Our guides are real, serious, professional Chicago tour guides who have created, run, and consulted on tours for countless major local tour companies. But now and then they want to run a tour where they can dress in a hoodie and swear! The ticket page for any given tour will tell who the guide will be.

MANDY is a trained and certified guide who travels the country with groups of impressionable children. The manager at one of the big architectural boat tours told her she needed to smile more, so she doesn’t work there anymore. A Chicago native, her specialty is tours of Chicago women’s history. She’s on instagram, too. 

PATTI is a historian, educator, and artist living in Chicago, Illinois. Raised near Austin, Texas, Patti came to Chicago to pursue a degree in art history at School of the Art Institute of Chicago and stayed for the city’s rich history, friendly people, and balmy winters.  Patti is the creator, chief guide, and Executive Director of Chicago for Chicagoans, a nonprofit organization focused on connecting city residents to the history of their Chicago neighborhoods. She swears like a sailor and was one time critized in a Yelp review for being too opinionated about prostitutes, Capone, and the “Dearborn Masacre [sic]”.

ADAM is the author of more than a dozen Chicago history books, appears on TV all the time, and has been a tour guide for over a decade.  He’s run ghost tours, architectural boat tours, and a whole lot more for several companies before forming Mysterious Chicago. He lost one job for being disrespectful about Donald Trump, and nearly lost another for  flicking off a statue of Jefferson Davis on a D.C. tour. He regrets nothing. Check out his (family friendly) instagram and podcast!

LEYLA is a local Chicagoan with a plethora of knowledge and talents that aren’t always practical. She’s the creator of horror history site Dead in Chicago, an accomplished cellist and event planner, an amateur trapeze artist, and the premiere tour guide at the Chicago Theatre. When she isn’t perusing microfilm, Leyla is a coding queen creating sites like the Chicago Address Conversion Guide. She is too nice to get fired, but is proud to say old white men have been yelling at her about Trump since 2017.

BEN is a CTPA certified tour guide who’s been showing people the best of Chicago for four years. He enjoys Chicago Common bricks, alleys, and Art Deco. Ben enjoys reading increasingly specific books about Chicago, and his favorite tour guide is Adam Selzer. When he isn’t giving tours, he is talking about his wife, who none of us have ever met. Ben didn’t write this bio, but he swears she’s real.