This former small town was destroyed not by the motor oil it sprayed the ground with but by the toxic waste that was added.

An unassuming store hides relics of its former life as the jazz club that hosted some of the best black performers of the 1920s and '30s.

The history of funerals and funerary customs.

Once known as the Illinois Asylum for the Incurable Insane.

In the Shawnee National Forest, amazing rock formations peer through the treeline.

An exhibit of items from the mental institution where Mary Todd Lincoln lived after her son conspired to have her committed.

A historic and oft-filmed prison stands in a Chicago suburb.

Where dioramas can follow you home.

A mythical bird etched into the face of a rock doubles as the mascot for a nearby school.

A hidden grotto on the grounds of the Kane County Government Center.

Buy a token from the liquor store and you can make this beast spew flames on command.

No one knows how many bodies are in this vault in a Chicago public park.

Assemble a masterpiece at the first and only North American school exclusively dedicated to mosaic art.

One of the largest pieces of scientific equipment ever carried on a NASA space shuttle sits in a Chicago alley.

You can take a class, browse the library, or visit the lavish lair of an international men's humor society.

This abandoned 19th century orphanage started as a boarding school for children of Civil War veterans.

One-of-a-kind preserved ruins of an abandoned 1880s church in Chicago's Pilsen neighborhood.

The mysterious white squirrels of this Illinois city are treated like sacred cows.

The legacy of an unsolved, gruesome murder rests beneath the spans of this historic bridge.

A strange and haunting monument of unknown origin in the historic Graceland Cemetery.

World's second largest particle accelerator, where nature reveals its secrets.

This grave in a ghost town cemetery marks the death of a witch on a day that never happened.

A six-story-tall golden pyramid, surrounded by a moat.

Recognized the world over as the home of the McCallisters in the 1990 movie "Home Alone."