Watch Telephony's Security Webcast Find out what Verizon Business is doing with managed network security and how service providers can cash in with this new service. Watch Telephony's Webcast today.

Chicago is known as the Windy City, the City of Big Shoulders and the city where guys named Daley become mayors-for-life.

But you may not know that among those who explore paranormal phenomenon, Chicago is also considered to be among the most haunted cities in the U.S.

In fact, many noted city landmarks — the Hancock Building, Lincoln Park Zoo, the Imperial Theatre (where you can catch the hot musical “Wicked”), the historic Jane Adams Hull House and even Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Studios building, are considered to be haunted.

If you are intrigued by ghosts and hauntings, or even if you are a history buff, one way to learn a lot about Chicago is to take one of the several ghost tours that are offered every summer.

For the uninitiated, ghost tours or ghost walks have cropped up all over the U.S. but are particularly popular along the East Coast, in U.S. cities with longer histories such as Charleston, S.C., Savannah, Ga., Salem, Mass., Philadelphia, and Gettysburg, Penn. For a fee, usually $20 and up, patrons can walk or ride with a guide who takes them to sites within a city or town where local legends exist and people claim to have seen ghosts associated with those legends.

Chicago is not without its share of historic disasters from which restless spirits are said to linger. What makes a ghost tour fun is learning about the local history in a way that is also entertaining — and spooky.

The Chicago Hauntings Tour is one my family has enjoyed and is perfect for Supercomm visitors because it is offered nightly, except for Mondays, for $30. Reservations are required (contact them at 773-404-4346 or www.chicagohauntings.com). On some Monday nights, Ursula Bielski, the author and researcher who runs Chicago Hauntings with her husband, also operates a ghost walk, a shorter $15 excursion that stays in the downtown area. Both the walk and the tour leave from the corner of Ohio and Clark streets. The Chicago Hauntings team also operates chartered Haunted Pub Crawls for corporate outings or private groups.

Because Chicago's haunted places are spread out across several miles, Chicago Hauntings is a tour, not a walk, conducted from a converted school bus that has been appropriately painted black. The tour is long — up to three hours, including a stop at the Billy Goat Grill for refreshments and a chance to see the stuffed head of the goat who is still cursing the Cubs — but enjoyable and informative.

Along the way, patrons exit the bus to explore haunted areas, take photos and otherwise get the creeps. The alley behind the Imperial Theater is the place for spotting ghosts of the infamous Iroquois Theater, where 602 people were killed in 1903, when a stage light malfunctioned and set a theater curtain on fire during a matinee of “Mr. Bluebeard,” starring Eddie Foy. The brand new facility had been allowed to open even though its owners hadn't finished building fire escapes and had cut corners on other safety matters.

Now, you may think it's foolish for 30 people to stand around staring at the bricks of a building, looking for hidden images, but that's the kind of thing you do on a ghost tour. On our most recent voyage, one of our traveling companions captured an “orb” of light — considered a spiritual presence — in the alley behind the Imperial on his digital camera.

I must admit my teenagers weren't impressed.

But they did get creeped out as we explored the area around the Jane Adams Hull House, once the famous settlement house operated in a very poor West Side neighborhood by Jane Adams and now a museum on the University of Chicago at Illinois campus. Hull House is said to be haunted by the spirit of a “devil baby” left there by its terrified mother, but its real significance in the paranormal world is as the portal to evil spirits that flow into Chicago because of a Native American curse placed on the city years ago. It seems Hull House is built on a sacred burial ground, and the displaced spirits remain angry at Chicago, sending a continuous flow of negative energy our way.

And to think all this time, we've been worried about a spurned goat.

The tours also include the Eastland disaster, the site of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre and more. If you are more interested in learning about Chicago's ghosts than possibly meeting them, check out this Web site with books on the topic: Whitechapel Productions Press, www.prairieghosts.com/whitechapel.html. There are other ghost tours: Shadow Tours, www.shadowtours.com/tour_dates/gen%20tour%20info.html; and Chicago Ghost Tours, www.ghosttours.com.