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Read about Chicago's haunted cemeteries......
Holy
Sepulchre Cemetery is a large Catholic cemetery established on July 4, 1923 by
the late Cardinal Mundelein. From about 1901 to 1910/11 this was the location of
the Worth Race Track. Since it's consecration, well over 90,000 interments have
been made in the cemetery and approximately 1800 are buried annually.
The late
Mayor Richard J. Daley is buried in a section near the cemetery entrance on
111thStreet. The same section also contains the burial place of Dan Ryan,
long-time Cook County Board President.
Within
Section 7, visitors will find the highly decorated grave of Mary Alice Quinn
sometimes referred to as "Chicago's Miracle Child". Mary was born on
December 28, 1920 to an Irish family. She was very mystically inclined; almost
the Chicago version of Saint Theresa, to whom Mary was very devoted. She claimed
to have seen a religious image on her wall and since that day became very
devoted to religion. Before she died, Mary told her parents that she wanted to
come back to help people after death. She died on November 8, 1935 at the tender
age of fourteen.
Many incidents have been related, especially in
the late 1930's and during the early 1940's of Mary's apparition appearing to
people throughout Chicago's southside. In fact, she has appeared to people
around the world! They come to the cemetery and leave candles at her grave and
also pray for favors. Some take away handfuls of dirt while others leave behind
prayer books, rosaries, crucifixes, religious medallions and notes requesting
divine intervention.
The current
manifestation that is most often reported at the gravesite is the overwhelming
scent of roses even in the dead of winter when there are no trees or flowers in
bloom. The odor is definitely not somebody's perfume or stray smell as it is
concentrated within a few feet of the grave and nowhere else. Even though there
may be stiff breeze blowing, the psychic odor does not drift away with the wind!
There is also
an alleged recent medical cure attributed to Mary Alice Quinn. A young couple
gave birth to an infant that doctors diagnosed as terminal and would not live
out the year. The couple refused to give up hope for the child. They had heard
about the stories of Mary Alice Quinn and decided to pray to her for help. They
brought their baby to the site, laid her on the grave and began to pray. All at
once there was an overpowering scent of roses in the air. From that day the
baby's health took a turn for the better and lived, mystifying the puzzled
doctors and specialists.
Archer Woods Cemetery
Graceland Cemetery
Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, is one of the oldest graveyards and boasts several hauntings. The most famous is the spirit of Inez Clark. Inez was just shy of seven years old when she was struck by lightening at a family picnic. Her parents, distraught over the loss, had a life-size statue of the child erected at her grave site. The statue is enclosed in glass, protecting it from the elements. On rainy nights, when thunder is rolling, the statue reportedly disappears from the glass box, and a young girl can be seen roaming the cemetery grounds.
Mount Carmel
Just inside the Harrison Street entrance
to Mount Carmel Cemetery
in south suburban Hillside is a rather impressive-looking statue of a
woman holding a bouquet of roses in her arms. This monument marks the
gravesite of Julia Buccola Peta,
often know as "The Italian
Bride".
Julia died in 1921 in Schaumburg of
apparent complications from childbirth and was buried here with her
stillborn infant. Shortly after her burial, her mother, Philomena
Buccola, began to have a series of
unusual dreams in which her deceased daughter, Julia, would beg and plead
with her to exhume her grave. This went on for sometime as the poor mother
tried to have the local priest grant her permission. Finally after six
years, permission was given.
In 1927, the grave of Julia
Buccola Peta was opened, the casket
lifted out of the ground and placed on the grass. As the lid was pried off
the coffin, there was Julia still as fresh and perfect as the day she was
buried.
Friends and relatives of Julia said that because the body was uncorrupt
could only mean that she was a saint. The body of Julia was resealed in a
coffin and reburied. An imposing monument was erected showing Julia in her
wedding dress holding a bouquet of roses. On the base of the monument are
two small porcelain photographs. The first one shows her in her wedding
dress and it is the one the monument was copied from. The second picture
is photographic proof of the story because it shows Julia lying asleep in
her coffin, loose dirt lying around the casket and the lid just taken off.
But Julia's story goes much farther then
just the body in the ground. Students of Proviso West High School just
east of the cemetery on Wolf Road
have reported seeing a girl walking through the cemetery by night. In
fact, rumors that Julia was walking through the cemetery emptied a school
dance near Halloween in
1976.
