The city of Chicago is, as you might know, an old one. It is filled with old buildings and old architecture. It is also a city with a very violent history. It is the city of Al Capone. It is the city where the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre happened. It is the same city of John Wayne Gacy and Richard Speck. It is the city with the legendary cow that allegedly started a huge fire and the location of one of the worst shipping disasters on the Great Lakes.
In short, it is a huge city, with a lot of people and a lot of immigrants. It is a city with a rich, deep history. It is a city with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tales of things and places that are haunted.
I am not one to say for sure something is haunted or not. I spent the night at a supposedly haunted mansion in St. Louis. I wrote a book about haunted places in St. Louis called “Ghosts of St. Louis: The Lemp Mansion and Other Eerie Tales.” I have suddenly become a “ghost guy.” Yes, I have seen a couple of weird things, but I cannot say for sure if there is such a thing as a ghost.
Many of the best-known haunted places in Chicago are located downtown. This stands to reason, of course, because that is the oldest part of the city. This is where Al and his friends spent their days and nights. The older portions of the city, as you might surmise, have more tales of hauntings than other places.
However, why should the city have all of the fun? There is a huge suburban population around here. Some of those suburbs are also fairly old. What about them? What ghosties and beasties supposedly lurk in the suburbs and makes those suburban homes go bump in the night?
It turns out there are quite a few haunted places in the ‘burbs. I have decided to talk about three of them. I am cheating with one, however, because one is reputedly no longer haunted and the building that supposedly as has been torn down. Still, these are my top three Chicago suburban haunted places.
The Cemetery
Most cemeteries are a natural place for folklore and, in particular, ghost-lore. It seems that any place with that many dead people, is just bound to be a spot where ghosts are spotted. Chicago has its share of very old cemeteries.
There are cemeteries in the city with local celebrities. Alphonse Capone is located at one, for example. There is one cemetery with a hooded statue that will supposedly drive anyone who looks beneath the hood utterly insane. Then there is the cemetery on the south side of the city that is reputedly the home of “Resurrection Mary.”
None of these places, however, is nearly as haunted or fallen into legend as that of the small, abandoned and disintegrating cemetery known as Bachelor’s Grove. It is a cemetery that was part of a very tiny community located about twenty miles from Chicago in an area now known as Midlothian, just off of the Midlothian Turnpike, that was known as Batchelor’s Grove. There appears to have been people living in the area going back as far as the 1820s.
There is much debate over when the cemetery first began operating as such. What is known is that, at some point, at a location just off of the Turnpike, near what is now known as Rubio Woods, on 143rd street and just East of Ridgeland Avenue became a cemetery. The cemetery was always very small, almost intimate, and it was right next to a quarry pond.
According to legend, there was a time when the community around Bachelor’s Grove would come and picnic with deceased relatives. They would spend the entire day there. They would swim in the pond and fish there. In short, the cemetery was a very active part of every day life for the people who called Bachelor’s Grove home.
Things began to change, however. At some point the Midlothian Turnpike was changed. The road no longer went directly past the cemetery. The area of Bachelor’s Grove simply ceased to exist. People moved away. The residents moved onto other places or passed away.
Even before this, the cemetery had been abandoned. The last full burial there happened in the 60s. The last person buried there in any fashion was in 1989 when a cremated person had his ashes added to his family plot. The hidden nature of the cemetery made it a natural attraction to young people. It became popular to walk the wooded roads in the middle of the night, drink, party and vandalize the headstones.
So, these days, Bachelor’s Grove is an abandoned little cemetery, hidden in the woods, near a muck-covered pond. It is, in the shortest terms, a place perfect for rumors of ghosts and hauntings. In fact, many consider Bachelor’s Grove to be one of the, if not the, most-haunted place in the entire state of Illinois.
In many ways the state of the cemetery these days is rather sad. It continues to be a destination of local teenagers and vandals. Very little of the actual headstones are left. Often there are just the bases of what were once more elaborate monuments. Paths are overgrown and the weeds, at least these days, have been left to grow and overgrow much of the cemetery. There is, in fact, a fence that is chained and locked around the entire area. However, ghost-hunters and those looking for a scare have pried open the gates despite the locks. Many believe most of the monuments are at the bottom of the pond, tossed there by vandals. It has also been the site, reportedly, of people attempting various satanic rituals on top of a place where some have attempted to do some grave robbing.
Bachelor’s Grove is rather unique in that, among the hauntings, there is a legend of a phantom house in Bachelor’s Grove. This is usually spotted along the path that leads from the turnpike into the cemetery. Many have said they saw a beautiful white house, complete with picket fence and porch swing, sitting beside the road. People are not seen in the house, but the house itself has been reported many times. Some stories say that those who have attempted to approach the house find it disappears before their eyes or that they only realize, upon their return trip or when visiting a second time, that there is no house along the path.
