Experiences,
articles, book excerpts,
investigation reports, news and photos from
our readers, fellow ghosthunters,
tour guests . . . and beyond.
Ursula
Bielski's brand-new book, Chicago Haunts 3
(Thunder Bay Press)
Now Available everywhere,
in regional bookstores and
at Amazon.com. To buy, click here!
Submit
your own Chicago ghost stories, news, photos and investigation reports
for
this page to info@hauntingchicago.com
__________________________________________
Scroll down to read more
about . . .
-New
Excerpt: "Strange Energy: The Secret
of Red Gate
Woods"--
- Ghosts of Chicago DVD Now Available
- New
Incarnation for the old Cavellone's West: The Stag's Head Irish Country
Pub.
- Guest report from
Archer Ave tour
-Dead
Whispernow
out on DVD!
-NewExcerpt: "The
Museum of Science and Industry" from Ghosthunting llinois by
John Kachuba
- Exclusive NewArticle: "Bad Memories: The Dead Secrets
of Marshall Field"
- Excerpt:"Fort Meigs" from
Jeff Belanger's Ghosts of War
- Link to
"Chicago's Strange
Angles" on GhostVillage.com
- Is Borley Still Haunted?
- Excerpt
from Rocco and Dan Facchini'sMuldoon:
A True Chicago Ghost Story
- Excerpt:"Saints
and Sinners: Mt. Carmel's Motley Crew" from
Ursula Bielski'sChicago Haunts
- Excerpt:"The Hand of
Death"
from David Cowan's Great
Chicago Fires
_________________________________________
Strange
Energy:
The Secret of Red Gate Woods
by Ursula Bielski
Red Gate Woods have long been known as
haunted, running as they do along notorious Archer Avenue. It is
these Woods that shiver with the chanting of an invisible chorus, and
these Woods that host apparitions of monks seen both here and at the
adjacent churchyard of St. James-Sag. It has been ventured that
the haunting of Red Gate Woods may be connected to gangland days, when
neighboring homes and business were connected by long underground
tunnels for use during the Prohibition era. According to some
tales, a number of such tunnels ran to still-remote areas like Red Gate
Woods from roadhouses as much as a mile away, making it simple work to
do away with a rival in the basement and cart off the body for burial
in the surrounding, as yet uncharted woodland.
History may never verify these events, but one other, much stranger
reality seemingly cannot be denied.
As a child growing up in the deeply forested Palos
area Southwest of Chicago, acclaimed advocacy writer and
environmentalist John James Bell remembers that aimless hikes in the
area’s seemingly endless preserves were what little boys were
made of. But, as Bell recalls in his essay, “The Many Faces
of Apocalypse,“ fossils and turtles were not the normal loot such
treks revealed, especially one surreal afternoon:
As
kids, my friends and I stumbled across the old
piece of plywood while hiking. Such
large junk was a familiar site — these woods
on Chicago’s South Side near
Palos Forest Preserve were really not woods
at all, but overgrown underbrush along the
industrial Illinois &
Michigan canal corridor. The
piece of plywood was almost overlooked, but I
noticed that if you jumped on it there was a bit of
a bounce. We cleared off the
dirt and grass. There were hinges; it was a
makeshift door. With some effort we
opened it and
within seconds we pledged to keep our discovery
secret. After all, it’s not every day that you
find buried in the woods a nuclear fallout shelter . . . .
This was Red Gate Woods. Before speaking with
Bell, I had heard about the woods from Ed Shanahan, an expert on
Southwest side paranormal phenomena, who had informed me, after a
lifetime of my unknowing, that the nation’s first nuclear reactor
was established here in 1943. To this day the reactor reposes
under the forested landscape along Archer Avenue. In fact,
nuclear engineers from the nearby Argonne National Laboratory are in
charge of environmental monitoring of the Woods for the U.S. Department
of Energy.
Argonne National Laboratory, which sprawls over more
than 1500 acres in DuPage county, was the nation’s first national
laboratory, having been chartered in 1946. Argonne’s
mission began with the Manhattan Project, the monumental World War II
venture which saw its success at the University of Chicago, when Enrico
Fermi and more than four dozen colleagues accomplished the
world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction. When
the war ended, Argonne was founded to develop nuclear reactor sites for
peaceful use. Red Gate Woods had already been established at the
time of Argonne’s founding, and the new laboratory was naturally
put in charge of it at once. The University of Chicago
reactor--known as Chicago Pile-1--was moved after the War to Red Gate
Woods to be buried next to Chicago Pile-2, which was developed at Red
Gate itself. But while the area is consistently declared safe, as
Shanahan asserts, there may be “a very good reason why paranormal
tools may go a bit out of whack when taken there. " As, indeed,
they do. In fact, the presence of the reactors may even explain
some of the paranormal phenomena experienced here, including
apparitional sights and sounds, perhaps given life by the long-buried
energy on site.
_________________________________
"Chicago Ghosts" Documentary
now available
on DVD!
Chicago Ghosts is a one hour
arm-chair tour of haunted Chicagoland locations produced and filmed by
Karen Barrett of Blue Ghost, Inc. Some of the featured locations
include: Bachelor's
Grove Cemetery, Robinson Woods Indian Burial Grounds, Resurrection
Cemetery, Widow McCleary's, the Rialto Theater, Ethyl's Party .
. . and a look into a "real" haunted private home in Bartlett,
Illinois!
It's
true! Rico D's, center of some of of Chicago's most enduring and
active ghost stories, is now a roaring old roadhouse with new bed
& breakfast accomodations. The new venture, Frankie's Roadhouse and
Bed & Breakfast, will still feature the same fantastic dining as
always, but with some haunting new features.
The upstairs rooms has been restyled into guest rooms--including a
double room suitable for family accomodations--and offered to anyone
daring enough to spend the whole night at this legendary Archer Avenue
location. The restaurant will also be featuring special dinner
packages each week to feature a delicious family style dinner and full
tour of the haunted structure. AND Rico D's will be hosting
overnights of their own beginning the night of February 2nd!
The overnights will include a buffet dinner, coffee and cookies in the
wee hours, and a continental breakfast at dawn. Reservations are
now being accepted for bed & breakfast reservations and for the
first haunted overnight in February. For more information or to
make reservations, call Shane at Frankie's Roadhouse or visit their
website: www.ricods.com
_____________________________
A Night on Archer Avenue . . .
On
the evening of Sunday, October 29th, I led a wonderful group on a tour
of one of the nation's most haunted roadways, Archer Avenue. The
night was superb. Everywhere we went, we were greeted by old
friends: at Chet's Melody Lounge, at Rico D's, and at the Willowbrook,
where the staff laid out a beautiful and delicious spread for us amid
the surreal swing atmosphere. It was a magical night, shared by
wonderful guests. One of these guests, a ghosthunter from Coal
City, documented some impressive phenomena during the course of the
evening. I asked her to share her experiences with all of you,
with many thanks. Here is her story:
"When
we entered Chet's bar I immediately was drawn to the back area. I set
down the equipment and pulled out the divining rods. I proceeded to
walk closer to the walls and circle in front of the television. I got
the first reading to the left of the TV (when you face it) when the
rods where drawn together. I started shaking and asked my friend Bonnie
to get out the Temperature Gage and the EMF (meter). I figured the EMF
would go crazy because of all the electronic stuff back there (and it
did!), so I asked Bonnie to take the rods, and I took the temperature
guage and recorded the base temperature of 72.4 in the bar. As I walked
with the guage it began to fluctuate instantly from anywhere from 67.8
(which you saw while we talked! to 85.4!). I was so excited! Then we
were able to go down to the basement, and I took the divining rods
while Bonnie took the temperature. They immediately touched and
centered. After you spoke I gave you the divining rods, and the other
group was sent down to witness this event.
When
you came up, you told me they continued to stay touching the whole
time. Amazing!
After
the wonderful reception at the Willowbrook and the tour through the
woods and by the church we got to spend 5 or 6 minutes at the infamous
Hull House. I was immediately drawn to the courtyard; I felt I could
not walk in the grass. I gave Bonnie the Temperature guage and she
called out the reading of 49.5 degrees outside. I took the divining
rods. At the stone memorial base facing out to the road, I began using
the rods. Not until I walked to the left and stopped at the side of the
fountain did the rods touch--while they faced into the courtyard. I
realize that these rods are also used for divining water, so I
continued pointing them inward to the courtyard and came to the top of
the sidewalk facing the fountain and out to the road. Again they
touched. Bonnie was up on the porch and called me to join her at the
window where we watched the curtains fluttering inside the house. We
also witnessed something not visable poking at them. I asked Bonnie
for the guage and went down to the last side of the courtyard sidewalk
with my back to the house. Once again I used the divining rods and
again they touched. I lowered them and turned on the temperature guage.
