Explore More with Amelia #7: Summer 2025

Oskar Cotter Pollock, 2007 (?)-2025. 

Wishing you a joyful summer solstice! This spring has been a time to both celebrate and remember. We would like to share that our sweet Oskar died peacefully in May after 17 wonderful years with us, and almost 18 years of life. I adopted Oskar in 2008, when I first moved to Chicago, and had him longer than any other companion in my adult life. We were there with him in his final moments and, just as we shared almost his whole life with him, were honored to share in his death. We will miss him forever.

There is still much excitement to come, including a new edition of Where the Party Never Ended: Ghosts of the Old Baraboo Inn, and I look forward to sharing more soon. If you love what you read here, you can support me and my free content and storytelling programs through my Virtual Tip Jar. Thank you and Happy Hauntings! 

~Amelia

Explore More...

The Couch Tomb was built in 1858 for wealthy hotel owner Ira Couch
and sits today on the grounds of the Chicago History Museum.

Lincoln Park and City Cemetery! Buried beneath the surface of the south end of Chicago's sprawling Lincoln Park are the remains of one of the city's best kept secrets: City Cemetery. Lincoln Park is Chicago's largest public park, attracting millions of visitors every year from around the world to its zoo, museums, conservatory, beaches, harbors, lakefront trails, sports facilities, and more. Many people who traverse the south end of the park, even those who call the Lincoln Park and Gold Coast neighborhoods home, are not aware that some 12,000 former residents still lie in eternal repose just below their feet. 

During the 1840s and 1850s, more than 35,000 people were interred at City Cemetery. Between the late 1860s and 1880s, the city undertook the immense project of moving the bodies and grave markers to outlying cemeteries. Met with many challenges, including corruption, poor recordkeeping, and the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, not all bodies were successfully moved. And for financial, political, and symbolic reasons, one monument remains: the Couch Mausoleum. Shrouded in myths and legends, haunted highlights of Lincoln Park include the Couch Mausoleum, Potter’s Field, former site of the Suicide Bridge, and Lincoln Park Zoo. Learn more by reading my contribution to the inaugural edition of Haunted Travels Anthology (see below), "The Windy City's Buried History," and by watching our "City Cemetery and Reed Dunning" series on One Minute Mysteries with Ground Chuck.

Send in the Clowns!

Clown around and find out.

This spring, I virtually presented "Folklore of Fear: The Evil-ution of the Killer Clown Motif" at the first-of-its-kind Terrifier Conference at the University of Warwick in Coventry, England. From the gripping "Creepy Clown Craze" to the surprise success of the Terrifier franchise, the perception of clowns in and outside of horror has changed dramatically over time, and rapidly in the last decade. Join me for an exploration of the role of clowns in folklore, history, mythology, and pop culture. 

Thank you to my special guests Ari Spence, Bailey Camien, and Art's Wh0re, as well as my tech guru Jonathan Montgomery Pollock. Very special thanks to David Howard Thornton, Signature Entertainment, and Terrifier's social media accounts for helping spread the word.

Featured Book: Haunted Travels Anthology: Vol. 1

Curated by Sam Baltrusis, "What started as a passion project conceived by a group of aspiring paranormal journalists has turned into Haunted Travels Anthology. Sam Baltrusis and his spooktacular team have assembled tales from established authors like Joni Mayhan, Mark Muncy, Roxanne Rhoads, and Amelia Cotter, coupled with curated stories from up-and-coming writers from across the country and a foreword written by Paranormal State's Ryan Buell. From Stephen King's haunts in Maine to a creepy honeymoon tour of Alcatraz in California, take a ghostly road trip to some of your favorite haunted destinations in the United States and abroad. Fasten your seat belts, it's going to be a bumpy night."

Featured Item: High Priestess Blend Incense Bundle

High Priestess Blend Incense Bundle … $10

Each attractively packaged kit comes with twelve incense cones and corresponding affirmation card. Use our Friends & Family coupon code FFD15 for a 15% discount off your entire order from my online Store any time!

Fragrance: Complex, ethereal, smooth, and stimulating, with fresh, coniferous, and balsamic spices.

Ingredients: Benzoin, Black Copal, Clove Buds, Dragon’s Blood, Frankincense, Juniper Berries, Myrrh, Pomegranate Peel, Makko, White Sandalwood, Red Wine.

Upcoming Appearances

Queens, Crowns, and Crossovers - Reimagining Women's Power in Wrestling and Media Panel at San Diego Comic Con at San Diego Convention Center in San Diego, California

July 26, 2025

The Mystery of Al Capone's Ghost Presentation at Rock Island Roadhouse Esoteric Expo at Haunted Rock Island Roadhouse in Rock Island, Illinois

October 4, 2025

Spooky Story Spectacular III

October 29, 2025 at 7 p.m. | 6 p.m. CST via Facebook Live

Days of the Dead Chicago at Crowne Plaza Chicago O'Hare Hotel & Conference Center in Rosemont, Illinois

November 21-23, 2025

History Alive and Parahunt

Coming Soon!

Poem #10: Andy

April is National Poetry Month, and this poem is a companion piece to my story "Andy," published in Barren Magazine in 2019. Around that time, I experienced a depression that fundamentally changed me. I gave it a name and a life force, which helped me a lot in my recovery. I often reflect on what Andy was and is. While he isn't around much anymore, his memory is never far. On a lighthearted note, Jonathan contributed the line, "rolling hills on a terminal moraine," during a long road trip a few years back. I jotted it down as a joke and promised I'd work it into a poem someday. It's perfect for this:

There’s a place inside myself I cannot bear to go
That’s where he lives, or dwells, or is

Absent the rolling hills on a terminal moraine
Beyond us, my muse, a small wooden square

Within a house, a house:
A crooked, dilapidated place and a ghost I never see

An encounter I dread and long for
To chase and be chased forever

My greatest obsession: possession
Staring back, my muse, from the abyss into me

"Andy," copyright 2025 Amelia Cotter (first published in Highland Park Poetry Winter Muses’ Gallery, 2025)

Haibun #6: The Great Fire

February is National Haiku Writing Month! This haibun, a poetry form combining prose and haiku, features three haiku and is a tribute to my late grandmother and her life as a light-aircraft-pilot-turned-mother-of-five in the tumultuous time between World War II and the Vietnam War:

The Great Fire

My grandmother was a pilot when she was young and flew light aircraft. I have a photo of her from the 1940s standing proudly next to her plane. She was a dreamer. The story my mother tells is that my grandmother was poor and deemed unworthy of marrying my grandfather. My grandfather is remembered as a war hero who was shot in the head on D-Day, survived, and earned a Purple Heart.

big sky

            prairielands reach

                        a time before I was born

They lived in a modest neighborhood outside of Washington, D.C., and had five children together, as good Catholics did in those days. My grandfather worked long hours at a grocery store, and he drank. A lot. For years, his doctor told him if he didn’t change, he’d have a heart attack. And he did. Twice. The second one sent him falling off the bed in the middle of the night. He hit his head on a dresser, waking everyone in the house. My mother, who was 16, came running and cradled him as he lay dying.

sliver of crescent moon
over tallgrass prairie…
a kingbird’s solitary perch

He left my grandmother with four children at home, one fighting a new war in Vietnam, and no money. Later in her life, my grandmother wrote a poem about how all she ever wanted was to be with him. She lived with my parents when I was a baby, took care of me while they worked, and died when I was five in a nursing home.

across a shimmering plain
wildflowers bend
into the prairie wind

"The Great Fire," copyright 2025 Amelia Cotter (first published in Bronze Bird Review, 2024)