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YOUR WEIRD GUIDES! Your Guides for the Weird Chicago Tours bring more than 25 years of combined experience with tours in Chicago and across the state of Illinois! As authors on subjects of the unusual, Chicago historians and just all around strange guys, your guides will offer you a weird experience that you won't get anywhere else!
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TROY TAYLOR Troy Taylor is a co-owner and creator of the Weird Chicago Tours and the author of Weird Illinois, Haunted Chicago, Haunted Illinois and nearly 60 books about hauntings and the unexplained in Illinois and America. Along with writing about the weird and unusual, Taylor is also a public speaker on the subject and has spoken to literally hundreds of private and public groups. He has appeared in newspaper and magazine articles and has also been interviewed hundreds of times for radio and television broadcasts about the supernatural. He has also appeared in a number of documentary films, several television series and in one feature horror film called "The St. Francisville Experiment". Critics called him the "best actor in the film", which wasn't saying much since he was playing himself. When not pounding away on a typewriter and chasing ghosts, Taylor is also the owner of the Illinois Hauntings Tour Co., which operates ghost tours (and the Weird Chicago Tour) all over the state. He began his career with ghost tours in high school, where he was well known for his interest in "things that go bump in the night", by taking his friends on informal tours of haunted places all over Illinois. Some of these friends still speak to him today! Taylor created the Haunted Decatur Tours in 1994 (the third longest running ghost tour in Illinois) and the Alton Hauntings Tour in 1999. He would wind up putting Decatur on the map as "one of the most haunted cities in the Midwest" and Alton as "one of the most haunted small towns in America." Fortunately, Chicago needs no assistance in being perhaps the weirdest city in the country! Taylor started the Weird Chicago Tour in 2006 with Ken and Adam after serving as a slave / manager for another Chicago tour that's not even half as good as Weird Chicago is! Troy and his wife, Haven, currently reside in Illinois (and part-time in Key West, Florida). |
ADAM SELZER Adam got his start in the "weird" industry by hosting a public access paranormal TV show in Des Moines at the age of 12, which very few people saw. Later, he hosted a folk music radio show, which very few people heard. Undaunted, he is now a noted expert on Chicago-style hot dogs and a scholar of Chicago's "historical bohemia." His first subversive young adult novels, "How To Get Suspended and Influence People" was released in 2007 and his "Pirates of the Retail Wasteland," will be published by Random House in 2008. With his first book, Adam also proudly joined the ranks of authors like Mark Twain and J.D. Salinger by being banned in some school libraries. His hobbies include eavesdropping on El riders, waiting in long lines, arguing with people who think the Earl of Oxford wrote Shakespeare's plays, hanging out in coffee shops, making prank phone calls to "people who are just asking for it," and digging through Bob Dylan's garbage. Check out his homepage at and his Chicago hot dog page Here are some excerpts from Adam's "official biography" (some of which are even true):
* He has
Jim Morrison's old doorbell in his bedroom Adam and his wife, Ronni, currently reside in Chicago and Adam can occasionally be found berating people who put ketchup on their hot dogs. |
KEN BERG Ken Berg is a co-owner of the Weird Chicago Tours, a professional psychic, an expert on the occult & supernatural and widely known authority on Chicago's secret places. Ken got his start with the "weird" as a child, when it was not uncommon for him to either sense the presence of ghosts or regularly predict the deaths of family members before they occurred. In November of 2007 his little sister Wendy passed away and now acts as Ken's Spirit Guide. In 2008 Ken co-authored Weird Chicago along with Troy and Adam. His career has been quite diverse through the years and includes being a bouncer at the Metro, a pararescue medic in the Air Force, a game designer and an owner of an occult bookstore. He was originally brought to Chicago to work with the famed psychic Irene Hughes at her Psychic Faires. Ken is also Kreamy the Clown, and adult clown that has no inner monologue and drinks lots of scotch. Kreamy the Clown opened for the Smashing Pumpkins during their (first) final show. In addition to being a scotch drinking psychic clown, he is also a great tour guide and has been giving tours in one form or another about the ghosts, gangsters and oddities of Chicago for over a decade. Like Troy and Adam, he also served at the whims of another, inferior Chicago tour company. Along with Adam, Ken hosts Weird Chicago podcast at iTunes and his upcoming podcast called "Weirdo" also on iTunes. Last but not least Ken is also a Psychic Detective that works with law enforcement agencies around the world helping with murder suspect identification. Since 1987, he has assisted with the conviction of 29 individuals around the globe, including 2 serial killers. Ken has a private practice giving personal or phone readings Monday to Wednesday at 773-360-9171 or see his email below! Recently he has had a fascination with pirates and zombies and frequently dresses as either during a tour. Ken's Red Light District Sex Tour has been voted best tour in Chicago by Time Out Chicago magazine 2nd year running. Ken is currently single (and ready to mingle) and lives in an undisclosed, secret location in Chicago and can be found competing with Troy over the number of tattoos that each of them has on his body! |
