Dark Chicago    The City    Neighborhoods    Southwest Side      West Englewood

“West Englewood’s where you learn to keep your head down and your mouth shut—unless you’re ready to throw down.”

West Englewood sits just west of Englewood proper, separated only by Ashland Avenue—but spiritually, it’s a world apart. This is a neighborhood built on resilience and hollow promises: rows of weatherworn flats, liquor stores with cages over the registers, and churches that burn more candles than they’ve got pews. It’s slightly more stable than its eastern sibling, but that just means the pressure’s deeper. Tension lives in the bricks here—between old families and new gangs, street prophets and spirit-slingers, and cops that only show up when someone bleeds too loud.
The Monarchs runs strong through these blocks, but they’re not the only ones watching. The Veil cuts close in West Englewood, particularly around Sacred Row where churches, storefront sanctuaries, and Veil-marked shrines sit shoulder to shoulder. It’s one of the few places where the spirit world and organized faith clash openly—and where desperate souls find salvation, damnation, or something worse.

Neighborhoods

Loomis Flats

These long, flat blocks run behind the old tracks and into the open guts of the South Side. The backyards tell the real stories here—patched fences, half-dug gardens, blood circles chalked over with hopscotch. The kids grow up quick, and crews stake their turf young. Shootings don’t make the paper anymore. The police drive slower here, and sometimes not at all.

Sacred Row

This stretch is thick with churches—small, strange, and run out of every third storefront. Some preach from the Bible, some from memory, and a few from books that shouldn’t exist. Street preachers share corners with Veil-touched mystics. Tensions run high—especially during full moons or blackout nights. The CPD Arcane Division has eyes here, but not enough of them.

Notes

The Monarchs recruit teens out of Loomis Flats for hit-and-run scores across the South Side

Several “Veil junkies” squat near Sacred Row, chanting glyphs and smoking charred powder

Holy Word and two rival storefront churches reportedly had a silent Veil battle last spring

The freight spur is rumored to “loop”—a train disappears on Track B and shows up across town

The Bleeding Sign mark appears to weep real blood once a week—samples dissolve in daylight

CPD Arcane Division operates a passive monitor hidden in a bus stop ad board

Several BCN-affiliated spirit-workers warn that something “beneath” the neighborhood is waking

A teenage girl seen walking into the 49th & Wood house has been missing for weeks—her cousin swears he saw her on the roof three nights later, barefoot and wrong

The Veil and the streets wrestle for dominance here—and no one’s winning. Ghosts, gods, and gang colors all bleed into the mortar.

Wealth
Security & Safety
Criminal Influence
Occult Influence

African-American	68%
Irish-American	9%
Lithuanian-American	6%
Polish-American	5%
Other	12%

South Side

Southwest Side

West Englewood

Locations

Holy Word Baptist Church – A Veil-touched congregation center and safe house for the spiritually afflicted
Veil Mark #197 (“The Bleeding Sign”) – An unremovable sigil that pulses with Veil energy and biological residue
New Life Shelter – Offers sanctuary to runaways, Veil-marked youth, and street prophets
49th & Wood “No-Go” House – Boarded-up two-flat with constant activity despite no legal residents
Hollow Stop Freight Spur – Used for illicit traffic, rumored to cross through space
Corners of Power – Intersections where BCN and Veil-aligned preachers collide over who owns the block
Loomis Flats
Corners of Power – BCN pushers on one end, Church-watch elders on the other
49th & Wood “No-Go” House – Abandoned two-flat where lights appear with no power
Hollow Stop Freight Spur – Graffiti-ridden railyard used by the Lads and BCN for arms drops Sacred Row
Holy Word Baptist Church – Community stronghold and secret Veil sanctuary
Veil Mark #197 (“The Bleeding Sign”) – A weeping symbol on brick that’s resisted exorcism
New Life Shelter – A safe house for runaways, spirit-marked, and those escaping deeper things

Crews