#chicago ghosts

[hauntsofmissouri]

Resurrection Mary

Resurrection Cemetery Archer Road Chicago Illinois The story begins at the O’Henry Ballroom, now called the Willowbrook, where a young girl accompanied her date to a dance. At some point they argued, and the girl left, opting to walk home or hitchhike, in spite of the cold winter evening. Not very far from the dance, she was killed by a hit and run accident. Her murder remains unsolved.  Due to…

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[deadinchicago]

Check the link to grab tickets! We have a super spooky Halloween tour tonight at 7PM, meeting at LaSalle and Wacker! JOIN US.

[deadinchicago]

1 October - The Hat Man Spook of Chicago

Beware the Hat Man.  Photo source.

The house at No. 198 Mather street had an evil reputation. Located on the near West side, on what is now a tiny & desolate strip named Lexington, the property used to contain a large yard, with a little two story frame house set at its back.  In this house many families lived over the years, but by 1890 those in the neighborhood had started to fear it.  

Within three years, three young couples had lived at the address.  The first was Mr. and Mrs. John Cull.  They were excitedly expecting their first child, and as her due date grew near Mrs. Cull stayed in bed, in a little room on the second floor of their home.  One day, while in bed, she saw a strange man in a hat appear in the doorway.  It’s not stated what he did, if anything, to the woman, but she soon died of fright from the experience.

The next family to move in shortly afterward was Mr. and Mrs. Cinnama.  They too were expecting a child, and like Mrs. Cull, Mrs. Cinnama was confined to her bed in the same little room upstairs.

One day, as she lay in bed, a big burly man in a hat appeared in the doorway.  He came over to her, picked her up, and threw her on the floor.  Mrs. Cinnama screamed in fear and confusion, and the hat man disappeared.  Her husband came to her aid and she was able to tell the story, but never left her bed again, dying soon afterwards.

Once again, the next family to move in was Mr. and Mrs. George Allen.  Like the Cinnamas and the Culls, Mrs. Allen was expecting a child and was confined to a bed in the same little upstairs room.  

The same man appeared in her doorway one day.  She described him as wearing a very large overcoat and a slouch hat which covered his face.  Mrs. Allen too died shortly after her visit with the hat man.

Men in the neighborhood weren’t so scared of the spook, but the women refused to speak of the manner.  There’s no further record on if anyone else ever saw the hat man in the tiny upstairs house of the little frame structure on Mather street, or even who or what had been the cause of such a deadly specter.  

From the Chicago Tribune, 3 November 1890.  Source.

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[deadinchicago]

1 April - Chicago Parks Close at Night to Protect the Public from the Undead

The Couch Mausoleum in Lincoln Park, where two men were mysteriously disappeared in 1874.  Photo source.

It's a common misconception that parks close at night to help prevent crime in the city.  Not well light, quiet, & remote from busy areas, they seem a prime location for thieves to attack those who might be out for a late night jog or a walk along the lake.

Indeed, today this is largely why most parks have set closing hours, & why those hours are enforced by the police.  However, that wasn't always the case.

Park hours were originally enforced to help keep the public safe from the undead, & those who believed in them.

In 1874, the faith in spirits was much more prevalent. Spiritualism was just taking hold in the minds of the American public, & everything seemed to have some sort of morbid history attached to it.

Lincoln Park was the perfect setting for these fears to grow in the minds of Chicagoans.  

As most know, Lincoln Park sits on what was originally the City Cemetery of Chicago.  The City Cemetery operated from the late 1830's to 1860, when it was officially closed by the city.  The area had been designated a cemetery because it was originally remote from the downtown area, but the cemetery was plagued with disease from the get go - bodies would drift back to the surface due to the swampy land, disease hunted those who lived near it, & it was not uncommon for locals to hear screams & muffled gurgling drifting over the land late at night.  By 1860, the cemetery was closed, & all those interred were moved to other graveyards - or so they claimed. It's still common for bodies to pop up when new construction begins in the area.

