The Terrell House has a rich and storied history dating back to 1880, when it was as a hotel originally built to replace a church that had been de-consecrated by the local authorities over rumors about some downright unwholesome activities. Within a few years, it had a reputation for attracting seedy and unpleasant people, from outlaws to thieves, and the manager, Edmure Terrell, did nothing to dissuade these rumors.
By the arrival of the 1883 World's Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World's Fair, it earned a different reputation: the old, family-owned criminal syndicates used it to broker peace treaties and seal accords of violence against their shared enemies, some of whom never left Chicago before the Fair had ended. The owner, Edmure Terrell, reportedly collected his percentage and put it all into the stock market.
That policy of collecting a percentage of ill-gotten gains accrued by the guests of the hotel came to a swift end with the arrival of the Wall Street Crash of 1929, which caused the owner's son, and inheritor of Terrell House, to cut the property into half and sell the remainder for enough money to keep it from falling into total disrepair and ruin.
For the next thirty-odd years, it lurched from hobby project to cash sink to money pit status and back again, and each generation grew to loathe it more than the one previous to them. Then came 1941 and the declaration of a World War, inducing an endless stream of boarders in need of lodgings, short and long-term alike, flooding the cash reserves handily and saving it ever after, all thanks to clever policy-making and strict rules.
Between 1941 and 1979 Terrell House provided housing, both temporarily and semi-permanent, to veterans and active-duty members of the US Armed Forces, until the infamous night of December 31st, 1979. That night, Clark E. Terrell, grandson of the original owner, took up a bayonet and stabbed his family, being his wife, Melody, and two sons, Pierre and Gene, to death before cutting his own throat as the police arrived. For two decades the house lay emptied and abandoned, until it was adopted anew by Clark's surviving daughter, Miette, who revived it as a themed "haunted hotel", and it saw a new life.
On July 4th, 2021, Miette Terrell was found dead in her bathtub, a victim of a burglar gone mad, and the case has been unsolved since then. In 2022, the house was once more adopted by a member of the Terrell family, this time Frank Terrell, the great-grandson of the founder himself. The locals aren't sure of what is going to happen next, though.