It first registered at 48.7 then began to fluctuate between anywhere in
the 30s and 40s. I held it for a few seconds more, and suddenly I felt
extremely cold and looked down at the guage just as something moved
through or past me. It read 21.7 degrees! I exhaled and saw my breath
come out as white steam! I was not frightened but wanted someone else
to witness this, so--not moving--I began to call Bonnie. She noticed
everyone on the bus and called me to come away. I was ecstatic as I ran
to tell you, and to get back on the bus. I felt like I was on cloud
none the rest of the night! I did not experience any paranormal
activity when I returned home that night (remembering the story you
told us) but even today, I am still completely mesmerized by these
events.
Your
friend in paranormal hunting, Laura
Hennessy"
__________________________________
now
available on dvd: Dead Whisper: A new documentary featuring
Robbie Thomas, Michael McDowell and the Indiana Ghost Trackers What do the experts have to say about it?
"Four Stars!"
"Astonishing EVP"
"These phenomena could give us some new insight into the nature of the
spirits, EVP and how they exist in the flow of time. Anyone fascinated
by ghost phenomena and EVP will find this DVD of interest, and I can
recommend it." Stephen Wagner - Guide to the paranormal for
About.com
"Dead Whisper is going to knock people's socks off!" Kevin Smith - syndicated radio host
"The most important film in a
very long time!" Lia Ramses - Ghost Radio
"Dead Whisper is going to get a lot of people shouting -- for
more! It's destined to become a paranormal classic. It's the new
benchmark in paranormal video journalism." Bill Schreiner, Owner & GM, Achieve Radio
(Webmaster's
note: I just watched "DWhisper," and I have to add my own review:
this movie shows just how meticulous, sensitive and effective ghost
investigations can be. I've admired and praised Michael McDowell
and the Indiana Ghost Trackers for years as the best in
the business, and this documentary shows McDowell and his
colleagues at their finest. You must have this in your collection.
--Ursula Bielski) For more
on this phenomenal new documentary, click on the banner at left, or visit DeadWhisper.com
__________________________________________
"The Museum of Science and
Industry" Ghosthunting
Illinois by John Kachuba
(Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from "Ghosthunting
Illinois" by John Kachuba.
Published by Ellis Books. All rights reserved.)
Chicago’s Museum
of Science and Industry,
located at 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive, is one of the
country’s pre-eminent centers for informal science and technology
education.
It is also home to at least three ghosts.
The beautiful domed and columned building was originally built as the
Palace of Fine Arts for the 1893 Columbian Exposition and is the only
surviving structure from that exposition. The museum, which is situated
along the shore of the Jackson Park lagoon, looks more like an ancient
Greek temple than it does a center of science and technology. Perhaps
it is that feeling of antiquity that draws the ghosts.
One of the museum’s most famous ghosts is that of Clarence
Darrow, the celebrated lawyer whose battle with William Jennings Bryan
in 1925 over the issue of teaching evolution in schools—a trial
known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—has become a landmark case in
the annals of jurisprudence and was also the inspiration for the play
and movie, Inherit the Wind. Darrow figured prominently in many other
high-profile cases, including the 1924 Leopold and Loeb case, in which
he defended two stone-cold teenage murderers of a fourteen-year old boy
and won them life imprisonment instead of the electric chair.
Darrow lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood that includes the museum. He
died in Chicago in 1938 and his cremated remains were scattered in the
Jackson Park lagoon as he had requested. Every year a wreath-laying
ceremony honoring Darrow is held at the bridge spanning the lagoon. In
1957 the bridge was dedicated in his memory and is now known as the
Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge.
Dale Kaczmarek, a Chicago ghost investigator who also operates area
ghost tours, reported that a man on one of his tours took photos of the
lagoon and captured the smoky image of a face near the bridge. Could it
have been the ghost of Clarence Darrow?
“His ghost has been seen here in the museum as well,” said
Travis*, a docent my wife Mary and me met at the Burlington Zephyr
exhibit inside the museum. Travis was a baby-faced, rosy-cheeked young
man whose new beard was just starting to grow in; it looked as though
he had augmented it with charcoal. Travis wore the blue uniform and cap
of a train conductor, but he looked more like a kid on Halloween trick
or treating as Captain Kangaroo.
“People have seen an elderly man dressed in a suit, walking in
the hall by the windows that overlook the lagoon. They say he matches
the description of Clarence Darrow. He’s there for just a moment,
then he disappears,” Travis said.
Travis told us how the ghost interrupted a children’s Halloween
story-telling session he was conducting at the museum. “I looked
up and there he was. In the next second he was gone.”
We were standing before the gleaming engine of the Burlington Zephyr,
one of the country’s first diesel streamlined trains, as we
spoke. The stainless steel Burlington Zephyr seemed to glow in the
vast, dark hall of the museum. Three cars were attached to the engine;
a mail car, a passenger car, and a passenger lounge at the rear of the
train that featured a curved exterior and panoramic windows. Travis
said he had more to tell us, but it was time for him to lead the next
tour through the train. Mary and I climbed aboard with him and a
handful of other visitors.
The tour began in the mail car, with the history of the Burlington
Zephyr given to us by Zeph, a robotic figure in the form of a talking
burro so lifelike that some of the little children in the group patted
its nose and tried to feed it some hay while it talked. The real Zeph
joined the Dawn to Dusk Club of eighty-four distinguished passengers on
the Zephyr’s maiden run from Denver to Chicago on May 26, 1934.
Zeph came on board when the Rocky Mountain News offered the Chicago,
Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) a “Rocky Mountain
Canary” as a mascot for the trip. It was only when the burro was
delivered that Ralph Budd, CB&Q president understood he had
accepted a burro and not a bird. Budd quickly ordered hay to be placed
on board for Zeph, remarking, “One more jackass on this trip
won’t make a difference.” Zeph sped off into history as the
Zephyr broke all train speed records of the day, traveling 1,015 miles
in 13 hours and five minutes, the longest non-stop train trip the world
had ever witnessed. The Zephyr’s average speed was 77.5 miles per
hour, although it peaked at 112.5 miles per hour.
The Zephyr’s sleek styling and incredible speed made it an
instant celebrity and the train starred in the 1934 movie, The Silver
Streak. Streamlining became all the rage in design, copied in
everything from cars and airplanes, to toasters and vacuum cleaners and
Madison Avenue ad agencies appropriated the Zephyr for advertising
campaigns.
The next car was the passenger coach. Unlike the stuffy old Pullman
coaches, the Zephyr’s coach was as streamlined as its gleaming
exterior. The clean lines and sleek design were accented by indirect
lighting, plush upholstered seats, and colors in soothing pale green,
cool blue, and light brown. Passengers could order 20¢ hamburgers
and hot dogs, or other food from the kitchen. They were served by the
all-female Zephyrettes, on-board hostesses who saw to the
passengers’ every need. There were no Zephyrettes on board
that day to assist the life-sized plaster passengers who now sat
scattered among the plush seats. Each of the figures had a speaker
built into it so that it could “talk” to the others about
the train and the journey. It was an eerie feeling, sitting next to
these immobile figures, never knowing when the one right beside you
might suddenly speak. I noticed that those same little children who so
happily had fed the fake Zeph now clung to their parents.
The last car on the tour was the lounge car. Large windows completely
lined its sides and rounded back end. A film projected onto the windows
gave the illusion of movement while the jostling floor mimicked the
rocking of the train along the tracks.
As we stood behind a velvet rope we watched three robotic figures
dressed in the style of the 1930s, seated in comfortable upholstered
chairs. Ralph Budd sat on the left wearing a three-piece suit. His
sister, Mrs. Katherine Wilder occupied the center seat. To her left sat
her young daughter. They all moved as they chatted with each other,
subtle movements such as the turning of a head, a hand moving to one
side, the flexing of a foot. There was something secretive and
mysterious in these movements, as if the robots were afraid of being
caught in the act. I would look at the figure of Budd as it spoke,
turning its head to look at me and then detect some movement from one
of the other figures. Wasn’t Mrs. Wilder’s hands folded in
her lap before? Wasn’t the daughter looking to her left only a
few second ago? The figures were more than lifelike, they were just
plain creepy.