In 1874, the City Cemetery had been a park for 14 years.  But the memories of the creepy, diseased burial ground remained lodged in the minds of Chicagoans.  People started roaming in the park late at night to conduct seances & attempt to commune with the dead.  They would attack anyone they found in the park, mistaking them for ghouls.  There's even one report of a man being staked to death because a local Spiritualist thought him a vampire. Grave robbers - "ressurectionists" - would attempt to local the left over bodies to steal them & sell them for "scientific reasons," or simply to rob what might have been buried with them.

The curfew came about after the following most unsettling & highly reported incident happened in 1874.

It was one late & hot August night when Antoine Bauer & two other unidentified partners snuck into Lincoln Park at 3 AM.  They headed towards the mausoleum of Ira Couch, a local businessman.  His was the only grave officially left - you can still visit it today.  According to Antoine, he "stepped quietly onto the grounds, keeping an eye for any who might be watching while the others worked to break the lock."  They fiddled for a bit before Antoine heard a clink, & the chain drop.  

"I heard the door open, scratching on the stone of the crypt.  Inside there seemed to be a sort of shuffling sound, like the sound of one walking through leaves in the fall.      T--- went inside, and I heard a gasp.  There was a sound like bubbles in water & a hard thud.  I had heard the stories of Lincoln Park before, but I did not believe them until that moment.  I ran as fast as I could until I was far away from Lincoln Park."

The next morning, Antoine went to the police & explained what happened, fearful for his friends.

Upon reaching the Couch mausoleum, the police found the door still partially ajar, the chain broken on the ground.  Inside there was blood splattered all over the floor.  They could read three distinct footprints - two pairs in shoes, one barefoot - but nothing else.  Antoine's nameless accomplices were never seen again.

Whether ghouls or crazed Spiritualists, the police decided to close the park at night for the safety of the general public.

This was only one of dozens of incidents found that lead to the city enforcing a curfew of 11 PM for the park.  The sounds of screams, while always present with the cemetery, increased before the hours were installed.  Strange lights were seen on a near nightly basis from those conducting seances on the grounds.  Even after the curfew was enforced, at least three police officers went missing - though the lower half of one was found the next morning high up in a tree.

Today, most do not know of the ghoulish past of Lincoln Park.  Even the police are getting lax on the rules, hardly enforcing them as much as they used to a hundred years ago.  

Perhaps the ghosts have found peace & moved on.

Or perhaps they're just waiting for the right person to come along at the right time.

From the Chicago Tribune, 28 August 1874 (Source), 3 September 1874 (Source).

[readwritelibrary]

#TBT: Muldoon, more than just a Chicago ghost story

[For Throwback Thursday--because RWL is all about media preservation!--we're republishing this book review. We originally posted it to our old blog on July 5, 2010, as part of the Printers’ Ball 2010 Blog-Down. You can still find Muldoon: A True Chicago Ghost Story on our shelves today! –Ed.]

When Rocco Facchini was ordained a priest of the Archdiocese of Chicago in 1956, he was charged to uphold the teachings of the Catholic Church. According to those teachings, ghosts don’t exist.

But then, Facchini hadn’t lived at St. Charles Borromeo, yet.

His first job was associate pastor of St. Charles, a Near Southwest Side parish. There, Facchini watched mysteriously blinking lights and listened to inexplicably shrieking radios. Sonic booms jolted him and a fellow associate out of their beds late one night.

And then there were the guests who wanted to know who that nice old priest was who sat in a back parlor, near the bathroom, smiling cheerily as they went in to do their business, and then disappearing.

It bore the imprint of the Right Reverend Peter James Muldoon, builder of St. Charles, and first bishop of Rockford, Illinois. Life took him far from his old parish, but his death thirty years ago must have brought him back. That was exactly when the weirdness started.

So who was Muldoon? What accounts did he have to settle? Facchini spent 40 years—even after leaving the priesthood—observing, researching, and talking with anyone who knew anything. Finally, with the help of his family, he wrote it all down, and Muldoon: A True Chicago Ghost Story is their product.

Facchini was a stone-cold believer in the ghost. He argued that Muldoon had reason to be agitated: a stalled career and a neglected parish.

Muldoon, son of Irish immigrants, was born in 1862 and ordained in 1886. Within two years, he was secretary to Chicago Archbishop Patrick Feehan and archdiocesan chancellor—an explosive rise.