A carload of people driving down
Harrison Street were startled to see a girl walking through the
tombstones. They saw this girl and stopped the car to have a better look.
They assumed it was someone playing a prank for Halloween. As they
watched, they became very frightened because they realized that it was
pouring rain outside and although it was very wet, the girl that they
could see only 25 to 30 feet away walking through the cemetery was
perfectly dry. Her hair and dress untouched by the fall weather. They
left the area in a hurry!!
Interviews from the Hillside
Police Department have yielded
strange things out there like odd white shapes floating around. This has
been seen by a number of the police department. These are apparently
different from the Julia sightings, as these are multiple sightings.
Julia is most often seen around the small
administration building just inside
the Harrison Street entrance to the cemetery. And the most recent
paranormal occurrence out near her grave is the psychic smell of roses
especially in the colder months when fresh flowers would all but be dead!
"The different scents are quite distinctive," says Chicago
floral designer Ruth Bukowski. "I was there in November of 1982 and
the flowers I smelled were definitely baby roses - better known as tea
roses."
In 1978 an eyewitness reported seeing
the grave of Julia apparently glowing!
Mount Carmel
contains many other fascinating graves, including those of Al
Capone and Deanie O'Banion.
St. James
The Church at
St. James Sag is the second oldest Catholic Church in Northern Illinois and
dates back to 1833. It was originally a mission and was the site of a French
signal post in the late 1600s. Father Jacques Marquette might have offered Mass
on the bluff in 1673 and/or in 1675. Three buildings make up the parish
structure. The first is the unique and beautiful church; the second, the rectory
built with the same pale yellow Lemont stone in 1942; and the third, Saginaw
Hall built in 1912 and later remodeled in 1970. The large main gates, fabricated
in 1905 for Western Electric in Cicero, were installed at the entryway in 1980.
This location is commonly known as "Monk's Castle" because it was said
that if you were caught trespassing out there at night, the monks would catch
you and make you kneel down on ball bearings all night in prayer. There never
were any monks stationed here and it's simply a folk legend.
A very
interesting report comes from a Cook County policeman and a two-page report
submitted by him. The encounter occurred on the Friday before Thanksgiving in
1977. The officer was on patrol about 2:30 in the morning and as he drove past
the cemetery he saw, through the gates, eight or nine figures dressed in
monk-like outfits. Knowing that there should be no one in there at that hour, he
called out to them to come out and be arrested for trespass. The monks just
continued to walk to the top of the hill. He then grabbed the shotgun from his
car and began to pursue these individuals. The monks had no difficulty with the
terrain, however the police officer was stumbling and tripping over tombstones
and unleveled terrain. He got to the top of the hill within seconds of the
individuals however they were no where to be found. He then ran down the hill
towards 107th Street but found nothing. Even an intensive search later turned up
no clues as to the identities or whereabouts of the monk-like figures. He now
believes that what he encountered were not humans at all but some kind of
ghostly phantom manifestations.
The area has been known to been haunted
well back to the pioneer history of the area. The area was settled by the Irish
back in the 1830s. They formed what was called the Sag Community. A former
pastor Father Ploszynski, who died in the rectory on May 10, 1970, confided to
friends on his deathbed that he could often look out his rectory window at night
and see the ground rising and falling as if the earth itself were breathing!
The first
reported ghost story dates back to September 30, 1897 and was reported in the
Chicago Tribune. Two musicians Professor William Looney and John Kelly decided
after finishing their performance about 1 in the morning to stay in a small
building overnight. About an hour later, Looney was awakened by the sound of
hoofs on the gravel road. He looked out the window and saw a carriage. It came
up the road that is now Archer Avenue and up to the gravel entranceway, stop and
turn around. He saw what appeared to be a girl in a white robe just appear out
of nowhere. She got into the coach with the driver, they turned around again and
just as they passed the archway, the coach, driver and everything just vanished!
This was during Rev. Bollman's reign.
Recent
reports include a phantom black stallion which many people have seen roaming the
graveyard at night and the face of the devil in appearing in rectory windows.
For Bachelor's Grove, click here
For Resurrection Mary and Resurrection Cemetery click here
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