State file · IL
Haunted places in Illinois
What are the most haunted places in Illinois? The best-known are Resurrection Mary, Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, Hull-House and Old Joliet Prison.
Illinois ghost lore is dominated by Chicago and its suburbs, a city whose history of fire, epidemic, gangland violence, mass immigration and spectacular disasters has given it one of the richest urban-legend traditions in America. Its most famous ghost is Resurrection Mary, the girl in the white dress who hitches a ride along Archer Avenue and vanishes at a cemetery gate – Chicago’s version of the worldwide vanishing hitchhiker. A few miles south, the vandalised pioneer graveyard of Bachelor’s Grove became internationally famous for a single 1991 photograph.
- 4 hauntings
- 12 recorded sightings
- 2 news stories
Haunted places in Illinois
Resurrection Mary
Chicago’s most famous ghost: a blonde girl in a white dress who asks for a ride home along Archer Avenue and vanishes at Resurrection Cemetery. Regional legend
Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery
A tiny pioneer cemetery in the woods south-west of Chicago, famous for a 1991 photo of a woman on a gravestone – and for decades of vandalism. Widely reported
Hull-House
Jane Addams’s famous Chicago settlement house, home to a 1913 “Devil Baby” rumour that drew thousands – and a lady in white said to be Mrs. Hull. Regional legend
Old Joliet Prison
The castle-like limestone penitentiary of 1858 – Jake Blues’s prison – now a historic site whose night tours promise voices in the cellblocks. Regional legendThe ghost lore of Illinois
Chicago’s ghost stories are often also stories about how a city remembers. At Hull-House, Jane Addams herself analysed the 1913 rumour of a “Devil Baby” as an expression of immigrant women’s hardships, and the museum still tells it as folklore. The Old Joliet Prison, the Eastland disaster site on the Chicago River and the city’s great cemeteries all carry legends rooted in real deaths, and Chicago has a long line of ghost-tour guides and authors, from Richard Crowe onward, who collected and shaped them.
Downstate, Alton on the Mississippi bills itself as one of America’s most haunted small towns, and Springfield has its stories of Abraham Lincoln. Most famous sites are public – museums, historic sites, cemeteries with daylight hours – but forest-preserve cemeteries close at dusk, and night-time trespass at places like Bachelor’s Grove has caused serious damage.
Ghost-hunting hotspots
- Archer Avenue
The south-west road out of Chicago past Resurrection and other old cemeteries, home of Resurrection Mary and many other legends.
- Chicago River and the Loop
The Eastland disaster site, old theatres and hotels make downtown a staple of Chicago ghost tours.
- Graceland Cemetery, Chicago
A grand Victorian cemetery whose striking monuments have attracted ghost stories for generations.
- Alton
A Mississippi River town with Civil War prison ruins, old mansions and a self-styled reputation as one of America’s most haunted small towns.
- Springfield
Lincoln’s home town, with legends about the president at his house, his tomb and the Old State Capitol.
Timeline
- 1939Jerry Palus’s dance partner Resurrection Mary
Southsider Jerry Palus later said he danced with a young woman at a South Side hall who asked him to drive her up Archer Avenue, then left the car and vanished at Resurrection Cemetery.
- 1946Bowen’s memoir Hull-House
Louise de Koven Bowen’s Open Windows recorded the story of Addams and Mary Rozet Smith seeing a woman in white in a second-floor bedroom.
- 1966Vandalism reported Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery
A Chicago Sun-Times article described toppled and defaced gravestones and a broken fence after the old turnpike closed to traffic.
- 1975Cook County takes over Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery
The county assumed responsibility for the neglected cemetery, which it still maintains.
- August 1976The damaged fence Resurrection Mary
Damage to the cemetery’s iron fence was claimed to show Mary’s burned handprints; cemetery officials said a truck had caused it.
- 31 January 1979A cab driver’s story Resurrection Mary
Suburban Trib columnist Bill Geist told of a cabbie who picked up a young blonde on Archer who vanished from his closed car.
- 10 August 1991The “Madonna” photograph Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery
Ghost Research Society members photographed what appears to be a semi-transparent woman seated on a gravestone – the image that made the cemetery internationally famous.
- 2002The prison closes Old Joliet Prison
Budget cuts and the obsolete, unsafe buildings ended Joliet’s 144 years as a prison; inmates moved to nearby Stateville.
- 28 October 2016The ballroom burns Resurrection Mary
Fire gutted the Willowbrook Ballroom, the former Oh Henry where, according to the legend, Mary spent her last evening.
- October 2018Ghost tours begin Old Joliet Prison
The Joliet Area Historical Museum and Chicago Hauntings ran paranormal tours and late-night ghost hunts, which sold out.
- 12 October 2019Ghost Adventures special Old Joliet Prison
The Travel Channel series featured the prison in its special “Serial Killer Spirits: John Gacy Prison”.
- May 2024WBEZ revisits the legends Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery
WBEZ’s Curious City examined the cemetery’s history and ghost stories, and historians called for more respect and upkeep for the burial ground.
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