The Paranormal

Resurrection Cemetery Part 1

ResurrectionCemetery is one of the largest cemeteries in North America. It encompasses over 540 acres and is shaped like a huge isosceles triangle. With over 152,000 graves, not counting the 5,300 crypts in the mausoleum, it is truly a mammoth burial ground. Area residents have nicknamed it "The Resurrection Triangle" due to all the strange events that have taken place here throughout the years. Resurrection was consecrated in 1904 and opened officially in 1912. It is a Roman Catholic burial ground, maintained and operated by the Catholic archdiocese. The cemetery was named in commemoration of the feast celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

This is allegedly the home of Chicago's most famous ghost "Resurrection Mary", a ghost that is said to haunt the surrounding highway, cemetery and theWillowbrook Ballroom. One monument appropriately named "Resurrection of Christ" is situated adjacent to the cemetery's chapel. The large gray stone figure said to be a favorite of Resurrection Mary. Reports describe Mary dancing at the foot of this monument on more than one occasion.

Resurrection Mary has been seen by more people than any other single ghost within the Chicagoland area. This blonde-hair, blue-eyed beauty has been seen since the latter 1930's. According to legend, she had gone to a dance at the O'Henry Ballroom, now called the Willowbrook Ballroom at 8900 S. Archer Avenuein Willow Springs, Illinois. She apparently got into an argument with her boyfriend and decided to hitchhike home. Somewhere between the ballroom and the main gates of Resurrection Cemetery, nearly two miles away, she was struck and killed by a hit and run motorist and left to die on the side of the road. Within a few years, people began to see a girl in a long white dress and blonde hair thumbing for rides along Archer Avenue.

One of the very first persons to have encountered her was a south side man by the name of Gerald Palus who used to frequent the Liberty Grove and Hall near 47th Street and Mozart. The building is no longer there but his memories of that night have persisted until his death in 1992.

He had apparently seen her there on more than one occasion and had decided to ask her to dance with him. They conversed very little throughout the evening and Palus noticed the only thing strange about her was that she was ice cold to the touch. Her beauty and charm more than made up for her icy chill. He even commented, "Cold hands, warm heart" to which there was no reply.

As 11:30 p.m. approached, he decided that it was time to leave and offered her a ride home to which she gave him an address in the Bridgeport area of Chicago. But instead of going straight home, she requested that Palus take her down Archer Road, as she called it. As they began to approach the main gates of Resurrection Cemetery, she asked Palus to pull the car off the road. She then informed him that she had to cross the road and that Palus could not follow. This statement took him aback but before he could respond, she suddenly darted across the street towards the cemetery and disappeared before she ever reached the gates. It was only then that he realized that he had been with a ghost that evening. His encounter was recreated by the series Unsolved Mysteries hosted by Robert Stack.

The next day he visited the address she had given her and was told by the woman who answered the door even before Palus rang the bell that he couldn't have possibly been with her daughter as she had been dead for sometime. He correctly identified her in a picture that sat on a piano in the front room.

Bob Main is the only man known to have encountered Resurrection Mary on more than one occasion. While a night manager at Harlow's once located at 8058 S. Cicero Avenuein Burbank, he saw a strange woman one Friday night and then again two weeks later on a Saturday night.

"She was about 24 to 30 years-old, five foot eight or nine, slender, with yellow blond hair to her shoulders that she wore in these big spooly curls coming down from a high forehead. She was really pale, like she had powdered her face and her body. She had on this old dress that was yellow, like a wedding dress left in the sun.

"She sat right next to the dance floor and she wouldn't talk to anyone. She danced all by herself, this pirouette-type dance. People were saying, 'Who is this most bizarre chick?'"

When Main and others tried to talk with her, the woman would only shake her head and "seemed to look through you."

"But the strangest thing was, even though we carded everyone who came in there - I worked the door, and there were waitresses and bartenders and people there - nobody, either night, ever saw her come in and never saw her leave." Even in his wildest dreams did Main ever assume it was Resurrection Mary until he read an article in a newspaper four years later.

A more mysterious encounter happened to a cab driver that apparently came in contact with her ghost near the intersection of Archer Avenue and Willow Springs Road, not far from the OldWillow Shopping Center and the Willowbrook Ballroom! This interview is reprinted from an interview conducted by Bill Geist of the Suburban Tribune, January 31, 1979:

"It was Thursday night - would have been two weeks ago - and I was lost, basically," says Ralph, a cab driver.

"I'd dropped this big spender way the hell down in Palos Heights or Hills or someplace like that and was trying to make my way back to the toll way. I'd just turned on to Archer, down there where it's still a lonely road, especially at midnight.

"And there she was. She was standing there with no coat on by the entrance to this little shopping center. No coat! And it was one of those real cold ones, too.

"She didn't put out her thumb or nothing like that. She just looked at my cab. Of course, I stopped. I figured maybe she had car trouble or something.

"She hopped right in the front seat. She had on this fancy kind of white dress, like she'd just been to a wedding or something, and those new kinds of disco-type shoes, with the straps and that.

"She was a looker. A blond. I didn't have ideas or like that; she was young enough to be my daughter - 21 tops.

"I asked her where she was going and she said she had to get home. I asked her what was wrong, if she'd had car trouble or what but she really didn't answer me. She was fuzzy. Maybe she'd had a couple of drinks or something or was just tired. I don't know.

"Oh, the only thing she did say really was 'The snow came early this year' or 'The snows came early this year' or like that. Other than that she just nodded when I asked sometimes if we were supposed to just keep going up Archer. She was just looking out the window at the snow and the trees and that. Her mind was a million miles away. Maybe she smoked something or something. Who knows?

"A couple of 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 any 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 door never opened. May the good Lord strike me dead, it never opened."

He refused to give his last name, address or phone number fearing that his name would be used in a newspaper article and he would appear to be a raving lunatic. The ballroom was closed Friday, January 12th, and for about two weeks thereafter, owing to a major blizzard that had blanketed the snow with heavy snow. But Thursday, the 11th it was open until midnight, an estimated ten minutes before Ralph says he picked up this blonde hitchhiker. And it was a special night in the ballroom: a singles night, for those without escorts to come and dance the waltz and the foxtrot just the way they did here for 40 years.

In May of 1978, in a slightly different type of encounter a young couple, Shawn and Gerry Lape, were driving down Archer when they suddenly saw a girl running across the road in front of them towards the cemetery. She yelled at her husband, "Watch out for that woman!" He later recalled how he hit the brakes but knew it was too late and that he was going to strike the woman with the right front fender of the car. As they braced for the impact, he saw the car cut right through the image and then rapidly began melting away until it was nothing more than a soft blur on the side of the road before completely disappearing.