of banging pots and paired with darkly dramatic lighting (Christine Ferriter). It’s a Halloween show that’s eerie without being frightening though it contains enough spooky moments to give younger kids the chills. (Zach Freeman)

City Lit Theater at Edgewater Presbyterian Church, 1020 West Bryn Mawr, (773)293-3682. Through October 31. $25.

Sean Thomas, Ashlee Edgemon, John Sanders, Michael Aguirre, Jennifer T. Grubb/Photo: D. Rice

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World-premiered by First Folio Theatre for Halloween 2006 and reprised a year later, it has been three years since Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Allan Poe have haunted the halls of Mayslake in west suburban Oakbrook Terrace. Dramas about Poe’s personal life and adaptations of his best-known short stories are a virtual cottage industry but kudos to First Folio managing director David Rice for a brilliant cross-fertilization of both types of Poe plays into a single, interactive audience experience that uses the magnificent space of the actual thirty-room Tudor “Peabody’s Tomb” mansion—considered haunted in Chicago folklore for decades—as an opportunity to spend an evening with the Poes and the characters of his best-known works.

Ushered into the cavernous library of the estate, Poe in the persona of actor John Sanders—making his debut in the role since Larry Neumann Jr., who created the role, is busy over at Steppenwolf as the chilling villain of “To Kill a Mockingbird”—welcomes you as guests as the real Poe would do, reading “The Bells.” Read the rest of this entry »

Scott Bradley/Photo: Jennifer Bisbing

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Watching a young Michael Myers reach for a kitchen knife as a gently crooned version of The Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun” rolls over the audience (along with a great deal of smoke-machine fog), it quickly becomes evident why The Scooty & JoJo Show’s “Carpenters Halloween”—a multimedia smorgasbord of video, puppetry, live music, and cartoonish props that crosses John Carpenter’s “Halloween” with the music of The Carpenters—has become a Chicago cult favorite now in its fourth year of production. As teenager Laurie Strode, director and co-creator Scott Bradley leads a cast of actors (and puppets) in an almost word-for-word re-imagining of the classic horror film, with Myers, still surprisingly spooky even when surrounded by lampoonery, stalking the cardboard-cutout neighborhood of Haddonfield, Illinois while a frantic Dr. Loomis puppet searches for him. The camp factor is appropriately high and the Circuit Nightclub, with its dangling disco balls, offers a more than suitable backdrop for this laugh-out-loud tribute. (Zach Freeman)

Circuit Nightclub, 3641 North Halsted, (800)838-3006. Through October 31. $15-$25.

Described as “a murder mystery, meets Tony & Tina’s Wedding, meets zombies,” “Zombies Attack Chicago” returns to Uptown’s The Spot (4437 North Broadway) on Thursday for its third straight Halloween run. Not so much a play as an “interactive theatrical event/zombie attack simulation,” “Zombies Attack” puts its audience at ground zero of a zombie outbreak and then lets them take it from there. “It’s a zombie movie you can be a part of,” says the show’s creator, Zack Geoffroy. “The military barges in to take over the bar because of a bio-terrorism threat, then someone turns into a zombie, and things get a little hairy.” The actors have a basic story to work from, but it’s the audience that gets to decide the direction it goes in: who to interrogate, who to quarantine and, most importantly, who to kill. It’s literally a different show every night. “It completely depends on the audience,” says Geoffroy. “It can get really interesting if the audience is interested in the background of the story, but with drinkers usually they just want to see blood. That’s the half-hour show.” Which, Geoffroy is quick to point out, is not necessarily a bad thing. “We’re not worried about the run time, we’re worried about the body count.” (Jonas Simon)

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For those who remember the short-lived but never-to-be-forgotten Asylum Experience in Berwyn in the late 1990s, it was a haunted house unlike any other that was steeped not in shock and gore, but in imagination and creepiness. The lines would run around the block at this time of year, surrounding the Victorian tower with a hearse in front of it as the lucky elite who were ushered in were slowly treated to disturbing and eye-popping scenes from room to room that were exquisite in their macabre detail, courtesy of Dave Link.

Link is a sculpture and design professional who creates movie-themed designs for companies such as Lucas Films, Disney, Sony Pictures, Sega and the like, and has an uncanny knack for creating lifelike characters and creatures which are then brought to life in animated vignettes and combined with live actors who are specialists in contortion, mime, performance art, minimalist deadpan dialogue and creepy improvisation that never breaks character. Read the rest of this entry »

Elizabeth Bagby & Kevin Crispin/Photo: Lucas Gerard

The Halloween custom of trick-or-treating has a lot in common with improvised theater: two parties, essentially strangers, have a brief interaction across a threshold. One party is seeking candy through dressing up in a way that at least theoretically is different from what would be worn the rest of the year; the other party is seeking entertainment or engagement—those who aren’t, leave home on Halloween, or do not bother to answer the door—without so much as stepping outside a domestic sanctuary. It is a win-win situation for people who want a brief, late-fall theatrical experience without stepping into a theater, for the mere cost of imagination for the trick-or-treater and a mere bit of candy for the temporary Halloween “host.”

That theatricality is exploited in Ron Riekki’s new play “All Saints’ Day: aka 44 Poems About Jeffrey Jones,” receiving its world premiere by The Ruckus with the California playwright in attendance at the opening. The first “trick” of the play is the title itself, a homage to, as Riekki puts it in his program notes, “Jeffrey Jones the playwright, not ‘Ferris Bueller’ sex offender,” who is usually listed as Jeffrey M. Jones. Playwright Jones wrote a play called “70 Scenes of Halloween,” the point of departure for Riekki. Reviews of that play—which I have not seen—would suggest it had a darker intention and more narrative flow than this lighter take on the theme which literally is a series of Halloween vignettes one after the other: doorbell rings, “trick or treat?” interaction, doorbell rings again, and so it goes. Read the rest of this entry »

Photo: Herbert Migdoll

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The first snowfall descends on Chicago, bringing with it the reality of the approaching holiday season and a hearty craving for diversions, rich foods and elaborate sweets. Enter the Joffrey’s annual sugar-encrusted treat, a Baroque construction of eye candy replete with children’s choruses, puppetry, the Chicago Sinfonietta, an immense Christmas tree on hydraulics, well over 100 young dancers and the entire Joffrey company dripping with frosting and lace. Robert Joffrey and Gerald Arpino’s vision of the European holiday standard injects Tchaikovsky’s most famous work with some good old-fashioned twentieth-century American athleticism. The divertissement is a mounting parade of jaw-dropping feats of flexibility and acrobatics—a healthy balance to the many hours of equally impressive physicality presented by the NFL you’re sure to gape at in the coming weeks. (Sharon Hoyer)

At the Auditorium Theater, 50 E Congress Parkway, (312)739-0120. December 11-27. $25-$100.