Hauntings in America: South Chicago's Cemeteries

October 29, 2009 by Jenny Corvette

Resurrection Cemetery & Bachelor's Grove

Chicago is full of cemeteries both large and small, but no matter the size, most likely some of the graves in those cemeteries are haunted. Here are the haunted graves of the cemeteries
on the South Side of Chicago and the stories behind them.

The most popular story involving a haunted cemetery in South Chicago is the tale of Resurrection Mary. According to legend, Mary was a young woman who went dancing on cold night in
the early 1930's at the O Henry Ballroom. She got into a tiff with her boyfriend later in the evening and decided to walk home up Archer Avenue. Only she never made it home. Mary was
struck by a driver, who fled the scene and left her there to die. She was buried in Resurrection Cemetery (7201 South Archer Avenue) wearing the same white dress and dancing shoes
she'd died in, or so the story goes. There has been wild speculation about who "Resurrection Mary" really was or even if she truly existed at all outside the realms of our overactive
imaginations. But despite such cynicism, the stories of her hauntings still continue.

Almost all of Mary's sightings involve a driver along Archer Avenue seeing and sometimes stopping to pick up a young, fair skinned young woman underdressed for the weather. Some
people have claimed to run her over in the road, or pass through her spectral body, only to have her vanish

Others pick her up only to have her vanish from their sight near the Cemetery. Eyewitness accounts of Resurrection Mary are eerily similar to each other in many regards. There is one
report, however, which is different from the rest. That is the story from August 10, 1976. According to Troy Taylor at the website prairieghosts.com, a passing driver spotted the girl inside the
gates of the cemetery. Concerned that someone had been locked inside after closing, he notified the police, who responded only to find the graveyard dark and empty. But the cemetery's
gates bore evidence that someone had been there. The bars in the gate had been bent apart! And they seemed to have turned black where she'd grasped them. Soon, the story of the
seared gates attracted more visitors than Resurrection Cemetery cared for. Cemetery officials tried to rid the bars of the handprints, with little success. They finally cut them off and
replaced them. Such paranoia bred even more speculation that the cemetery was trying to hide something, embarrassing them to a point when they reinstalled the original bars. They've
since been straightened out, but painting them had little effect in keeping them green like the rest of the gate. It seems that the blacked scorch handprints would always come back.
Recently the bars were removed yet again, until Resurrection Mary decides to strike again.

While Resurrection Mary is the most widely known ghost of Chicago, no one knows who she really is or even if she was in fact buried in Resurrection Cemetery. But the same cannot be said
for the woman haunting Bachelor's Grove Cemetery on 143rd Street and the Midlothian Turnpike. Bachelor's Grove is a small cemetery with its own ghost of a woman in white. This
haunter is sometimes called the "Madonna" of the grove but there's nothing material about this Madonna. According to legend, she was a young mother buried there with her infant son,
and sometimes she's seen wandering around the tombstones, baby in tow. She's often seen during full moons and once she even appeared on someone's film.

Bachelor's Grove, according to the book Graveyards of Chicago by Matt Hucke and Ursula Bielski, was originally called Everdon's Cemetery in 1844, and back then it was nothing like
the rundown creepy place it is today. It started to decline in the 1950s, about the same time reports of mysterious happenings began arising. One of the mysterious happenings involve a
phantom house that appears and disappears within a blink of the eye. Eyewitness accounts describe the house as an old two story white farm house that gets smaller and smaller the
closer you get to it, until it eventually cannot be seen at all. There is no evidence that a house like that ever existed near the cemetery.

Then there is the story about the cemetery's haunted pond. Yes, you read that right. Bachelor's Grove is so haunted that even the pond behind it has a tale to tell. According to Troy
Taylor at prairieghosts.com, in the 1970's, two officers from Cook County saw the ghost of a horse arise from the pond's water, pulling an old man in a plow, only to disappear shortly after it
vanished into the forest. This apparition may have been the ghost of a farmer who drowned in the 1870's after his horse was startled and pulled him into the pond.

These are only two of the cemeteries on the South Side of Chicago, but from them both we can learn valuable lessons about having respect for our dearly departed. Bachelor's Grove has
fallen into disarray over the past several decades. There have been reports of black magic and satanic practices occurring there, and vandalism due to the neglect and lack of
respect some have had for the small graveyard and those buried there. Bachelor's Grove has suffered the price for attracting people who don't belong there. Resurrection Cemetery,
in contrast, has suffered little due to its folk ghost stories. Both women in white died before their time yet, if the tales are true, they still long to live again. They're alive in our imaginations,
at the very least, and maybe our imaginations are the portal to a parallel reality, an alternate universe that occasionally overlaps our own when we're strolling through the cemeteries
on the South Side of Chicago.

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