🔮 NEW ISSUE: The Occult

Cholo-goth burlesque, cults, Coven, and more! [View this email in your browser]( | [chicagoreader.com]( by Maja Stachnik|October 17, 2024 Good morning—our inaugural Occult Issue is out now, just in time for spooky season! This special issue is one that we’ve been eagerly awaiting to put together and share with our readers. Our social media engagement associate (and self-proclaimed Reader Resident Witch) Charli Renken wrote about it in [this week’s staff note]( complete with a a full-moon spell for Chicago Reader readers. Read on to find out where the bodies in Chicago are unexpectedly buried (literally), plus some witchy and Halloween-y theater reviews. [an illustration of a woman planting plants with stars as the flower]( [Credit: Anna Wagner for Chicago Reader] [Scrapyard dead]( Battle of Waterloo veteran Andreas von Zirngibl’s final resting place is located in a scrapyard among recycling wreckage and construction equipment, where he’s been allowed him to rest for decades. This isn’t the only place in Chicago where the dead live unexpectedly: scrapyards, storage spaces, parks, galleries, theaters, museums, churches, and more are home to countless bodies. Just the Field Museum is the resting place of more than four thousand people, and there are an estimated 12,000 corpses under Lincoln Park—unaccounted for bodies that were supposedly moved out of the park when it was the old city cemetery but never seemed to make it to new resting places. [READ MORE](  NEWS & POLITICS - Kacie Faith Kress describes a “bacchanal” hidden in the back of Simone’s Bar in Pilsen, the brick and chalkboard room adorned with a dark metal chandelier tangled with glowing hot pink webs and jarringly cut clips of horror movies on a projected screen as gothic EDM-rock blares. The makeshift stage soon features [cholo-goth burlesque—regular performances put on by Obscura, the burlesque group]( founded by Sio Bast in 2021. “I always had these feelings like I didn’t belong [in Chicago’s mostly white goth scene]—and if I don’t belong in this place that was created for people who don’t belong, there’s something wrong with that,” said Bast. “I want to see more people of color, queer folks, and goth parties, so I’m going to book them and highlight them. These are people who deserve to be awarded and celebrated.”  THEATER - Scholar Kay Daly is currently teaching a course at Newberry Library, [“When Shall These Three Meet Again?” Witches on Stage](. The course’s reading list includes familiar classic titles like Macbeth and Arthur Miller’s The Crucible alongside more obscure plays, like The Witch of Edmonton, written around 1621 by William Rowley, Thomas Dekker, and John Ford (and possibly others). Daly (and her students) make the connection between a belief in witchcraft and the conspiracy theories that seem to govern current politics: it’s a way of making sense of the world that places blame on others, feeding feelings of self-importance. “It can’t be as simple as bad things happen to people. It has to be ‘a cabal has come together to thwart me.’” - Two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist and Wilmette native Sarah Ruhl sets out to correct the record put forth by The Crucible about the Salem witch trials in [Becky Nurse of Salem](. Set in 2016–17 and in flashbacks to an imagined 1692, the play follows Becky Nurse, a descendant of Salem victim Rebecca Nurse, as she raises her teenage granddaughter while navigating intergenerational trauma and the language of “witch hunts.” The show is directed by longtime Ruhl collaborator Polly Noonan, running through November 16 in its midwest premiere at Shattered Globe Theatre. - Two television universes have unexpectedly collided on Chopin Theatre’s mainstage with [The Golden Girls Meet the Skooby Don’t Gang: The Mystery of the Haunted Bush]( funny and raunchy new installment in Hell in a Handbag’s popular Golden Girls parody franchise. The details of the mystery don’t make too much sense, but the wisecracks and high-energy slapstick just keep coming: excellent direction from Frankie Leo Bennett and a fully game cast make this a must-see. [Matt Simonette]  CONTESTS & GIVEAWAYS As part of Chicago Humanities Festival, Lewis Moore explores a glaring sports discrepancy: while the NFL has long been racially integrated, quarterbacks were exclusively white for many years. Moore’s new book tells the story of Doug Williams and Vince Evans, two pioneering Black quarterbacks: one became the first Black quarterback to both start and win a Super Bowl, and one “couldn’t make it in the racist world of the NFL.” [Enter to win a pair of tickets to the November 9 event at The Study at University of Chicago!](  BEHIND-THE-SCENES To celebrate the first-ever Occult Issue, we’re partnering with [Avondale’s horror-themed coffee shop The Brewed]( to bring you the Häxan! Available now through Halloween, order this limited edition cardamom and maple London Fog made especially for us—a portion of the proceeds will be donated to the Reader. You can also pick up a print copy of the Occult Issue there while supplies last. It’s the perfect excuse to curl up with a newspaper and a warm beverage—be sure to pick up a Blu-ray on your way out! 📰 LATEST ISSUE: OCCULT ISSUE 📰 [READ ONLINE]( | [COVER]( | [DOWNLOAD PDF]( [Facebook icon]( [Instagram icon]( [X icon]( [LinkedIn icon]( [Threads icon]( [YouTube icon]( [logo] You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from the Chicago Reader. Want fewer emails from us? [Click here to choose what you want us to send you](. Or, [unsubscribe from all Reader emails](. We’ll miss you! [Sign up for emails from the Chicago Reader]( | [Forward this e-mail to a friend]( © 2024 Chicago Reader. All rights reserved. Chicago Reader, 2930 S. Michigan Ave., Suite 102, Chicago, IL 60616