The tour ended in the lounge car and we all debarked from there. Travis
had a break for a few minutes so we resumed our conversation while Mary
wandered off to explore more of the museum.
“That was a great tour,” I said.
“Thanks.” Travis took of his conductor’s hat, wiped
the sweat from his brow with his coat sleeve, and put the hat back on.
Apparently, fake conducting on a train that couldn’t go anywhere
was harder work than I thought. “What did you think of the
animatronics?” Travis asked.
“The which?”
“Animatronics, the robots.”
“Really good,” I said, “a little freaky maybe.”
Travis nodded. “We have to turn them on, you know. They’re
not able to move unless we do.” One of the people who had been on
the tour was walking near us and Travis waited for her to pass by
before continuing. “So how come the figures in the lounge car
move on their own, without being switched on? Mrs. Wilder, especially.
She’s been seen moving her head when the power’s off.”
“Do you think the car is haunted?” I asked.
He shrugged and drew me to a display board near the train. One of the
panels described an accident at Napier, Missouri on October 2, 1939, in
which the engineer and another person aboard the Burlington Zephyr were
killed.
“Maybe there’s reason for it to be haunted,” Travis
said.
We had walked around to the front of the sleek locomotive, its single
headlight piercing the gloom of the great hall. Though at rest, it
looked as though it could spring to life at any moment and hurtle
through the museum, with or without the dead engineer at its controls.
More people passed by and Travis lowered his voice when he said,
“The train isn’t the only thing in the museum that’s
haunted. Have you heard about the U-505?”
I knew something of the history of the U-505, the only German submarine
ever captured by the Americans in World War II. The U-505 was
commissioned in Hamburg, Germany in 1941 and was involved in several
battles and by 1942 was already responsible for sinking eight allied
ships. On June 4, 1944 the USS Guadalcanal task group in the
mid-Atlantic Ocean attacked the U-505. The Germans attempted to scuttle
the sub, were unsuccessful, and so, surrendered to the American forces.
The capture of the sub was the first time an American naval force had
captured an enemy ship on the high seas since 1815, when the USS
Peacock seized HMS Nautilus during the War of 1812. The submarine was
towed into port in Bermuda where U.S. and British military experts
could study it. Its capture was kept a secret until after the war.
In 1946, the U.S. Navy planned to scuttle the German submarine by using
her for target practice. The existence of the sub came to the attention
of the Museum of Science and Industry’s president, Leonard Lohr,
who revealed ten-year old plans for the museum that included a
submarine among its future exhibits. The people of Chicago raised
$250,000 to purchase the sub and tow it to the museum where it was
designated as a war memorial and became a part of the museum’s
exhibits.
But none of that was what Travis was talking about. He was talking
about ghosts aboard the U-505.
“What kind of ghosts?” I asked.
“The commander,” Travis said, “a man named Peter
Zschech. In 1943, the sub was attacked with depth charges by a British
ship. The attack went on for a while and Zschech just lost it. While
the depth charges were exploding all around the sub, he killed himself
in the control room.” Travis told me that the
U-505’s First Officer took over and skillfully evaded the
attacking ship, bringing the sub safely back to port in France.
“Some people here think that Zschech is still aboard his
sub,” Travis said.
He said that before the museum opens, a staff person boards the sub and
walks through its length to turn the lights on inside. One day, as a
member of the staff walked through the darkened sub to turn on the
lights, he suddenly felt an unseen presence with him.
“The guy said that the presence ‘tried to enter
him’,” said Travis. “Those were his exact words,
‘enter him’.”
Another docent was straightening up the commander’s bunk, Travis
said, when he felt someone right behind him. He whirled around but
there was no one there.
Female docents especially seem to be having a tough time with the
commander’s ghost. One young woman had just made a rather
insulting joke about the commander, according to Travis, when a steel
door suddenly slammed closed on her hand, injuring her. Another woman
felt a hand come out of nowhere and grasp her shoulder. Of course,
there was no one else in the room.
The U-505 exhibit was undergoing major renovations when Mary and I
visited the museum. It will be interesting to see if the ghost of
Commander Zschech becomes even more active as a result of being stirred
up by the commotion, or whether he decides to ship out for some
otherworldly port. But even if Zschech leaves, the ghosts of Clarence
Darrow and those aboard the Burlington Zephyr remain to keep you
company when you visit Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. (Ghosthunting
Illinois--and other books by John Kachuba--may be purchased at
Amazon.com. See what else John is up to at JohnKachuba.com
_____________________
Bad Memories:
The Dead Secrets of Marshall Field by
Ursula Bielski
The
transformation of
Chicago's beloved Marshall Field & Company into Macy's is
now
complete; the event which Field's loyal followers dreaded has come to
pass. But maybe it's a good thing. Indeed, Marshall Field
&
Company was plagued with death and disaster--and their paranormal
ramifications--for more than 100 years.
In December of 1903, a
devastating fire at the nearby Iroquois Theater (now the refurbished
Oriental/Ford Center) took the lives of 602 Chicagoans, many of them
children attending a matinee performance at the site. As the
tragedy
unfolded, the 8th floor of Field's was converted into a hospital where
fire victims were bandaged with dishtowels from housewares; those
who died during treatment were wrapped in sheets and blankets from the
bedding department to await the coroner's wagons.
A
year earlier, an elevator cable "gave way in an unexplained manner,"
causing the car to plunge ten floors, from the 9th level into the
basement, killing the elevator operator and wounding one passenger.
In
1905, Marshall Field, Jr. was found shot to death in the bedroom of his
own home on Chicago's Prairie Avenue, reportedly the result of a
self-inflicted shotgun shot. Field's family told police the death
had
been an accident: Marshall had been cleaning a hunting weapon when it
accidentally discharged. Neighbors weren't so sure, however, and
the
press soon leaked rumors of Field's longtime dealings in the old Levee
vice district, where Chinatown sprawls today. Had Field taken his
own
life to bow out of some untoward matter at Chicago's most prestigious
brothel, the Everleigh Club? No one really knows, but we do know
that
for a century the enormous Field, Jr. house (known as the Murray house
from its first owner) stood abandoned: no one, it seems, could live in
it.
That is, until now.
For the past several years, the 30,000 square
foot property has undergone a massive gutting and reconstruction; the
43 rooms have been transformed into 6 condominiums, with price tags of
$870,000 to 1.7million. But are the new tenants really
comfortable?
We doubt it. Along with the sinister mark of its
previous tenant, the house bears another burden: like with the rest of
Prairie Avenue, it was originally built on the killing fields of the
Fort Dearborn Massacre of 1812. That Anglo-Indian battle resulted
in
the scalping and killing of scores of Chicago settlers, whose bodies
remained on the windswept sand dunes for four years, until soldiers
returned to the burned out fort to rebuild it in 1816. At the
turn of
the 19th Century, Prairie Avenue dwellers were already complaining
about the paranormality of their lovely digs; today, with a new
generation of affluence moving in, the new life in the neighborhood is
joined, again, by the dead.
Throughout the mid-20th century,
rumors arose of a number of employee suicides said to have occurred
from the 8th level of the then open-air atrium in Marshall Field &
Company; coworkers were said to claim that the victims all spoke of a
"heaviness" or depression while working on that floor. Could the
use
of the floor as a hospital--and morgue--for the Iroquois victims have
left some kind of deadly impression on the building itself?
In
1972, a car rammed a crowd of pedestrians on the south side of Marshall
Field and Company, continuing through a display window, killing one
shopper and injuring seven others.
In 1973, almost exactly a
year later, a Northside Chicago woman jumped to her death from the
ninth floor of the landmark store, leaving behind a suicide note in the
housewares department.
The tragedy surrounding the Marshall
Field family and its world-famous department store has led some
paranormal investigators to speculate on the reasons for the
problem.
Many Chicagoans believe that the trouble may stem from Field, Sr.'s
life of luxury on the Fort Dearborn Massacre site, sacred ground for
Native
Americans. Could Field have built his mansion, as some claim, on
the
mass grave of the Native American dead?
Today, the proud and historic
shell of the world's first modern department store has a new
resident.
Like many Chicagoans today, it's from New York, and though the store
pays a lot of lip service to the "legacy" of the great Marshall Field
& Company,
the new bosses likely have little idea of the history--and
mystery--they've inherited.
___________
"Fort Meigs" Ghosts of
War by Jeff Belanger
(Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from GHOSTS OF WAR (C)2006, Jeff Belanger.
