This year’s Victorian Haunting: Escape from the Asylum invites you into a chilling, immersive night where the line between guest and participant disappears. An escapee has slipped into the city—and they’ve left a trail behind.

As you wander through shadowy streets, historic spaces, and eerie encounters, you’ll piece together clues, follow whispers, and uncover fragments of a story that grows darker with every step. But be warned… not everything—or everyone—is what it seems.

Will you find the truth before the night is over… or become part of it?

 Don your finest Victorian attire and be entered to win a $100 Discover Ottawa Gift Card in our Third Annual Costume Contest!

Tickets coming soon!

Fatal Footsteps: Tracing Ottawa’s Most Gruesome Crimes Tour

Enhance your outing with a 1-hour guided tour by Tom Aussem of the award-winning Awesome Ottawa Tours. Discover the dark side of local history with Fatal Footsteps: Tracing Ottawa’s Most Gruesome Crimes. A chillingly perfect companion to your night of mystery.

Step back into a time when justice was swift, suspects vanished without a trace, and the line between the accused and the innocent blurred under the gaslight. In the gritty days of the 1800s, Ottawa, Illinois, was no exception to the chaos of the Wild Middle West—where crime often went unanswered and death left whispers that still echo today.

You’ll visit local cemeteries and crime scenes where killers and the killed now rest uneasily beneath the soil. Hear haunting tales of unsolved murders, brutal frontier justice, and the desperate measures ordinary people took in desperate times. This journey into the darker corners of Ottawa’s history is not for the faint of heart.

Which fatal footsteps will you follow? Find out—if you dare.

Tours available at 2, 3:30, and 5 pm. Limited capacity.