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Devil's Bake Oven - Grand Tower, Il

Here is the most infamous house in Grand Tower and one of the most infamous houses in southern Illinois.

The house's proximity to the ominous rocky outcropping known as devil's bake oven is the perfect recipe for a ghost story -- and so a ghost story there is!

There a few versions of the story, but here is a brief version of the one that I know best:

During the mid-19th century, the owner of the house was a big wig at the iron furnaces in town. He had a daughter who secretly had a relationship with one of the workers at those furnaces. Once the father found out about the romance, he became furious because he couldn't allow his daughter to become so to close one of the rough and rugged workers. He ended up forbidding her from ever seeing the fellow again. The agony of this proved to be too much for the grief-stricken daughter and she committed suicide by throwing herself from the rock, falling 100 feet below to the banks of the Mississippi river. It is now said that her ghost has been seen on and around the bake oven during certain nights.

Portions of the foundation of the house still remain to this day.