Published by New Page Books, a division of Career Press, Franklin
Lakes, NJ. 800-227-3371. All rights reserved.)
War: War of 1812 (1812–1814) Dates of
battle: April 30–May 8 and July 21–28, 1813 Location:
Perrysburg, Ohio Participants:
United States General William Henry Harrison against Tecumseh and his
Indian forces and British General Henry A. Proctor Casualties:
400–500 who died in the two battles, in skirmishes surrounding
the fort, and from illnesses related to the living conditions
“Tell General Proctor that if
he shall take the fort it will be under circumstances that will do him
more honor than a thousand surrenders.”
--U.S.
General William Henry Harrison in a note to British General Proctor, May
4, 1813
Fort Meigs marked a
turning point in the War of 1812,
a war that wasn’t going well in the northwestern region of the
United States at the time. America had been defeated in Dearborn,
Mackinac, Detroit, and Frenchtown, and another rout could lead to the
loss of the entire region. The stockades and forces at Fort Meigs held
through two attacks and sieges, but not without its price. Today there
are still echoes from those who fought. Some have claimed that even the
spirits of Native Americans who lived here for centuries before the
fort was built still roam the grounds. Many people today report strange
glowing masses of light and even the apparitions of American soldiers,
but there is an even higher rate of unexplained occurrences around
blockhouse number three.
On
January 22, 1813, General William Henry Harrison and 900 of his men
were fleeing Frenchtown (modern day Monroe, Michigan) after a failed
American offensive against British General Henry A. Proctor. Along the
Raisin River in Frenchtown, U.S. Major General James Winchester let his
guard down and didn’t post enough sentries to watch the town at
night. By morning, British cannon fire was raining down from all around
and the Redcoats swarmed like angry hornets. Of Winchester’s 960
men, over 300 were killed and 500 were captured, including Winchester
himself, and the rest ran south to catch up with General
Harrison’s men. When the escapees caught up with Harrison, they
were panicked and warned that an exaggeratedly immense British and
Indian force was heading south to finish off any American forces in the
area. Harrison’s only choice was to give up Michigan territory
and keep moving south to find a position where they stood a fighting
chance.
When
Harrison reached a hill on the banks of the Maumee River in northwest
Ohio that evening, he ordered his 900 men to dig in—all the while
checking over their shoulders to the north to watch for advancing
British and Indian forces. The men dug and pick-axed through the cold
weather without rest because if their enemy closed in, this could very
well be the last stand for the northwestern United States. After almost
two weeks had gone by and no enemy came, General Harrison figured a
British attack wouldn’t come until spring, so he set his men to
building a more significant fort.
Soon
more American soldiers arrived from Kentucky and Virginia, bringing the
garrison totals up to 1,800 men. When completed, the fort’s log
stockade enclosed ten acres, seven two-level blockhouses, and five
emplacements, or prepared cannon positions. They dug large earthen
parapets on the river-side of the fort, offering protection from any
attack that might come from the water. When the basic configuration was
complete, General Harrison named the fort in honor of Ohio Governor
Jonathan Meigs.
Back
in Michigan, General Proctor was also building a force of more than
2,200—about 1,000 British and Canadian militia and 1,200 Indian.
On April 26th, they set out for Fort Meigs. Two days later, they began
to set up camps two miles from the fort. Gen.
Harrison’s scouts saw the British movement and reported in.
Harrison ordered the base to be readied for defense as British scouts
watched unabashedly from the opposite side of the Maumee River.
On
April 30th, a British gunboat drifted down the Maumee and fired at Fort
Meigs but it achieved little. Around 11 A.M. the next morning, General
Proctor opened up his cannon artillery on the Americans inside the fort.
General
Proctor’s hope for a quick surrender was quickly dashed. General
Harrison gave the order to his quartermaster: “Sir, go and nail a
flag on every battery where they shall wave as long as an enemy is in
view.” Until late that night the British fired heavy and light
rounds at the fort, and by midnight only two Americans were dead and
four injured, but a steady rain was turning everything to mud,
including the giant traverse dug just a few days prior.
May
2nd saw an all-day assault from Proctor and the British and Indian
forces. Fort Meigs returned fire sparingly, considering their supplies
of ammunition. General Harrison offered a reward of a gill (about 4
ounces) of whiskey for every six-pound British cannonball his men could
recover for firing back. The more whiskey the men received, the braver
they became at facing the British gunfire. Over 1,000 cannon balls were
recovered.
For
two more days, the British battering continued until a scout arrived
informing Harrison that reinforcements were only 45 miles away. Gen.
Harrison devised a plan to counterattack the British from Fort Meigs
while the reinforcements flanked the British troops on the opposite
side of the river and American gunboats could drift in and have their
pick of targets.
The
plan came together, and American forces chased the Indians through the
woods all the way back to the British camp two miles away. The
reinforcements successfully took out many of the British cannon
batteries on the opposite shore of the Maumee, and the British
retreated to their own camp to take up defensive positions. Of the 846
men under Colonel Dudley who chased the Indians back to the British
base camp, only 170 made it back to Fort Meigs. The American rout was
successful in securing their fort, but disastrous considering the
losses that could have been avoided had the men stopped once the
British fled their siege. Harrison sent out men from the fort to help
break the Redcoat defensive lines that were forming during their
retreat. The British came back for a few more cannon attacks on Fort
Meigs in the coming days, but when Harrison returned fire with great
number and fury on May 8th, Proctor conceded that the fort would not be
his and pulled out.
The
past is still alive at Fort Meigs in many ways. The site offers regular
tours from volunteers in period dress, and many have reported
experiences ranging the supernatural spectrum from simple uneasy
feelings to seeing strange balls of light and even recognizable
apparitions.
John
Destatte is a 52-year-old history buff who has been volunteering at
Fort Meigs since the early 1990s. He grew up in the area, and though he
hasn’t seen the ghosts himself, he’s heard many reports
from people who have.
“Blockhouse
number three always seems to be a place where a lot of people say they
see things,” Destatte said. “I’m one of the resident
skeptics. I don’t necessarily believe in these things, but
it’s food for thought when you hear a number of people repeatedly
give the same accounts and the same stories, and you say well maybe
there is something to this.
“Blockhouse
number three was destroyed during the first battle at the fort,
essentially from artillery fire from across the river. During the
original construction, there was found to be many remains of Native
Americans who are buried on that site, which is natural because
it’s a nice prominent point looking over the river. A lot of
people say they feel an Indian presence there, or they seem to see some
sort of Indian spirit. Then there’s the other people who say they
see a woman and child looking out of the upstairs of the
blockhouse.”
“Was
there any record of a woman and child there?” I asked. “It
doesn’t really tie into anything we’ve ever come across.
Blockhouses were not used for people to stay in. We don’t know of
anything that would indicate why people would see that apparition. But
those two things always seem to be associated with blockhouse number
three. We know that there was probably some refugees from the local
area that might have taken shelter here. Some of them were probably
from Frenchtown, which is present-day Monroe, Michigan, and there are
some references to women at camp, but there really isn’t much to
go by.”
Destatte
explained how many of the Perrysburg locals will walk around the fort
in the evenings, walking their dogs, or just going for a stroll. Some
of these locals have contacted the fort to ask some peculiar questions.
“Off the east end of the fort there was a local kid hanging out.
His parents called a couple days after he was up there and asked what
was going on this last weekend. And I said, ‘Well, there
wasn’t anything going on. We didn’t have any events or
anything, why?’ And he said his son was up there and he heard
drums and music and horses, men marching over where the cemetery is.
And he was wondering if we were having a re-enactment up there.
“That
was a new story, I never heard that before, but when you stop and think
about it, it makes sense because that’s exactly where
Miller’s charge was. And he probably would’ve heard men
marching, and the drums and fifes and horses because they were right in
the area where this kid said he heard all of the noise.”
On
May 5, Colonel John Miller and 19th U.S. Infantry led a sortie
consisting of 350 men from seven companies against the British and
Indian battery in the ravine on the east end of Fort Meigs. The men
charged in full view of their enemy. Indian snipers fired at them from
the tree line and British soldiers fired back head-on. By noon, Miller
accomplished his goal of spiking the nearby British cannons and he
managed to capture 42 prisoners in the charge.
Another
hotspot for sightings at Fort Meigs are the giant earthen traverses.
During the sieges, some brave (and probably a little bit crazy) men
from the fort would stand on the traverses and watch the British
artillery shots launch from across the river. The spotters would call
out if they felt the shell was going to fly over the fort, or announce
where they thought it might land inside—giving the American
forces a second or two to take cover.
