Bachelor's Grove Cemetery

Coordinates: 41°37′51″N 87°46′15″W / 41.63083°N 87.77083°W / 41.63083; -87.77083

Bachelor's Grove Cemetery

Bachelor's Grove Cemetery is a small, abandoned cemetery in Bremen Township, Cook County, Illinois in Chicago's southwest suburbs. It is well known for its haunted reputation and supposed ghost sightings. The cemetery has also been known as Bachelor Grove, Batchelor Grove, Batchelder's Grove, and Everden (or Everdon).

Location

Bachelors Grove Cemetery is just northwest of Midlothian and Oak Forest, near the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve on the Midlothian Turnpike (near its intersection with Central Avenue), in the southwest Chicago suburbs.^[1][2]

Background

The land surrounding Bachelors Grove Cemetery was originally settled by English homesteaders who relocated to the area from New England, including Stephen Rexford, arguably the most well known of the first wave of Anglo settlers, around 1833.^[3] Ursula Bielski, author of "Chicago Haunts," asserts the actual cemetery was originally named the Everdon Cemetery after the original holder of the property title, Samuel Everdon. The site saw its first official burials around 1840 and contains 82 plots, many of which were never sold or used.^[4] Burials, however, possibly go back as far as 1834, when German immigrant workers killed while working on the Illinois and Michigan Canal were reportedly laid to rest at the site.^[5] The site is often reported to have been a dumping ground for victims of Chicago's organized crime families of the 1920s and 1930s, but no evidence of this has been proven.^[5]

Reported phenomena

The most common of the reported phenomena at the site typically involves floating orbs of light over tombstones and near collisions with a phantom vehicle.^[5][6]

Specific manifestations reported

Bachelors Grove (photo in Infrared (IR))

Besides orbs and phantom vehicles, there have been additional reports of supernatural events at the cemetery, including:^[5]

• The white lady (or "white madonna")– she walks the grounds carrying an infant during the full moon.^[5]
• Phantom farmhouse– a ghostly farmhouse which is purported to shimmer, float, and then vanish;^[5][7] this was most often reported during the 1950s. There are also reports by witnesses of the house shrinking as they approach it, then disappearing altogether.^[6]
• A farmer and his plow-horse– both victims of a plowing accident, dragged to their deaths into the nearby slough.
• A two-headed ghost– near the same slough.
• Religious monks– as late as 1984, witnesses reported seeing numerous figures dressed in monk's robes throughout the cemetery.^[5][6]
• A black dog– witnesses in the 1990s reported seeing this manifestation at the cemetery's entrance; it would disappear when they approached it.^[6]
• The "woman sitting on the grave"– a notable photograph which ran in the Chicago Sun-Times, purportedly showing a transparent woman sitting on a tombstone; the apparition was not visible when the photograph was taken.^[5]

Paranormal investigations

Claims of hauntings peaked in the 1970s and 1980s.^[6]

Paranormal researchers James Houran, Timothy Harte, Michael Hollinshead and Ursula Bielski conducted a series of experiments at Bachelors Grove Cemetery in the 1980s and 1990s. One of these, a photography experiment, was published in the Journal of Perceptual and Motor Skills (1997) and found that, while no anomalous images were obtained from Bachelors Grove Cemetery, approximately half of the frames on both infrared and black and white films were unexposed. The results are discussed in terms of ambiguous events being interpreted as meaningful due to paranormal contexts.^[8]

The Ghost Research Society has conducted numerous investigations into the reported phenomenon, and their results have included images which contain light resembling ectoplasm as well as orbs.^[6]

^[9] One photograph, taken by Judy Huff Felz in 1991, includes a "supposed" full image of a ghostly figure.^[6][10] Researchers have reported electronic voice phenomena in the area.^[6]

References