Bell Ringer #8 – 10/29/10

1.Why were the Articles of Confederation considered “too weak”?

2.What did the first flag of the United States look like?

3.Who was the first President of the United States?

Resurrection Mary• The world-famous vanishing

hitchhiker rests at Resurrection Cemetery. This blue eyed blonde young woman wearing a white dress and dancing shoes haunts part of Archer Avenue.

• This is said to be the ghost of Mary Brgovy a young polish girl who died in a car accident.

• Her ghost left handprints on the bars of the cemetery and they are still there. Dozens have witnessed her ghost. A typical encounter goes like this. A young man meets the lady dancing at a ballroom. She has a pale complexion and has cold skin.

• She accepts a ride home and directs the man to the gates of Resurrection Cemetery where she goes inside the gates or disappears. The cemetery is located at 7200 S. Archer Avenue, Chicago.

Resurrection Mary

H.H. Holmes• The tale of serial murderer H. H. Holmes

and his Murder Castle captured the imagination of the world with the publication of The Devil in the White City.

•  Fans of Chicago's often brutal history, will note that a U.S. Post Office stands on the site of Holmes' Castle of Death on 63rd Street.  Rumors abound of apparitions--visual, audio, olfactory--and of poltergeist-type activity in the Englewood building.  Residue, perhaps, of Holmes' many victims?

• Not far away, staff members of the Museum of Science and Industry claim that Holmes' spirit still walks the halls the grand building, favoring the retrospective "Yesterday's Main Street" exhibit, a true-to-scale streetscape of Victorian Chicago.  Some wonder if the shadowy figure seen peering into the shop windows, is indeed the phantom of one of the city's most notorious lost ones.  

• Why does Holmes frequent the museum?  It is one of the only permanent buildings of the Columbian Exposition, where Holmes walked often during the Fair to lure victims to his horror-laced hovel on 63rd Street.

H.H. Holmes

Marshall Field’s/Macy’s on State• In 1903, a fire at the Iroquois Theater (now the

Ford Center) took the lives of 602 Chicagoans, many were children attending a matinee performance.  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.

• It is rumored that a number of employee suicides have occurred from the 8th level of 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 victims have left a deadly impression on the building?

Marshall Field’s/Macy’s on State

Prairie Avenue• Prairie Avenue, west of Soldier Field, was

Chicago's easy street in the days after the Great Fire.  Anyone who was anyone in the city had a multi-room mansion on the street.  

• The hush of death fell on Prairie in 1905 when Marshall Field, Jr., prince of American retail, was found shot to death in the bedroom of his 20-room home.  Some said Field had a secret life in the Levee District, perhaps a lover (or worse) at the famed Everleigh Club brothel.  

• Though the family claimed Field accidentally shot himself while cleaning a hunting rifle, the house soon became "uninhabitable."

• Since the death of Field, rumors of shadowy figures, footsteps, and inhuman cries have haunted the house, just recently rehabbed and sold (in sections) as condominiums.  Is all peaceful again on Prairie Avenue?  The new owners won't tell . . .

Prairie Avenue

Bachelors Grove Cemetery• Bachelors Grove is one of the most haunted

spots in Chicagoland. It is an overgrown neglected cemetery. The tombs here date back to the 1830's. There are rumors of satanic worship here.

• Gangsters used to dump bodies in the small pond beside the cemetery. Phantom figures in dark hooded robes, various spook lights, and a yellow glowing woman with a baby are sometimes reported. She is called Mrs. Rogers or the White Lady, or even the Madonna of Bachelors Grove. She is said to be buried here next to her son.

• The cemetery is located west of Midlothian in the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve.

Bachelors Grove Cemetery

“Irish Castle” / Beverly Unitarian Church• “The Irish Castle”, found in Beverly was

built in 1886 for Robert Givens, who built it resemble a castle in Ireland. As time passed, it was a girl's school & then the Beverly Unitarian Church in 1942.

• The haunting here was caused when it was the Chicago Female College. According to the story, a young girl became ill with a serious case of influenza and died in the early 1930's. The ghost was encountered in the 1960's by a custodian who came upon a young girl in a dress. The two of them chatted for a few minutes and the girl remarked that the place had changed much since she had lived there.

• The custodian left the room and then suddenly recalled that the church had been in the building for more than 20 years... the young girl couldn't possibly have lived there! She ran back to the room, but the girl had vanished!

• She searched the entire building, only to find the doors and windows all locked. She even looked outside and discovered that a fresh layer of snow now blanketed the ground... and no footprints led either in or out of the church. 

• In 1994, a pastor saw 2 small arms embrace her husband's waist. Her husband claimed to feel nothing. The ghost is also said to appear in the form of what appears to be a candle from outside of the building. The light has been observed passing by the windows and floating up the staircase... while no one was in the castle.

• The ghost also makes itself known through unexplainable sounds. Occupants of the building have described it as a "jingling" sound, like the tinkling of glasses and silverware at a dinner party.

• The Irish Castle is located at 10440 South Longwood Drive.