David Cowan is a native Chicagoan and hails originally from the city’s West Side. He is the co-owner of Chicago Hauntings. An accomplished journalist and writer, David is co-author (with John Kuenster) of the best- selling and critically acclaimed book To Sleep With the Angels: The Story of a Fire (Ivan R. Dee, Inc.), considered the seminal and authoritative work on the 1958 Our Lady of the Angels school fire in Chicago. After its 1996 publication, the book was made into an Emmy-award winning television documentary entitled Angels Too Soon by PBS station WTTW in Chicago.
David also authored Great Chicago Fires, Historic Blazes That Shaped a City (Lake Claremont Press), a non-fiction anthology documenting Chicago’s unique and legendary fire history, focusing on fires that resulted in important changes to national fire safety laws and others of significant social and historical importance. David’s writings and reviews have also been published by major newspapers and magazines, including the New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Magazine, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Cleveland Plain-Dealer, New Orleans Times-Picayune, Reader’s Digest, U.S. Catholic, the Associated Press, and a host of smaller publications. He also contributed to the Encyclopedia of Chicago History, published in 2004 by the Newberry Library of Chicago.