Good Morning and welcome to the tie-in to today’s daily
Facebook question.
My answer is Resurrection Mary. I grew up not too far away
from Resurrection Cemetery and have gone down Archer road on many spooky nights and
swearing to God, that I have seen her.
Do you think that, me and the thousands of other Chicagoans that believe,
are crazy? Tell us what you think. And tell us about your spooky local legend.
Disbelievers say that this pictures like these are fake. Experiencing
it first-hand myself, I say...it’s probably the real deal.
The following Information
is provided by the Internet.
Resurrection Mary is a well-known Chicago area ghost story.
Of the "vanishing hitchhiker" type, the story takes place outside
Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois, a few miles southwest of Chicago.
Since the 1930s, several men driving northeast along Archer
Avenue between the Willowbrook Ballroom and Resurrection Cemetery have reported
picking up a young female hitchhiker. This young woman is dressed somewhat
formally in a white party dress and is said to have light blond hair and blue
eyes. There are other reports that she wore a thin shawl, dancing shoes, that
she carried a small clutch purse, and/or that she was very quiet. When the
driver nears the Resurrection Cemetery, the young woman asked to be let out,
whereupon she disappeared into the cemetery. According to the Chicago Tribune,
"full-time ghost hunter" Richard Crowe has collected "three
dozen . . . substantiated" reports of Mary from the 1930s to the present.
Mary’s Story
The story goes that Mary had spent the evening dancing with
a boyfriend at the Oh Henry Ballroom. At some point, they got into an argument
and Mary stormed out. Even though it was a cold winter’s night, she thought she
would rather face a cold walk home than spend another minute with her
boyfriend.
She left the ballroom and started walking up Archer Avenue.
She had not gotten very far when she was struck and killed by a hit-and-run
driver, who fled the scene leaving Mary to die. Her parents found her and were
grief-stricken at the sight of her dead body. They buried her in Resurrection
Cemetery, wearing a beautiful white dancing dress and matching dancing shoes.
The hit-and-run driver was never found.
Reported sightings
Jerry Palus, a Chicago southsider, reported that in 1939 he
met a person who he came to believe was Resurrection Mary at the Liberty Grove
and Hall at 47th and Mozart (and not the Oh Henry/Willowbrook Ballroom). They
danced and even kissed and she asked him to drive her home along Archer Avenue,
exiting the car and disappearing in front of Resurrection Cemetery.
Burned section of the
front gate bars.
In 1973, Resurrection Mary was said to have shown up at
Harlow's nightclub, on Cicero Avenue on Chicago's southwest side. That same
year, a cab driver came into Chet's Melody Lounge, across the street from
Resurrection Cemetery, to inquire about a young lady who had left without
paying her fare.
There were said to be sightings in 1976, 1978, 1980, and
1989, which involved cars striking, or nearly striking, Mary outside
Resurrection Cemetery. Mary disappears, however, by the time the motorist exits
the car.
She also reportedly burned her handprints into the wrought
iron fence around the cemetery, in August 1976, although officials at the
cemetery have stated that a truck had damaged the fence and that there is no
evidence of a ghost.
In a January 31, 1979 article in the Suburban Trib,
columnist Bill Geist detailed the story of a cab driver, Ralph, who picked up a
young woman – "a looker. A blonde. . .she was young enough to be my
daughter - 21 tops" – near a small shopping center on Archer Avenue.
"A couple miles
up Archer there, she jumped with a start like a horse and said 'Here! Here!' I
hit the brakes. I looked around and didn't see no kind of house. 'Where?' I
said. And then she sticks out her arm and points across the road to my left and
says 'There!' And that's when it happened. I looked to my left, like this, at
this little shack. And when I turned she was gone. Vanished! And the car door
never opened. May the good Lord strike me dead, it never opened."
Geist described Ralph as "neither an idiot nor a
maniac, but rather [in Ralph's own words] 'a typical 52-year-old working guy, a
veteran, father, Little League baseball coach, churchgoer, the whole shot'.
Geist goes on to say: "The simple explanation, Ralph, is that you picked
up the Chicago area's preeminent ghost: Resurrection Mary."
There was a movie a few years ago based on the so-called “legend”.
For those of you that need more information, here is website
dedicated to the subject of “Resurrection Mary.”
Our recent cool, Halloween like weather has inspired my
spooky side. So I decided to add in another blog or too, feating the supernatural and other scary subjects. Many people think that Bloody
Mary and Resurrection Mary are
the same person, but in fact they are not. Come back tomorrow to see the
difference.
To catch a great scary story in the meantime...check out
Hellfire Publishing...where the “Scary and Supernatural” are always “in”.
http://www.hellfirepublishing.com/
Leave a comment for a chance to win the eBook version (now) and the print book version of Hellfire's "Hot Reads Horror Collection Volume One" when it comes out next month.
Leave a comment for a chance to win the eBook version (now) and the print book version of Hellfire's "Hot Reads Horror Collection Volume One" when it comes out next month.
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