Weird & unusual things to do in Chicago
The genuinely offbeat side of Chicago: 69 hand-vetted hidden spots — oddity shops, hidden bars, haunted history, sound baths, weird outdoor finds — built for an unusual date night, a weird afternoon, or showing a visitor a side of the city they'd never find alone. Like Malliway Bros. Magic & Witchcraft, Occult Bookstore, Alchemy Arts. Local secrets even locals miss — you didn't hear it from us.
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Malliway Bros. Magic & Witchcraft
Two brothers with deep working knowledge of European folk magic run this Rogers Park shop, stocking spell oil…
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Occult Bookstore
Founded in 1918 by occultist D.G. Nelson, this is plausibly the oldest dedicated occult shop in the country a…
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Alchemy Arts
Open since 1989, Alchemy Arts bills itself as Chicago's most complete occult and metaphysical supply store, a…
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Sideshow Gallery
Opened in 2013 by artist Anne Elliott and tattoo-shop co-owner Cheri Basak, this Western Avenue storefront is…
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Botanica Adde Eggun
Established in 1991, this West Side botanica is a working source for Santeria, Lucumi, Ifa, Palo and Espiriti…
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Augustine's Spiritual Goods
A South Side spiritual boutique that calls itself 'an apothecary for the soul,' specializing in hand-made hoo…
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Congress Plaza Hotel
Opened in 1893 as the Auditorium Annex to house World's Columbian Exposition visitors, this 14-story Michigan…
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Couch Tomb, Lincoln Park
This fifty-ton limestone mausoleum is the last above-ground trace of Lincoln Park's origins as a city cemeter…
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Graceland Cemetery and Arboretum
Founded in 1860, Graceland is the resting place of Chicago titans and the source of two of the city's most fa…
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Jane Addams Hull-House Museum
Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr founded this settlement house in 1889, and beyond its serious social-reform…
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Red Lion Pub
This British-style pub sits on ground that was once a 19th-century burial area for cholera victims and Confed…
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Resurrection Cemetery (Resurrection Mary)
The front gates of this sprawling Catholic cemetery are ground zero for Resurrection Mary, Chicago's most fam…
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Bachelor's Grove Cemetery
Founded around 1840 and now an abandoned, overgrown burial ground enclosed by the Rubio Woods forest preserve…
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Woolly Mammoth Antiques & Oddities
A crammed curiosity cabinet started in 2010 by a couple who were gifted a set of human teeth, this Andersonvi…
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The Insect Asylum
Founder Nina Salem turned a lifetime of collecting into this Avondale specimen museum, which opened a brick-a…
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International Museum of Surgical Science
North America's only museum devoted to the history of surgery occupies a stately 1917 lakefront mansion model…
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Covet Oddities & Macabre Gallery
Run by Ben and Erica Santine, who moved their collection from Austin to Logan Square, Covet is part oddities…
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Andy's Art, Antiques & Oddities
This LGBTQ+-owned shop mixes the beautiful, the bizarre, and the just plain cool, blending antique furniture…
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Busy Beaver Button Museum
Tucked inside the working Busy Beaver Button Co. factory, this free single-obsession museum preserves over 25…
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Intuit Art Museum (Henry Darger Room)
After a $10 million renovation, this museum dedicated to self-taught and outsider art reopened in May 2025 ac…
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Chicago Fed Money Museum
On the ground floor of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, this free single-subject museum is entirely about…
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Sanfilippo Place de la Musique
Snack-food magnate Jasper Sanfilippo (of Fisher Nuts) spent over 30 years assembling what is widely called th…
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Oakland Museum & Garden
Self-taught sculptor Milton Mizenburg Jr. spent over two decades carving tree stumps and salvaged wood into t…
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National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts & Culture
Housed in the historic Humboldt Park stables at the western gateway of Paseo Boricua, this is the only freest…
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WNDR Museum
A walk-through immersive museum of 20-plus interactive installations blending art, light, and technology in t…
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Color Factory Chicago
Tucked into the lower level of Willis Tower, this 25,000-square-foot experience strings together 14-plus walk…
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Chicago Mosaic School
Founded in 2005 by mosaic artist Karen Ami, this is North America's premier institution devoted to the mosaic…
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Eye Care Indian (Muffler Man)
A fiberglass 'Indian Brave' muffler man stands on the flat roof of a low storefront, peering down Pulaski Roa…
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Gulliver in Wonderland (Hector Duarte's House)
Muralist Hector Duarte wrapped his own Pilsen home-studio in a nearly 3,500-square-foot painting that turns t…
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Leaning Tower of Niles
A half-scale replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa rises 94 feet over a Chicago suburb, complete with a delibe…
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The Spindle (Car Kebab) at Paisan's
The original 50-foot "Spindle" that impaled eight cars on a spike in a Berwyn parking lot was torn down in 20…
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Gemini Giant
A helmeted fiberglass astronaut cradling a rocket, the Gemini Giant is one of the original Space-Race-era 'Mu…
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American Giants Museum & Bunyon's Hot Dog Giant
This small Route 66 museum is devoted entirely to the 1960s-70s 'Muffler Men' fiberglass giants, with restore…
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Shit Fountain
On the corner of a quiet residential block, a bronze coil shaped unmistakably like a mound of dog excrement s…
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Garden of the Phoenix & Yoko Ono's Sky Landing
On a wooded island in the middle of Jackson Park sits a traditional Japanese garden whose roots trace to the…
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Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool
Behind a Prairie-style stone gate on a busy Lincoln Park sidewalk hides a garden most passersby never realize…
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Montrose Point Bird Sanctuary (The Magic Hedge)
