In 1997, when Dave went to examine the the mechanics of his newly purchased home, the previous owner warned him, "You will hear things you won't understand; you will see things you won't understand." Dave (who asked that his last name not be used) didn't make much of the man's comments at the time. He thought the ominous warning referred to the massive electric and heating systems in the 1920s Waukegan rehab, which was originally an Illinois Bell booster station. Today, Dave says he knows what the man meant: the house is haunted.

When coaxed, the 31-year-old packaging professional will entertain you with stories of ghostly encounters in his home. Some are your garden variety spooky sights and sounds: footsteps in the night, lights and stereos turning on and off by themselves, misplaced furniture, fleeting shadowy figures caught out of the corner of an eye. Others are creepier. The piano playing itself and a stranger, swinging by the neck, in the basement laundry room. Still other incidents are downright unfathomable: laundry that mysteriously washed and folded itself and once altogether disappeared.

Dave, who lives with his girlfriend Nicole and a rottweiler named Mack, is pragmatic about the inexplicable incidents, even if all his acquaintances don't look at it in quite the same way. (At least one roommate, freaked by an upstairs phantom, moved out in a hurry). "It really doesn't bother me," Dave says with a shrug. "I just don't pay much attention to it anymore."

Dave's domicile may be spookier than most, but his belief that he lives in a haunted house is by no means unique. "I've heard thousands of these stories," says Ursula Bielski, a historian and ghosthunter living in Chicago. Bielski has made a career of investigating, writing, and lecturing on hauntings since publishing her 1997 book Chicago Haunts: Ghostly Lore of the Windy City (Lake Claremont Press.) "Whether there are actually dead people hanging around, I don't know, and I don't know if there is any way of finding out. That's what is so captivating about ghost stories."

The North Shore has its share of haunted houses and ghosts. One of the better known ghosts is the mysterious woman in orange, seen walking along a road at former army post Fort Sheridan, now an upscale housing development. There is also the ghost of an unknown drowning victim in Evanston, called the Aviator or Seaweed Charlie, who would haul his saturated frame out of Lake Michigan. Staggering between swerving cars, he would drag himself across Sheridan Road, then try to open the locked gates of Calvary Cemetery.

Some of the legendary haunted houses in the area include two that stood in Waukegan but have long since been razed — one was supposedly haunted by a world-famous oral surgeon who had practiced in his home. There was also the so-called mystery house in Evanston, which was said to be in the vicinity of what is now Northwestern University's Ryan Field. The house may have obtained its ghostly reputation because it was used for a time as an insane asylum.

Because it is that spooky time of year when cool dusk falls early and dead leaves crackle underfoot, we decided it would be fun to go on our own suburban haunted house tour. Just leave your skepticism at the front door....

The classic North Shore haunted house story is set — fittingly — in a Gothic castle commanding a high Lake Michigan blufftop. The tale begins in about 1913, when philanthropist John G. Shedd (of the Chicago aquarium) built a 33,000-square-foot English Tudor stone manse on 20 prime Lake Forest acres as a wedding gift for his daughter Laura and her husband, financier Charles H. Schweppe. The couple named the new estate Mayflower Place.

Inside the imposing house were ornate rooms with elaborate, hand-carved woodwork; outside were grand formal gardens with a swimming pool. The Schweppes hosted glamorous parties with glamorous guests, including American high rollers and European royalty.

Laura died from heart disease in 1937. She left the bulk of her estate to the couple's two children. Charles, emotionally distraught after his wife's death, ended his own life in 1941. According to an oft-repeated version of the story, before he shot himself he scrawled a note: "I've been awake all night. It is terrible."

After Schweppe's death, the mansion stood abandoned for nearly 50 years. The formidable house became the stuff of legends (and a popular teen party spot). Tales spread of Charles' tormented spirit roaming the mansion's rooms and corridors, haunting the master bedroom. The stories gained momentum when the estate's caretaker, who reported seeing Schweppe's apparition, would only enter the main house during daylight. One pane in a window overlooking the front circular drive was said to be eternally clean, even though the other panes were grimy. A refined-looking older man was seen in the unoccupied house peering through that very window by a witness on the driveway. Did perhaps the ghost of Charles Schweppe clean the pane so he could have a clear view of approaching visitors?