During
May 5th, when U.S. General Green Clay and his 1,200 reinforcements
arrived, they surprise-attacked the British battery before moving into
the cover of the fort. The orders were to spike the British cannons,
then move back to the fort. The eager Americans were so successful they
continued to chase the British and Indian forces into the woods where
many Americans were cut down. Some men inside the fort saw what was
happening and screamed for their comrades to stop and come back. Today,
some witnesses have spotted the ghost of an American soldier standing
on the traverse and frantically waving his arms, trying to get the
attention of someone on the other side of the river. “It would
make sense that you might see somebody on top of the traverses waving
their arms,” Destatte said. “It ties into the written
accounts.”
“You
hear some stories too often to just totally disregard them,”
Destatte said.
To order
Ghosts of War, please
visit Amazon.com or your favorite bookseller. For more
information on this new book or Jeff Belanger's other works, plese
visit GhostVillage.com
__________________________________
"The Haunted Rectory" Muldoon:
A True Chicago Ghost Story by Rocco &Dan Facchini
(The following excerpt is reprinted
with permission of Lake Claremont Press from "Muldoon: A True Chicago
Ghost Story.")
At the
corner of Rush and Chestnut Streets,
just a block away from the
historic Chicago Water Tower and the bustle of Michigan Avenue, stands
Quigley Preparatory Seminary, a Catholic entry-level school of theology
for teenage boys aspiring to the diocesan priesthood. (The word
seminary is derived from the Latin noun semen: a seed carefully sown
into an environment of strong faith, to develop strong and vigorous
stock.) Today, the old school seems like a lost homeless person among
the modern glistening skyscrapers—unkempt, injured, and
misplaced. Much has changed since I was a student there, when the
religious compound comprised some of the largest structures in the
area. The Gothic court buildings of the seminary stood tall and
majestic then—a beacon amid a sea of shabby houses, scattered
parks, and cheap taverns. In particular, I remember a balmy spring
afternoon in 1949, just weeks away from my graduation ceremony at Holy
Name Cathedral. This was the first time I had ever heard of a haunted
rectory in a Chicago parish.
At
the time I attended Quigley, the minor seminary of the Archdiocese of
Chicago was a five-year school, offering three years of high school and
two years of college preparation. Quigley was different from most minor
seminaries in the nation because students did not have to move away
from home to attend. Most other seminaries were boarding schools in
which students were isolated from family life, and society. But Quigley
was founded on the progressive idea that a minor seminarian could
pursue studies leading to the priesthood while living a typical life
with his family. The devout purpose of the school was to support the
young seminarian in his growth as a person of prayer, spirituality, and
intellectual understanding, as a trained messenger who would bring the
Good News of Jesus Christ to the waiting world. Classes were held five
days a week, with Thursdays off and classes on Saturday. This kept
fellows from common adolescent social activities, especially dating.
The school days were from 9:00 A.M. to 3:15 P.M. daily, with a
guaranteed three hours of homework each night.
Classes
had a strong emphasis on language studies. Everyone studied English
along with a modern language tied to his ethnic background, such as
Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, or German. The predominantly Irish student
body learned French. Latin was required through all five years, and
classic Greek with its ancient alphabet was required of all seminarians
from sophomore year onward. Quigley's difficult and complex curriculum
was weighted heavily in the humanities, reflecting a wide range of
thoughts and feelings of every human age and providing deep insight
into the human psyche. Each student studied a significant amount of
literature, including Latin classics such as Caesar's Gallic Wars and
works by Cicero as well as Greek literature pieces like Xenophon's
Anabasis and Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Ancient, medieval, and modern
history was studied. English literature concentrated on the works of
Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet. The
significance of all these classical studies was to develop a
well-rounded parish priest as someone able to understand, connect with,
and counsel desperate souls.
My
senior
English literature professor was Father Vincent Casey, a monotonous and
no-nonsense teacher. He had a round, serious face and stood about six
feet tall, weighing some 200 pounds. He was meticulous, from his
trimmed, graying black hair at his temples, to his pristine black
cassock, to his well-organized teaching style—he always stuck to
his appointed text. Though his lectures were lethargic and dull, Father
Casey was a teacher who, in order to perform, needed total control over
his pupils. When the class faded from his attention, the easily
flustered Father Casey would nervously start coughing and stuttering,
his face would turn crimson, and he would begin rapidly distributing
demerits. Like so many other mild men of the cloth, when Father Casey
blew his stack, it was catastrophic and everyone ran for cover.
On
this particular spring afternoon in 1949, Father Casey was
concentrating on the main characters of Shakespearean plays. According
to him, each of the Bard's characters was a worthwhile study of human
behavior. As we discussed the significance of Banquo's ghost from
Macbeth, Father Casey made a rare interruption from the coursework that
I never forgot. He paused for a moment and completely changed the
subject. With uncommon energy, he began talking about an old rectory in
the archdiocese—a dark, musty place that smelled like death and
had a creaky staircase leading to the second floor. Soberly, he told
the class about the ghost of a former pastor who had been seen walking
up the staircase, almost bumping into a priest from the house. Father
Casey went on to tell of this ghost who made itself known many times,
year after year, both visually and sonically. The story seemed fresh to
him, as if it had just happened recently. And Father Casey told it very
seriously. When some of the class chuckled in disbelief, he
deliberately cleared his throat and retold his story, speaking in a
stronger and more nervous tone. This was something that obviously shook
him up. I could tell that he wanted to be heard. He wanted to be
believed.
Father
Casey gave few details or facts that would reveal the name or location
of the haunted rectory. He just kept saying it was a dark, ominous
place. After discussing it briefly, he turned back to the lecture topic
just as abruptly as he had begun telling the ghost story. It was
apparent Father Casey was uncomfortable speaking of ghosts and spirits.
Though he never brought up his ghost story again, and I can't remember
ever discussing the story with any of my classmates, I was enthralled
by his short narration. I could not help but wonder where that haunted
rectory could be.
Having
been a priest, I can appreciate Father Casey's need to cut his ghost
story short. Priests know that the discussion of the spirit world is
dangerous territory, as it can easily challenge traditional Catholic
beliefs. Historically and to this day, the Catholic Church refuses to
officially recognize the concept of ghosts. Though Christianity
promises immortality through the spiritual afterlife of heaven and
hell, it rejects the concept of the manifestations of spirits returning
to earth. Therefore, there is a vague, yet significant, difference
between the definition of a human soul and a ghost: The soul goes to a
completely different conscious afterlife unknown to our physical world,
while a ghost, seen as a tortured spirit trapped in our material world,
for unexplainable reasons does not move on to future rest. For men of
the cloth, it might be all right to joke superficially or to allude
briefly to ghostly happenings. However, it is more comfortable to
blanket unexplained occurrences with silence, avoid deep theological
debate, and move on to safer topics.
__________________________________________
Rest in
Peace, Ed Warren . . .
Ghosthunter and
Demonologist Ed
Warren worked with his wife, Lorraine, on some of America's
most
famous ghost cases, hauntings and possessions, including the case at
Amityville, New York. Ed passed away on the afternoon of
August 26th, 2006, after a long illness.
For more information on the Warrens, their cases and
history, please visit The
Warrens Website.
For an in-depth interview--and words of rememberance from fans and
friends around the world, please visit GhostVillage.com
__________________________________________
Read
Ursula Bielski's brand-new article on
Chicago's
Strange Angles and
Haunted
Architecture
Click to
read it,
exclusively on GhostVillage.com
__________________________________________
Do You See What I See? Is
the site of "The Most Haunted House in England" still haunted? Below,
Borley Church, Essex, in 1972. The photo was taken by
photographer
Eddie Brazil, currently an active paranormal investigator
and Borley expert. According to Brazil, Borley has
lately
been seeing a resurgence in paranormal activity. For more on
the
most up-to-date phenomena--including recent photographs--at the Borley
grounds, visit the
Harry
Price Website.
__________________________________
Saints and Sinners:
Mount Carmel's Motley Crew
(Reprinted
with permission of Lake Claremont Press. From Ursula
Bielski's Chicago Haunts:
Ghostlore of the Windy City : Lake Claremont Press.)
Along
Roosevelt Road in West Suburban Hillside, a curious conglomeration of
souls awaits judgment. Here, in one of the largest post-mortem
gatherings of Chicago's Italian-Americans, some of the most notorious
of Chicago's gangland players lie side by side with some of the most
pious of the city's faithful, all nestled in a curious and cramped
communion. While generally there is a fair balance between good and
evil, now and then the strength of one or another seems to overpower
its opposite force.
