Ethyl's Party

Ethyl’s Party

2600 S. Wentworth Ave.

Chicago, IL. 60616

773-276-0961

Tito’s on the original edge of Chinatown was at one time a funeral home, Coletta’s around 1908 which served the Italians in the area of Chinatown . The funeral director lived in the upstairs apartments. As the neighborhood changed in the 1960s and ‘70s, the Italians moved elsewhere and “Tito’s On The Edge” came into being. It was so named because it is located on the edge of Chinatown . The restaurant operated by brothers opened up in 1995 and the regulars are local Italians and Chinese. However, one thing is certain; the place is truly haunted by those who frequent the place.

Owner Bobby Tito, always felt uncomfortable about the place. I guess part of that could be its former incarnation as a funeral home. That would surely give the creeps to most. The back room was the embalming room and downstairs is where bodies awaited, in cold storage, to be properly prepared for wakes.

Television sets display a mind of their own by constantly changing channels. The set is not defective in any way because it’s happened to both the televisions in the bar area.

Apparitions have been reported including one by co-owner Russ Tito in the summer of 1995. While sleeping one night in the bar after working a number of overtime hours, he awoke and observed a figure dressed in a trench coat walk from the bar to the side door of the establishment. Described as an older man, not hazy or filmy but perfectly solid, the phantom disappeared near the stage. This area was used for wakes when it was a funeral home.

A bartender had her own sighting late at night just after the bar was closed for the evening. She was sitting with a friend reading when a huge cloud of smoke, white in color, drifted from one end of the bar to the other. Her sighting was different from the owners as this cloudy mist didn’t have a recognizable form to it. However, it disappeared in the same area as the owner’s ghost report. Occasionally shadowy figures are seen by patrons in the hallway and vanish quite rapidly.

Perhaps these ghosts have something to do with the building while it was being used as a funeral parlor? Or, are they still visiting their spectral deceased even though the wake area no longer exists? No one knows for sure.