Phantom cars are often reported as well. This was occurring even before the turnpike was moved so it no longer ran directly past the cemetery. Many a motorist would find themselves suddenly driving head on into the path of an oncoming black car. Normally the witnesses said the car looked older, perhaps like the kind of car they would expect to see in the 1930s or 1940s. Then, as the car neared, it would disappear. These days, the cars are often seen on the closed off part of the turnpike, sitting beside the road and disappearing as the hikers approach.
Of course, it is within the cemetery that much of the activity has been reported. To those who have visited this site, many have reported that the entire area just seems dreadful, sad, and depressed. Of course, an abandoned cemetery that is overgrown and vandalized and hidden by woods on all sides, may just give that kind of impression. However, others have reported strange mists and the always-popular orbs when taking pictures of the cemetery.
Back in the 1980s the Chicago Sun-Times did a story about Bachelor’s Grove and printed a picture from a ghost-hunting expedition. The picture was reportedly taken using infra-red film and that when the person took the photograph, there was no one in front of them. There were only broken monuments and trees leaning across the area where the picture was taken. However, the picture clearly shows a woman in white sitting on one of the broken monuments with her head in her hands. Her face is indistinct. Her feet seem to slowly disappear and blend into the ground.
In addition to this woman, there is the reported Woman in White. According to those who believe in this legend, she appears only on nights with the full moon. She is dressed in a white gown and is seen holding a baby. Others say she is seen apparently searching, perhaps looking for a missing child.
There is the legend of the farmer and his horse. Reportedly the farmer and his horse had property near the cemetery. One day they were out plowing a field. Something spooked the horse and it bolted, carrying the plow and the helpless, entangled farmer toward the lagoon. They fell in and the plow and field equipment carried them to the bottom. Reportedly these two can still be seen, near the lagoon, still attempting to plow their field.
There is also reportedly a two-headed ghost who can be seen near the lagoon. The descriptions of this one are usually vague. Some have even claimed that witnesses are really seeing the farmer and horse ghost and not a two-headed human.
Ghost-hunters have come away from Bachelor’s Grove with seemingly hundreds, perhaps thousands, of photographs they claim show orbs and mists and apparitions. There have been EVPs (electronic voice phenomenon) recorded in the cemetery which show ghostly voices and conversations.
Legend also says the lagoon was a popular dumping spot for the Chicago mafia. The place was deep, often covered with muck, and far enough from the city for their purposes, but not so far to make getting there impossible. Whether or not bodies actually lay at the bottom of that lagoon, no one really knows for sure.
What is known is that the area is patrolled heavily. The cemetery is now part of property owned by Cook County and patrolled by Forest Preserve police. They do not take kindly to visitors, especially at night and especially near Halloween. People can and do get arrested for being there when they aren’t supposed to.
It is sad that vandals have destroyed much of the history of this place. Regardless of whether or not there are ghosts, it is always sad to see history so carelessly treated.
The Plane Crash Site – A Haunted Trailer Park
On May 25, 1979 Flight 191 was set to leave O’Hare for Los Angeles. It was the start of a holiday weekend and the plane was crammed with holiday travelers. The plane was the work-horse of the airline industry, the DC-10.
The plane taxied down the runway and increases speed for the take off. However, just before the plane lurched into the air, one of the engines gave way. It broke off, tearing out vital components, hit the runway and bounced over the wing. The plane took off, however, the co-pilot, who was trying to pilot the plane as the power had gone out in the pilot’s stick, could not control the plane. To the horror of everyone on the plane and countless witnesses on the ground, the plane banked sharply, becoming perpendicular to the ground, and crashed just beyond the runway.
The plane barely missed a highly-trafficked road. It also barely misses several large oil tanks that dot the landscape near O’Hare. Finally, it just barely missed a large trailer park also situation right across from the runway. It slammed into a field and exploded into a huge fireball. All 271 people on board the plane were killed. Two people on the ground were also killed. It is still the largest lost off life for an accidental plane crash in the history of the United States.
The trailer park is still there. Where there was an empty field there is now a training facility for police dogs. However, some residents of the trailer park say that some of those passengers from Flight 191 still roam the fields and are still looking for a way to get home.
Shortly after the accident, the police and fire department would get phone calls from residents of the trailer park insisting that they saw lights and people in the field. In the beginning, of course, these were probably people with a morbid curiosity and souvenir-seekers. However, the problem was that these calls kept coming in long past the time when the last of the debris was long gone.
One resident claims that his two dogs still face that field and bark in the night. Other residents have claimed to have seen ghostly orbs and strange lights coming from the field long after the dog-training facility has been closed.
Still stranger are the reports of people who claim to have come face-to-face with former passengers from Flight 191. Some residents of the trailer park have said they have heard footsteps outside their home and heard them climbing their front steps, only to open the door and find no one there. Others have claimed to have seen people in older clothes walking along the trailer park streets and roads who have then vanished as they watched them pass.