Mt.
Carmel briefly captured international attention in 1996 when Joseph
Cardinal Bernardin was entombed in its Bishop's Mausoleum after losing
his grueling battle with pancreatic cancer. Pilgrims trudged to the
site for weeks, toughing the cold to glimpse the interior of the
otherwise closed tomb—everlasting home to the bodies of
Chicago's past Archdiocesan leaders. But before the spectacle of that
recent season, pilgrims had been traveling to Mt. Carmel for a peek and
a prayer at the comparatively modest monument that marks the grave of a
mysterious young woman named Julia.
Over
the past seventy-five years, Julia Buccola Petta has been engaging the
interest of thousands of Chicagoans, becoming no less than a martyr to
many of Chicago's Italian-American women. Such status is partly due to
the circumstances of her death, but is ultimately due to the
circumstances that came after that death.
In
1921, the young bride died in childbirth and was buried at Mt. Camel
carrying her baby. When in 1927, Buccola's mother had recurring visions
of Julia begging to be dug up, Julia's casket was opened. To the shock
of witnesses, the girl's body, six years in its grave, had remained in
unblemished condition. Astonished admirers hastened to display a
photograph of the perfectly preserved corpse on Buccola's tombstone,
where it remains today along with the Italian-English inscription:
Filumena
Julia Buccola aged 29
Questa fotoraha presa dopo 6 anni morti.
As
a
further tribute, a life-sized statue of "The Italian Bride" serves as a
beacon to the endless stream of curiosity seekers who come to pay
homage to a powerful image, the instantaneous meeting of birth and
death.
According
to some of those visitors, not only Julia's flesh has endured the
rigors of the grave. Buccola's spirit also seems to have survived,
joining the handful of Women in White featured in Chicago ghostlore.
The ghost of this dead mother, clad in the wedding gown she was buried
in three-quarters of a century ago, wanders near her resting place, say
witnesses. In fact, one story recounts the day a small boy was
accidentally left behind in the cemetery by his family. The boy's
shaken kin rushed back to the cemetery and spotted the child taking the
hand of a white-gowned woman. Upon the family's arrival at the scene,
however, the woman vanished.
Over
the years, the ongoing search for the phantom Julia spread to all
generations. Even local Proviso West high-schoolers would make ritual
attempts to catch a glimpse of this fabled apparition, sometimes
leaving school dances en masse to line up, eyes wide, along the Mt.
Carmel fence.
In
1947, 20 years after the unearthing of the Buccola grave, Mt. Carmel's
ground was broken once again, this time for the interment of Alphonse
Capone. The family plot, gathering several of Al's siblings, his mother
Theresa, and his father Gabriel, is nondescript by Mt. Carmel
standards. In a burial ground filled with life-sized likenesses and
family mausoleums, the Capones' humble flush stones would go unnoticed
but for the force of the family name.
Visitors
to the Capone grave find flowers, beer cans, coins, and other tokens of
varying sentiment: the love and regret of family; the compassion or
curses of strangers; the grotesque admiration of the anonymous. At
least a few unknown visitors, perhaps heirs to his wrath, have made
attempts to soothe Al’s soul with peace offerings. Though few
haunting-related stories exist to enforce the fear, the admonition to
tread softly here is taken to heart by most.
The
fear of being haunted was something to which Capone himself confessed.
In his later years, he became convinced that he was being stalked by
the vengeful spirit of James Clark, brother-in-law of Capone's arch
rival, Bugs Moran, and a victim in Capone's cold-blooded coup, the St.
Valentine's Day Massacre.
__________________________________________
The Hand
of Death
(Reprinted
with permission of Lake Claremont Press. From David
Cowan's Great Chicago Fires:
Historic Blazes that Shaped a City.)
In
1924, Good Friday fell on April 18. On that afternoon, members of the
Chicago Fire Department's Engine Co. 107 and Truck Co. 12 settled into
their daily routine. Even though it was a holy day, cleaning the large
firehouse was still a necessary duty. After drawing the task of
cleaning the first-floor windows, Francis X. Leavy, a member of Engine
107, set about his duties without any specific zeal.
At
that particular moment in history, the world beyond the stable pattern
of firehouse life was pursuing an unusually lively pace. Europe was
still rebuilding from the Great War. In Paris, a lost generation of
writers and artists was trying to make sense of it all. In America, the
Roaring Twenties moved wildly to the playing of Benny Goodman and Louis
Armstrong. It was the Jazz Age, an era of flappers and It Girls, of
illegal liquor and underground speakeasies, of individual fortunes
created by a skyrocketing stock market. Chicago was in the thick of the
action, a Babylon of prostitution, gambling, and bootlegging thanks
largely to its mayor and chief buffoon, William Hale "Big Bill"
Thompson, who along with most city cops and county judges, was
compensated handsomely by the underworld. In 1924, Chicago's Grant Park
Stadium was renamed Soldier Field in honor of America's World War I
veterans, and a reform mayor, William Devers, was elected after
promising to clean things up. But four years later the crooked Thompson
would be back in office, once again padding his pockets with the spoils
of public corruption.
Frank
Leavy and his Chicago Fire Department colleagues didn't share in the
glamour of the era. As gangster Al Capone lived a potentate's existence
in downtown Chicago hotel suites, city firemen struggled to raise
families on about $2,500 a year. Most had to work second jobs. Frank
Leavy spent his days off driving a taxi.
Like
most of his co-workers, Leavy was Irish. He joined the fire department
13 years earlier after an eight-year stint in the navy, which he had
joined at age 14. A family man, he and his wife Mary were parents of a
young son and daughter, Frank, Jr. and June. When Leavy said goodbye
that Good Friday morning, no one guessed it would be for the last time.
All day, the normally upbeat Leavy seemed uncharacteristically sullen,
even melancholy.
As
the firemen went about their cleaning, they listened to the Joker, the
telegraph system at the front of the firehouse that devoted most of
that afternoon to a four-alarm fire in the Union Stockyards. The fire
was too far away; Engine 107 and Truck 12 were not due to respond. Yet,
that such a large fire was burning only a few miles to the south made
the men edgy. Leavy tried putting it out of his mind, concentrating on
the window he was washing. He placed his left hand against the glass
and wiped it clean with a soapy sponge in his right hand. It was
precisely at this moment that he looked down and uttered a grim
prophecy:
"This
is my last day on the fire department."
Though
Leavy had spoken to no one in particular, his words, coupled with his
sudden change in personality, puzzled his fellow firefighters,
including Edward McKevitt, who had been standing next to him. Before
McKevitt could respond, bells started ringing. Box 372 was coming in
for a fire a mile-and-a-half east. Engine 107 and Truck 12 were due to
cover the response because other fire companies stationed closer to the
new fire were fighting the stockyards fire. "Fourteenth and Blue
Island," yelled the officer at the desk. "Let's Go." Leavy donned his
boots, coat, and helmet and jumped on the back of the 1921 Ahrens-Fox
pumper assigned to Engine 107.
The
fire was bad. Burning was Curran Hall, a landmark 50-year-old brick
building at 1363 S. Blue Island, southwest of the Loop. During its
heyday, the four-story dance hall had been a popular party spot. But
thanks to time and Prohibition, instead of dancing and fun, the hall
now was home to several small businesses, including a leather goods
store.
Engine
107's crew stretched a hoseline up the fire escape and into the burning
second floor. They crawled on hands and knees through the heat and
blinding smoke, inching their way to the seat of the fire. In those
days firefighters had no breathing apparatus, so they had to follow the
hose and crawl back and forth to the door to grab a breath of fresh
air. After playing water against the flames for about a half hour, it
began to darken, but the firefighters could sense something was wrong.
Their instincts were confirmed when fire commanders outside began
frantically screaming for their men to get out of the building.
But
the warning came too late because no sooner did the men from Engine 107
and Truck 12 begin scrambling for the fire escape when the building's
outer walls buckled, bringing down the entire structure, burying the
firefighters inside. The collapse knocked out electrical power to the
area, leaving those searching for trapped men to use flashlights. For
several hours they dug by hand amid the possibility of a secondary
collapse. When cranes were finally brought in eight bodies were dug
out. Frank Leavy's dire prophecy had been fulfilled: he had been among
those killed. Though Leavy's chest had been severely crushed, his was
the only body recovered with an intact face, its features clearly
distinguishable.