In 1895, Muldoon became pastor of St. Charles Borromeo, and this without giving up his other jobs. He loved his flock, and they him. He tore down the makeshift church at Roosevelt and Hoyne, replacing it with a towering neo-Gothic monolith. In 1901, Archbishop Feehan asked the pope to make Muldoon his auxiliary bishop.

Then the gates of hell swung open.

Feehan offended many of his clannish, Irish-born clergy by choosing an American-born “narrow-back.” About thirty of them formed a coalition, protesting Muldoon and nominating one of their own. Then they smeared Muldoon in front of everybody they could find: Feehan, Vatican diplomats, newspaper reporters.

Muldoon survived the immediate scandal and became auxiliary bishop, but lived under a cloud for the rest of his life. He was archbishop and cardinal material, but never rose higher than bishop of Rockford, then still the hinterlands. And once in Rockford, he was effectively exiled from the only place he really called home: his masterpiece, St. Charles. Facchini suggests it must have gnawed at him. Probably it did.

Muldoon died in Rockford in late 1927 at the age of 64. Groaning and banging noises began at St. Charles Borromeo almost immediately.

Facchini writes that Muldoon’s ghost must have wanted to clear his name, but probably cared especially about his church. Paranormal activity was at fever pitch when Facchini was there, a period coinciding with the tenure of “Pastor Kane.” Kane had no interest in St. Charles, only in his dog, bingo proceeds, “spending quality time” with his housekeeper, and running a bogus but profitable shrine out of the basement. Only ten or fifteen people showed up at each Mass, devastating for a church that seated more than a thousand, but Kane remained impassive.

Facchini believed Muldoon was warning that St. Charles would close unless Kane shaped up or shipped out. Kane eventually left, but in 1969, the archdiocese bulldozed Muldoon’s magnum opus, which is now a parking garage. No word on whether Muldoon strolls through the parking garage.

But in any case, the rich background makes Muldoon more than typical Halloween drivel. It explores the roots of Chicago Catholicism, from the time of explorers Marquette and Jolliet to the Great Chicago Fire. It is a story of great achievement: how Muldoon helped his superiors build the devastated, post-fire Catholic community into one of the most powerful in the world.

Above all, this is the story of the St. Charles Borromeo that Rocco Facchini knew. Facchini writes sensitively about Muldoon because they shared not only a parish, but similar priorities. The neighborhood, called “the Valley,” was by the 1950s an imploding hovel. Kane ignored the poor, which scandalized Facchini. And Muldoon, who spent much of his career organizing charitable efforts, would have loathed Kane.

But Facchini’s St. Charles did have good priests, especially Father Bill Schumacher, a brilliant scholar who was equally at home cleaning up the urine of a homeless man or wielding a revolver to protect the bingo dollars. Facchini dedicated Muldoon to him.

Characters are drawn simply but vividly—even those who appear briefly, like Facchini’s archbishop, Samuel Cardinal Stritch. Facchini relates the rumor that Stritch assigned new priests to their first parishes by hurling darts at a map.

“I don’t know if I can muster enough words to captivate a reader,” Facchini fretted. No worries—you did fine.

– Justin Sengstock

[Justin Sengstock is a Read/Write Library cataloger and blog editor. In his non-RWL life, he is a south suburban writer focusing on social justice and religion. Justin’s pieces have appeared in the books Hungering and Thirsting for Justice and An Irrepressible Hope, both published by Chicago-based ACTA in 2012. Justin is a graduate of Loyola University Chicago.]

[historymysteryweird]

The Italian Bride

One of my favorite weird Chicago stories is popularly known as The Italian Bride. In Hillside, a suburb of Chicago, in Mount Caramel Cemetery, is the grave of Julia Petta. 

Petta, who died in childbirth at the age of 29 in 1921, was buried in her wedding gown by her mother. 

Because of her mother's recurring nightmares, Petta was supposedly exhumed 6 years later; her still-born baby that had been buried with her had naturally disintegrated but she appeared as if she could still be sleeping. Her mother took a photograph (the one above) and had her reburied  On Petta's gravestone there are two pictures: one from the day of her funeral and another showing her as one of the city's most beautiful corpses.