Others have claimed to have heard the footsteps and opened their doors only to find someone they do not recognize standing there. Again, they are often describes as wearing older 1970s clothes. They report to have spoken to these people and found that they are searching for a connecting flight, or talking about luggage that they cannot find. When the resident turns around or tries to help, the visitor vanishes.
There is even one resident who found an impression on her sofa one evening as if someone had walked in and sat down on her couch when she was home alone. There is even the story of a man seen talking on the phone in the terminal near where the terminal for Flight 191 was inside the airport. Again, he appears to be dressed in a 1970s style suit. Witnesses say he will hang up the phone, turn to walk toward a gate and then vanish.
Other residents and visitors to the park also report some of the standard haunting phenomenon. Cold spots are often cited. Others remark about an uncomfortable feeling or a sense of sudden dread.
A recent incident was given by a man who said he was walking his dog one night, not far from the area where Flight 191 met its final fate. He stated that as he walked he was approaches by a young man from the opposite direction. The young man seemed nervous and agitated and the witness said he also seemed to be “smoldering” and gave off a strong odor of gasoline. Thinking that this was just a jogger with steam coming off of him, the witness agreed to help the young man find a telephone. Apparently this man said he needed to make an emergency phone call. As the man with the dog turned to point to where a phone was, he turned back and found that he was now standing there alone save for his dog.
So, are the passengers, or at least some of the passengers, of Flight 191 still wandering around that field? Are they looking for their luggage or a connecting flight? Are they still trying to figure out what happened to them and why? No one can really know the answers to that, of course, but some of those who live at the end of that busy runway near O’Hare say they know and that the answer is yes.
The Fast Food Place
Brown’s Chicken is a local Chicago fast food chain. It is a direct competitor to other national fast food chains like Kentucky Fried Chicken and Popeye’s. It offers fried chicken and mashed potatoes and cole slaw all in family-sized boxes or buckets. It’s pretty good chicken, really, and it has always been a nice local alternative to the big guys.
However, in 1993, at the Brown’s Chicken in the suburb of Chicago known as Palatine, an incident happened that has forever marred the name of Brown’s Chicken. On a wintery day two men entered the Brown’s Chicken located at Smith and Route 14 and herded the seven employees into the freezer. After loading themselves up with cash, they then brutally shot all seven people and left their bodies in the freezer.
For years the empty chicken franchise stood on the area. Right next to it was a laundry and it continued to stay open and function as an on-going business for years. As for the killers, well, it seemed like they had managed to get away with one of the most vicious and brutal murders the Chicago area had seen since the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre.
Finally, in 2002, the former girlfriend of one of the men now in custody for the crimes came forward and talked to police. She said her former boyfriend and an accomplice had committed the crimes and she has been so afraid of him, she had not come forward for nearly ten years. Those two men are now in custody and standing trial for their crimes.
As for the site where the restaurant once stood, well, these days the restaurant has been torn down. There is little there to indicate that anything once stood there, let alone one of the most notorious crime scenes in Chicago history. But before that finally happened, residents of Palatine reported strange things happening within the walls of that Brown’s Chicken.
The restaurant itself never did open again. It was probably too much even for the Brown’s Chicken managers to think that people would actually want to eat at the location of a brutal slaughter. However, neighbors say the site was active.
There are reports from those who would walk by the restaurant and from people who worked at the laundry next door, that cold spots were common near the restaurant. Again, that feeling of total dread was common amongst those who had to get near the place.
At night, especially around the time when the murders reportedly took place, some residents claim they heard terrible screams emanating from the within the walls of the restaurant. Still others near the location say they heard the sound of gunshots, always seven of them, in the middle of the night.
The restaurant was eventually torn down. The laundry moved out and the land was razed. The reports of cold spots, screaming and gunshots dropped dramatically. They did not stop entirely, however. They did finally stop in 2002, when the two men were arrested and charged with the crime. It seems that if there were spirits stuck at the location of that restaurant, they only hung around until their killers were brought to justice.
Even as this is being written, the two men accused of the crime are on trial for it. Exactly what official justice will be meted out to them remains to be seen.
The Haunted Suburbs and City
The city of Chicago has seemingly hundreds of reportedly haunted places. There are bars and taverns in the downtown area that are reported hot spots of ghosts and spirits. There are homes scattered throughout the city that have reported ghosts of all kinds.
Further out, in the suburbs, you run into even more reports of hauntings. There are reportedly haunted cemeteries everywhere. There are old railroad tracks with apparitions of all kinds. There are countless remote roads where ghostly cars, children, men and women are reported.
However, for me, the three listed above are probably the nearest and dearest to me. I find Bachelor’s Grove particularly fascinating and sad that it is being destroyed a piece at a time by vandals and erosion. I remember the crash of Flight 191 and grew up not too terribly far from where it went down. I also remember when the crime at the fast food restaurant was reported and the horror of what happened there came to light years later.
Chicago may very well be a haunted city. Lord knows, there were plenty of other civilizations who lived here long before someone decided to build a fort here and that fort ultimately became the city we all know as Chicago.