Of
the eight dead firefighters, six were from the firehouse at 13th and
Oakley. One civilian had also been killed. A ninth firefighter, also
from the Oakley station, died eight days later. Twenty others had been
injured. A tenth firefighter suffered a fatal heart attack while
serving as a pallbearer for one of the victims from Truck 12.
When
the building collapsed, Edward McKevitt was working outside. The next
day, the shaken McKevitt related to a group of firefighters Leavy's
spooky premonition of death. As he told the story, McKevitt glanced up
at the window Leavy had been wiping. Etched in the glass, in the exact
spot where Leavy had rested his soapy left hand was the image of a
man's handprint. Because it hadn't been there before, McKevitt
suggested the handprint was Leavy's, and he and the others tried
scrubbing it away. When the image refused to come off, a combination of
fear and mystery infiltrated the firehouse.
Arson
surfaced during the investigation of the Curran Hall fire. Flammable
liquids had been used to start the fire, which originated inside the
leather goods store on the second floor. Detectives learned that the
store's two owners had been in financial trouble, and that on the night
of the fire, the pair had instructed their employees not to lock the
rear doors. Witnesses later related seeing one of the men leave the
building through the unlocked door shortly before the fire was
reported. After a coroner's jury returned a verdict of murder by arson,
the two owners were indicted. At trial the defendants were acquitted
because, despite an abundance of circumstantial evidence, nothing could
be produced to prove that they had actually started the fire
themselves. For the dead firefighters and their families, this meant
justice had been denied.
Meanwhile,
the legend of the ghostly handprint lived on. Over the years,
firefighters assigned to Engine 107 and Truck 12 came and went. But in
the course of their daily house duties, many had tried to scrub the
mysterious handprint from the window. Not one effort, including the use
of ammonia or scraping the glass with a razor blade, had succeeded.
Finally, the Pittsburgh Glass Company, which had manufactured the
window, was called in. Still, the apparently supernatural print
resisted even their toughest chemical cleaning compounds, causing the
handprint to become all the more famous. Dozens of people visited the
firehouse to view the strange phenomenon and listen to the story of
Frank Leavy. Was the handprint an apparition? No one knew for sure. But
when a city official obtained a copy of Leavy's thumb-print, it was
compared with the print on the window. The two thumbprints matched
perfectly. There could be no doubt: the handprint on the glass
definitely belonged to Frank Leavy.
The
handprint remained undisturbed for 20 years until one day in 1944, when
the unexplained revisited the firehouse at 13th and Oakley. A newsboy
accidentally threw the afternoon paper through the window, shattering
the glass containing the handprint along with any hope of solving its
mystery or preserving its physical evidence. What made the accident
eerie was the date of its occurrence: April 18, 1944, exactly 20 years
to the day of Leavy's death.
Leavy's
widow, Mary, and her daughter, June, never went to the firehouse to
view the handprint. The younger Frank Leavy did, though he never
conceded that the print was his father's. Yet, he did follow in his
father's footsteps by joining the Chicago Fire Department on April 18,
1945, the 21st anniversary of his father's death. He was not assigned
to Engine 107.
Aside
from the belief that the handprint was supernatural, some have
theorized that Frank Leavy's fear of an impending crisis may have
caused his pancreas to produce a chemical that left behind a permanent
stain through his perspiration. No one will ever know for sure. The
firehouse at 13th and Oakley was razed in 1971, replaced by a newer one
a few blocks away.
__________________________________________
Meat
is Murder: The
Butcher of Palos Park
By
Ursula Bielski
Just
southwest of Chicago proper lies a sprawling expanse of
slough-studded forest, one of the largest preserve areas in Northern
Illinois and, many believe, one of the most haunted regions in America.
Though
the story to be told plays out in one of this area’s many
villages, it cannot be told without setting the larger scene, because
Palos Park is nestled in one of the nation’s most mysterious
districts, and Chicago’s most supernatural realm.
The
area known locally as “Palos” is comprised of three
separate villages: Palos Heights, Palos Hills, and Palos Park, and
these three towns slumber on the Eastern border of the most under
populated part of this very haunted territory. The district is bounded
on its north end by phantom-riddled Archer Avenue, home to
Chicago’s most famous ghost, Resurrection Mary, an erstwhile
Southside Polish girl who has, for more than seventy years, hitchhiked
this old Indian road as far south as Willow Springs. Her stomping
grounds are also home to the so-called Sobbing Woman of Archer Woods
Cemetery, the gangland ghosts of Rico D’s restaurant, an old
Capone speakeasy, and the phantom automobiles tied in legend to the
1956 double-murder of little Barbara and Patricia Grimes, whose frozen
bodies were eventually found at nearby Devil’s
Creek.
Archer
Avenue was built in the early 1800s by Irish immigrants who
settled in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, near
present-day
Chinatown. The building of the road progressed in conjunction with a
much larger, more significant project: the construction of the Illinois
and Michigan Canal, a waterway that aimed to, at long last, connect by
water the Chicago River and the Illinois River, thereby connecting the
Great Lakes and the Mississippi. Constructing the road over an old
Indian trail that snaked southwest out of the city, immigrants worked
under conditions that were often slave-like, going without pay or
food--and sometimes without water--for days or weeks at a time. It is
estimated that many hundreds of canalers died along the canal route;
indeed, one of Archer’s most haunted sites is the churchyard
of
St. James, established near the Sag Bridge, which was founded to
accommodate the bodies of the many dead canalers.
The
suffering of the Illinois and Michigan canalers certainly left a
preternatural imprint on this atmospheric road, but other factors that
have contributed to the haunting of Archer Avenue can also go a long
way in explaining the haunting of the entire region south of it, most
notably the presence of water.
Even
before the building of the Illinois and Michigan canal (and, with
less fanfare, the Calumet-Sag Channel and the Illinois Sanitary and
Ship Canal), the DesPlaines River flowed through this heavily-forested
land, a landscape covered with lakes, ponds and sloughs. Though it was
long believed by many cultures that water keeps ghosts at bay,
parapsychologists today contend that paranormal manifestations are
actually encouraged by the presence of water, an excellent conductor
for the electromagnetic energies that ghosts are thought to
be.
Another
contributor to the paranormality of this region may be the
sheer under population of much of it. The Chicago area is rife with
forest preserves, some of them even within the city limits, and these
areas have long been notorious as hotbeds of supernatural phenomena.
Why? Theories abound.
Of
course, haunted houses most often harbor their ghosts in the attic
or basement: areas with infrequent human visitors. Silly as it may
seem, ghosts seem to prefer to “hide” from
flesh-and-blood
cohabiters rather than mix in with their everyday lives. It would
follow, then, that forest preserves would be perfect habitats for
Chicago ghosts with a distaste for the hustle and bustle of urban
life.
Other
theories, however, suggest that it is humans--and not
haunts--that have ended up infesting Chicago’s preserves.
Some
preserve visitors have attested to experiencing chanting and singing by
unseen people; at times this chanting seems to be done by dozens of
voices. Others have reported glimpsing apparitions of hooded or cloaked
figures, including those seen at Red Gate Woods, along Archer Avenue,
and at super-notorious Bachelors Grove Cemetery, part of the Rubio
Woods preserve, an overgrown woodland ossuary that remains one of the
most haunted cemeteries in the nation. These audio and visual
apparitions are often tied to the ritualistic activities that have been
reported in Chicago-area preserves since at least the 1960s. Those who
make the connection believe that these rituals, performed largely by
amateurs, have conjured up nature or even evil spirits that their
unskilled conjurers could bring forth, but not send back.
The
little village of Palos Park is, today, pure woodland serenity, a
pocket of humanity comprised mostly of mid-20th century ranch houses,
bordering the great forested preserves of Southwest Chicago. Residents
commute to Chicago to work, but thoroughly enjoy the riding stables,
fishing holes and hiking trails of their home village. But
don’t
be fooled by this town’s peaceful looks. The place holds a
terrible secret indeed, if the legends of this town are true. For, at
the foot of a hill on the grounds of Palos Park’s unassuming,
interactive “Children’s Farm”--a petting
zoo and
interpretive center catering to school groups--is buried the head--and
only the head--of a horrifying local maniac: the Demon Butcher of Palos
Park.