A 150-yard tangle of shrubs and trees on a lakefront point that draws an absurd density of migratory birds, o…
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Promontory Point
A man-made peninsula jutting into Lake Michigan, ringed by the lakefront's last surviving original limestone-…
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Bahá'í House of Worship Gardens
A white temple that rises 190 feet over Lake Michigan, its lacework dome looking like carved stone. The concr…
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Indian Boundary Park
A small Tudor-revival park in West Ridge whose 1929 field house is studded with eccentric details: a carved I…
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The Drifter
Hidden in the basement of the Green Door Tavern -- one of the few wooden-frame buildings put up before Chicag…
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Bordel
Tucked above the Spanish restaurant Mama Delia, a hidden door in the entryway opens to leopard-print stairs c…
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Booze Box
Tucked in the basement beneath the Sushi Dokku restaurant, this dark Japanese-style underground bar is reache…
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The Office at The Aviary
A clubby, antique-and-art-filled speakeasy hidden behind an unmarked door beneath Grant Achatz and Nick Kokon…
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Three Dots and a Dash
Reached only through a discreet River North alley off Hubbard Street, this subterranean tiki temple is named…
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Dorian's Through the Record Shop
The street front is a working vinyl record shop with a functional listening booth, and the bar and restaurant…
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Lightwriters Neon
A rare public-facing neon studio whose whole mission is teaching the disappearing craft of bending glass tube…
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Ignite Glass Studios
A full hot shop in a West Loop industrial building where you work one-on-one beside a professional glassblowe…
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Firebird Community Arts
A warehouse-turned-studio nonprofit founded in 1990 that uses glassblowing and ceramics as community healing,…
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Fire Arts Center of Chicago (Bladesmithing & Forging)
A gritty metal-arts shop where forging classes put a hammer in your hand at the anvil and fire. The flagship…
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Aroma Workshop
Chicago's original custom perfumery, running for over three decades, where a trained perfumer guides you thro…
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Galloping Ghost Arcade
This is the largest video arcade in the United States, packing well over 800 cabinets into a maze of darkened…
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Logan Arcade
Logan Arcade is the city's beloved 21-and-up tavern-arcade, with a front room of restored cabinets and a back…
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The Royal Palms Shuffleboard Club
Royal Palms is a 20,000-square-foot indoor shuffleboard club built like a kitschy tropical cruise ship, with…
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Fleetwood Roller Rink
Fleetwood is one of the last classic roller rinks left in Chicagoland, open since 1957 and still rolling on i…
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Replay Lincoln Park
Replay is a free-play barcade with 60-plus vintage cabinets, pinball, skeeball, and bubble hockey, all includ…
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Headquarters Beercade River North
One of Chicago's original arcade bars, Headquarters lines its walls with around 70 vintage free-to-play cabin…
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Doane Observatory at Adler Planetarium
Tucked behind the Adler on a spit of land jutting into Lake Michigan sits the largest-aperture telescope avai…
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Dearborn Observatory (Northwestern University)
Inside a domed 1888 limestone building on Northwestern's lakefront campus lives an 18.5-inch refractor that w…
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Music Box Theatre Midnight Movies
This atmospheric 1929 movie palace still has a ceiling rigged to mimic a twilight sky with drifting clouds an…
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Wateriders Moonlight Paddle
After dark the Chicago River empties of tour boats and Wateriders sends small groups out in kayaks under the…
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ChiTown Drive-In
One of the only actual drive-in movie experiences inside Chicago city limits, set up in the parking lot outsi…
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Palos Preserves (World's Largest Urban Night Sky Place)
Roughly 30 minutes from downtown, this 6,600-acre sweep of Cook County forest is the largest Urban Night Sky…
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Cernan Earth and Space Center
A small, unflashy planetarium on the Triton College campus named for Apollo 17 commander Gene Cernan, the las…
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Volo Museum
What started as a 1960s collector-car dealership has sprawled into a 35-acre warren where Hollywood movie car…
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Forevertron / World of Dr. Evermor
The Forevertron is a 50-foot-tall, 300-ton scrap-metal contraption that the late demolition expert Tom Every…
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House on the Rock
Alex Jordan's house perched atop a chimney of rock unfolds into one of the strangest attractions in America:…
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Yerkes Observatory
Called the birthplace of modern astrophysics, this 1897 lakeside observatory houses the largest refracting te…
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Dickeyville Grotto
Between 1924 and 1930 Father Mathias Wernerus encrusted an entire churchyard in broken glass, seashells, colo…
Unusual things to do in Chicago — FAQ
What are some unusual things to do in Chicago?
69 hand-vetted weird spots — like Malliway Bros. Magic & Witchcraft, Occult Bookstore, Alchemy Arts — plus oddity shops, hidden bars, haunted history, sound baths, and offbeat outdoor finds. Every one is real and sourced, not a top-ten landmark.
Where can you go for a weird date night in Chicago?
Try Malliway Bros. Magic & Witchcraft, Occult Bookstore, Alchemy Arts — strange-but-real spots that make a memorable date. Filter by neighborhood, vibe, or how far you'll drive: in town, nearby, or a day trip.
What's a weird thing to do in Chicago tonight or this weekend?
For tonight, filter to "in town" and low-key picks; for the weekend, the day-trip ring opens up genuinely strange spots a short drive out. Start with Malliway Bros. Magic & Witchcraft, Occult Bookstore, Alchemy Arts — and sort by how far you're willing to go.
Are there free or cheap weird things to do in Chicago?
Yes — 35 Chicago spots are free or low-cost, like International Museum of Surgical Science, Busy Beaver Button Museum, Chicago Fed Money Museum. Roadside oddities, public art, and outdoor curiosities usually cost nothing.
How is this different from the usual Chicago tourist lists?
We skip the landmarks everyone knows. An agentic research system digs up the genuinely hidden, offbeat spots — the local secrets even locals miss — and verifies each against real sources before it makes the list.