James Dunn is an actor, writer, and improviser based in Los Angeles. Originally from Omaha, Nebraska, he graduated from the University of Nebraska with a degree in theatre. He was the host of Wooden Breakfast, a long-running comedy and music radio show on WLUW Chicago. James is a founder of the critically acclaimed Chicago theatre company The Plagiarists. He has trained with Playground Theatre Chicago and iO West. He can be seen doing improvisation across venues in Los Angeles. James was recently named a member of the prestigious LA group, The Groundlings Sunday Company.
Rock Island Train Crash
On the night of August 10, 1894, a passenger train carrying 33 people raced through the darkness toward Lincoln. It would never reach its destination. As Locomotive 213 crossed a towering trestle above Salt Creek, the rails suddenly gave way. The engine and passenger cars plunged forty feet into the creek bed below, erupting into an enormous fire. Trapped passengers screamed from inside the burning wreckage while helpless witnesses could do little more than watch. Eleven people would die that night. But this was no accident. Investigators discovered that someone had deliberately tampered with the tracks. A mysterious man carrying a lantern was reportedly seen disappearing into the darkness—and more than 130 years later, no one can say with certainty who sent that train to its fiery end. Today, deep within what is now Wilderness Park, visitors still report screams among the trees, the sound of twisting metal, shadowy figures moving through the brush…and something that sounds remarkably like a train wreck happening all over again. Location Directions: (at your own risk) Take the Rock Island Trail north for .2 miles and then .3 miles west across the GPTN bridge over the railroad. Then take the ramp down to the Jamaica North Trail, where the Trail Trek sign is posted.
Hell's Gate
Deep inside Wilderness Park stand the remnants of a place that once drew thousands of visitors. Today, the crowds are gone, the buildings have vanished beneath the woods, and what remains has earned a far more sinister name: Hell’s Gate. Those who venture beyond its arches after dark describe something deeply unsettling. Footsteps follow from behind when no one is there. Children’s laughter drifts through the trees. Chains rattle somewhere in the darkness. And the deeper you walk, the harder it becomes to remember exactly which trail brought you in. There are old stories about missing children here. And about a mysterious woman the locals called the Witch of the Woods. They say you can still hear her chains. The frightening part is when they start getting closer.
Hobbitsville
Behind the walls of a beautiful Sheridan Boulevard mansion once hid a strange little kingdom of twisting pathways, dark ponds, stone caves, and trees so thick they seemed to swallow the house after sunset. Lincoln kids gave it a name: Hobbitsville. And for decades, they dared one another to climb the wall and find out what was hiding inside. Then came the stories. A little boy who disappeared. A child pulled beneath the water. A mother who supposedly left the gate unlocked, waiting for someone who never came home. And perhaps creepiest of all, people claimed that if you stared into the trees at night, in just the right light, the branches formed the unmistakable face of a child staring back. Most of Hobbitsville's legends can be dismissed as teenage folklore. But one night, after a fresh snowfall, something left footprints behind.
Lake Street Lake
Most people who walk through Rudge Memorial Park have no idea they're walking across the bottom of a vanished lake. Long before the streets and houses arrived, water collected here from Salt Creek, freezing solid in winter and drawing generations of neighborhood children onto its ice. The lake is gone now. But some say it never completely left. As the weather turns cold, people have reported the sound of water moving beneath dry ground, strange figures near the old shoreline, and an uneasy feeling that seems to rise from somewhere under their feet. There are stories about what happened here—stories of violence, death, and people who appeared where they shouldn't have been. Walk far enough into the old lake bed after dark, and you may feel it too.
Hear James and the rest of Lincoln's voices on the tour.