Hermann
Butcher was one of a number of small businessmen who migrated
to the Palos region during the chaos of the Columbian Exposition of
1892, when the influx of visitors to Chicago--many of them settling
there--drove a significant section of the urban population to quieter
realms outside the city limits. The town of Palos was originally dubbed
“Trenton” at its founding in the 1830s; in 1850,
the
village was renamed by its postmaster, whose ancestor had sailed from
Palos de Fronters with Christopher Columbus.
In
the days of its establishment Palos Park was a farming community in
a region that had been alive with Indians and French explorers in the
1700s, but the building of the Wabash Railroad was the key to its
survival, as it allowed non-farming residents with Chicago ties to
establish homes in Palos beginning in the late 1800s.
Butcher,
whose family name came from the long-held family business, was
one of several German immigrants who set up butcher shops in Palos in
the late 19th century, but it wasn’t long before he was the
only
butcher left in town. The significant depression that swept the United
States in the 1890s did not miss Palos, and butchers here were pinned
to the ground by the livestock shortage that accompanied it.
Fortunately, Hermann Butcher was not only well-to-do, having enjoyed a
thriving business in Chicago before his exodus, he was also
well-connected to executives and managers at the best Chicago meat
suppliers. Though he was forced, like his colleagues, to raise his
prices, Butcher was able to remain in business.
No
one knows whether Butcher’s insanity stretched back further
than his life in Palos, but what happened during his days here have
made residents of Palos afraid to dig more deeply.
The
atrocities began one afternoon when a large shipment of beef
arrived at Butcher’s shop. Like most butchers of the day,
Hermann
retained an apprentice who learned, at his side, the art and craft of
butchering meat. Hermann was known in the village to drive his
apprentice too hard. With a bad back and a sharp tongue, Butcher pawned
off most of the daily workload onto his young charge, who bore the
increasing burden with the patience of a saint. On this particular day,
though the shipment was larger than usual, Butcher pressed his
apprentice to carry every parcel of it down to the basement meat
locker, without a lick of assistance from the master. Unfortunately, a
particularly heavy package of beef caused the young man to falter on
the steep steps; he tumbled to the basement, breaking his neck with a
fatal snap.
Butcher
was horrified. He knew he had a reputation for working his
apprentice into the ground, and of disciplining him with his foul
temper. Because of it, he had been on unfriendly terms with the
boy’s family for months. Would the apprentice’s
family
think the boy’s death had been Hermann’s fault?
That he had
driven the boy too hard or, worse, in a flair of temper, pushed him
down the stairs?
Strained
by months of trying to keep his business afloat, Butcher
wasn’t willing to chance it. If he were accused of
contributing
in any way to his apprentice’s death, who knew what could
happen?
And Butcher was sick of worrying and struggling. In a moment of
desperation, Butcher stashed the apprentice’s corpse behind
the
parcels of beef that the young man had just unloaded. He locked the
freezer door and hoped for the best.
It
wasn’t long before the boy was missed, but inquiries as to
his
whereabouts were met by Butcher’s own, feigned bewilderment
and
anger: I have no idea where he is, Hermann claimed, but when you find
him, tell him to get into work immediately! Butcher claimed he
hadn’t seen the boy since he’d left work two days
before;
he suggested that the boy had been unhappy with the job and, perhaps,
had decided to hop a Chicago-bound train to make his fortune in a more
pleasing apprenticeship.
Despite
his cool demeanor, the heat on Hermann increased as the week
wore on. Adding stress was the always-dwindling meat supply. When fare
for his customers was at an all-time low, Butcher took action. After
closing up shop one evening, he made his way to the basement meat
locker. Working by the light of a dim lantern, he carved up a portion
of the apprentice’s chilled left leg and packaged it in
butcher
paper. At home that night, Hermann roasted the leg meat and sat down to
dinner. Sampling the morbid fare, he found it surprisingly similar to
beef, but with an added sweetness that rendered it quite delectable.
Early
next morning, Butcher arrived at his shop and spent several hours
butchering and displaying his gruesome offerings. When the first
customers arrived, they were delighted to find the fine-looking cuts of
meat and, in short time, every one was sold.
The
next day, a nervous Butcher was waiting for the verdict on his
grisly new supply. To his delight, the same customers returned, having
found Hermann’s “beef” scrumptious.
Luckily, Butcher
had carved up most of the apprentice’s remaining corpse, so
his
customers went away happy again, but this couldn’t last... or
could it?
Butcher
found himself newly perplexed. If he could not supply more of
the flesh his customers craved, what would they do? Likely, try to find
more of the strangely delicious beef themselves, by contacting his
suppliers. This simply couldn’t be allowed. The supply would
have
to continue.
When
the last scraps and bones had been sold, Butcher launched a fresh
plan to protect his ever-floundering business. Each evening for weeks,
he made his way out to the railroad yard and singled out a
hungry-looking hobo. Promising food in exchange for some light labor,
Hermann lured his victims back to his shop, where he fed them a drugged
dinner, washed down with potent schnapps, until they dozed off. When
the unfortunate vagrant was suitably comatose, Butcher brought out his
cleaver and hacked him up in his sleep, working late into the night to
attractively arrange the cuts for sale the next day.
Soon,
however, word spread through the hobo camp that something
untoward was afoot; overnight, the camp emptied, and Butcher was again
without meat for his shop.
By
this time, Butcher had passed the point of no return. One by one, in
the days that followed, the children of Palos began to go missing.
Besides the hobos, who could be plied with food and liquor, these
little ones were all that Butcher, in his aged state, could handle.
Worse,
with the first child’s murder came even greater reviews of
Butcher’s products: Hermann’s customers, of course,
found
the latest offerings the most succulent of all, so Butcher was insanely
encouraged to provide more and more of the sickening stock.
Eventually,
the locals began to suspect that one of their own villagers
was behind the recent string of child abductions; working with an
assortment of tips--and driven by the hunches of the
apprentice’s
family--a group of enraged villagers stormed Butcher’s shop
late
one night, searching it from top to bottom and finding, in the basement
meat locker, a shocking array of packaged body parts--and the remains
of a seven-year-old child hanging from a meat hook.
Making
their way to Butcher’s home, the villagers forced entry
and dragged Hermann out onto the lawn, where they butchered him with
his own cleaver, spraying the house with blood. The final blow of the
cleaver severed Butcher’s head, which the people of Palos
buried
at Indian Hill, across from Oak Hill Cemetery.
Today,
Palos Park remains a uniquely peaceful suburb of Chicago, the
greatest beneficiary of the preserves that surround it. Residents enjoy
horseback riding, fishing, boating and hiking in the beautiful
woodlands that abut the village, and even the homes here nestle in
lovely woodland settings. Still, at Oak Hill Cemetery, all is not at
rest.
After
the slaughter of Hermann Butcher, and the burying of his head at
Indian Hill, the murderer’s headless remains were interred
separately in a plot near the center of Oak Hill Cemetery, marked by a
stone bearing only the name of “Butcher.” But they
haven’t remained there. Residents of Palos Park tell of the
body
moving ever closer to the head. In fact, the grave has mysteriously
moved twice already, from the center of the graveyard towards the road,
to a plot near the pond, then to its current site along Southwest
highway itself. Is it only a matter of time before Butcher’s
body
returns to its unbutchered state--rejoining its head across the
road?
Of
course, skeptics claim that the Butcher remains have been repeatedly
moved by decidedly unsupernatural means. The water table at the
cemetery is such, they say, that certain graves have become waterlogged
over the years, forcing the caretakers to move them, sometimes more
than once. The migration of the Butcher body closer and closer to the
road (and, inevitably, its head at Indian Hill) is, according to the
unbelievers, pure coincidence.
A
visit to the Children’s Farm on a warm summer afternoon seems
to chase away all thoughts of ghosts. The air smells of hay and
new-mown grass, and the sounds of young animals mingle with the
laughing of children, visitors to the Farm enjoying its pleasant,
natural surroundings.
Wandering
away from the animals and the outbuildings, however, yields a
distinctly different feeling, especially if one wanders toward Indian
Hill... (to
be continued)
(Many thanks to the
Palos Historical Society and the Children's Farm for reference
materials and a lifetime of information!)
"The Museum of Science and
Industry"
Bad Memories:
Along
Roosevelt Road in West Suburban Hillside, a curious conglomeration of
souls awaits judgment. Here, in one of the largest post-mortem
gatherings of Chicago's Italian-Americans, some of the most notorious
of Chicago's gangland players lie side by side with some of the most
pious of the city's faithful, all nestled in a curious and cramped
communion. While generally there is a fair balance between good and
evil, now and then the strength of one or another seems to overpower
its opposite force.