ONE MORE NIGHT: Death at the Drake
Drivers in Chicago traveling southbound on Lake Shore Drive from the North Side always know when the Magnificent Mile is nearby. The Drake hotel’s pink neon moniker has lit up the top of Michigan Avenue since the Jazz Age, and its halls have been haunted, in fact, since the first guests arrived.
On its opening night, New Year’s Eve 1920, the Drake hotel hosted an unforgettable gala in the lavish Gold Coast Room, a sumptuous ballroom overlooking the sands of the city’s posh Oak Street Beach. All of Chicago was agog over the opulent event, but of the hundreds of well-heeled revelers present, only one is still talked about today: the beguiling but blighted Woman in Red. Don’t confuse her with Anna Sage--the Lady in Red who ratted out chum John Dillinger in 1939. The Drake’s red-garbed Woman was the decided victim in her own sorry yarnAccording to legend, the still-anonymous Woman--dressed in a red silk ball gown and escorted by her fiancé--had enjoyed that long-ago evening’s merry offerings, giddy with delight over her boyfriend’s proposal just a week earlier, on Christmas Eve. Though the couple shared many dances that evening and tipped numerous cocktails with friends and each other, the Woman at some point struck up a conversation with an old friend, and her man excused himself to smoke a cigar in the lobby.
A few minutes later, the orchestra struck the first notes of the couple’s favorite song, and the Woman quickly left her friend to find her fiancé, hoping to mark the start of their wedding year with a twirl to their beloved tune. Though much time had passed since his departure, a scan through the room revealed no trace of her love. Guessing that he must have met a colleague in the lobby and lingered, she began her way there, preparing to drag him out of the smoke-filled gathering of men and back to the party with her.
Passing the door of the Palm Court tea parlor across the hall, however, she heard the low but unmistakable sound of her lover’s voice, and she entered the room to find him. As she wound a path through the elegant tables, she suddenly stopped. A second voice had joined that of her fiancé: a breathy, feminine whisper, punctuated with the tinkle of sly laughter. Continuing through the maze of chairs and potted palms, she finally spotted them, in the furthest corner of the room, cloaked in shadows and engaged in a kiss.
Without a word, the Woman turned from the demoralizing scene. Gathering up the skirts of her scarlet gown, she rushed through the parlor and into the hall, the strains of the orchestra drowning her frenetic sobs. Entering the elevator at the end of the hall, she rode, alone, to the top floor of guest rooms, tearing down the length of them to find the stairs to the roof. A burst of tearful power brought her at last to the top, the freezing air of the year’s final night like a slap against her burning cheeks.
There, at the summit of the Drake, she scanned the beauty of the Chicago evening, with Lake Michigan to the North and East, stretching it seemed to the ends of the earth. The natural vista seemed to calm her for a moment, until she turned to look southwest. For out there, beyond the twinkling lights of the Loop skyscrapers, lay the home her lover had found for them, the home which was to be theirs and their children’s: the home, now, of nothing but nightmares.
Newly stricken, the Woman walked calmly to the edge of the roof and, with a final breath, gathered her crimson skirts about her one last time--and stepped off. Ever since, guests and staff have told many tales of the pitiable Woman in Red. Since her suicide that long-ago night, she has been spotted at each scene of her drama: in the Gold Coast Room, where she blindly celebrated a future that would never come; in the Palm Court tea parlor where she realized her lover’s heartbreaking deceit; on the top floor where she searched, panic-stricken, for the door out of the building; and finally, on the roof itself, where she almost found the strength to go on.
Curiously, no one has ever reported a run-in with the Woman in Red on the sidewalk where she actually met her end. Rather, she is encountered at the locations where her emotions ran strongest in the hour before death. Seasoned ghost hunters will not be surprised, as true hauntings are believed to be residual; that is, there are no actual spirits present. Rather the energy of the traumatic event creates an imprint on the location, like a video that may be viewed over and over, sometimes for centuries. Such was likely the case with the “ghost” of Ruth Steinhagen at the Edgewater Beach, and such may be the case of the “ghost” of the Woman in Red.