Mayflower Place was purchased in the late 1980s by current owner Donna Denten, who restored the once-gloomy house to the builders' spectacular intent. Although the mansion was once exorcised by a priest, weird spectacles still occur, says Denten. Lights inexplicably switch on and off. A two-person elevator sometimes stalls for no apparent reason, and an organ — brought up from the basement — has been heard playing, but no earthly musician sits at its keyboard.

Also strange is the three-toed, cloven footprint in the center of the cement on the third floor. How the imprint got there no one can say. A man bearing a strong resemblance to old photographs of Charles Schweppe was seen walking along the street near the house — it was the spats the dapper gentleman wore which garnered particular notice. As for the mystery window pane, it is clean now, along with the rest of the mansion's windows. If Charles Schweppe indeed visits his home after death — as he is reputed to have vowed in life — surely he is pleased with his home's reincarnation.

Before Dave bought his Waukegan house in 1997 it, too, had fallen victim to vacancy, but only for three years. The old government building, with its 18-inch-thick brick walls and steel fire doors, was renovated by previous owners who created a contemporary, loft-like space. Still, it needed some sprucing up. Dave repainted and designed a comfortable sitting room where he placed an antique grand piano.

Dave says this is the piano that, on several occasions, played by itself. He once had a roommate who worked at night. Sometimes, when Dave came home from his daytime job, his roommate would mention, "Your piano was playing today." Nicole says she has heard it during the day. Other times, the strains were played in the middle of the night, when no one was around.

It was also during night hours when the phantom footfalls were heard. The routine would begin with sound of the heavy back door opening, then slamming shut. Then there was the sound of footsteps, which stopped near the front of the building at the basement door. That door would open and then close with a loud metal clang as the mystery nightwalker descended the basement stairs. No one was ever seen in the basement and all doors remained locked. Was the ghostwalker a long-dead Illinois Bell employee, eternally responsible for the old booster station's works?

A room Dave hasn't redecorated is the basement laundry, the former employee washroom. It is an institutional room with a single toilet, urinal and shower stall. The paint is peeling. Laundry machines stand beneath a tarnished mirror. It is here the most frightening scenes occurred: a shocked visitor turned the corner on the basement steps to see an apparent suicide victim hanging by the neck in the doorway.

The apparition suddenly vanished. (Dave, who didn't learn about the incident until much later, once saw the same thing.)

Dave has a habit of letting his dirty wash pile up on the laundry room floor. One day he dumped dirty clothes and returned 20 minutes later to find no less than four loads of laundry washed — and folded! There was no one else home at the time. "I still can't believe that one, not at all," Dave says. "There wasn't enough time to do one load."

He says he was pretty ticked off when he had to replace a dozen pairs of unwashed work jeans that went missing and never returned. Evidently, Dave's way with dirty clothes annoyed some unseen housekeeper.

Dave does not know why his house is haunted. Former Illinois Bell employees he's talked with say they don't know of any deaths in the building. The disturbances tend to take place after a renovation project, a party or when a new roommate moves in. Most roommates (he's had a few) claim to have experienced strange encounters — an overnight guest once left abruptly after hearing disembodied voices — but others heard nothing. Mack, the dog, doesn't appear to notice anything untoward, but two cats often acted stranger than usual. "I never, ever, believed in haunted houses, until I moved in here," says Nicole, a self-described scaredy-cat who has heard her name called when no one else was home. "It's weird, but nothing really bad ever happens."

Things have died down (pun intended) in the past couple months, but Dave hopes his ghosts haven't cleared out for good. "I'm used to them. I like having them around," he says. "They were here before me."

Dave recognizes that his ghost stories certainly make haunting dinner conversation.

Laurie Grano lives in Libertyville, in an old house where a spirited soul or two has been thought to visit.