Every city and every town has its share of ghost stories. Who among us hasn’t heard about a ghost that is seen walking the streets searching for a way home from a tragedy from which they never returned in life?
In Chicago there are literally dozens upon dozens of ghost stories and the most famous of all is that of Resurrection Mary. So famous is Mary that she is included in ghost tours and her story was featured on the television show Unsolved Mysteries. The question remains is Resurrection Mary a true story or is it an urban legend?
Naysayers and skeptics scoff and easily wipe away the stories as inventions of attention getters and publicity seekers. What’s interesting about the stories of Resurrection Mary is that they begin back in the 1930’s and sightings of her have continued for over 70 years. Before there were books written about her or television reports of her, researchers recorded dozens of sightings from people otherwise unrelated in any way that more or less told the same story.
Resurrection Cemetery, located on Archer Avenue, is reputed to be the final resting place for Mary. Many sightings of her came from drivers having just passed the cemetery. In the 30’s there were dozens of reports of a young woman in a white dress that always appeared to be real until she vanished before their eyes. Sometimes she was walking along the road on the side of the cemetery. Sometimes she was seen standing on the edge of the road in front of the cemetery’s entrance. Sometimes she would appear at the side of a car seemingly attempting to climb on the running board. Many people claim to have actually let Mary in the car only to see her vanish as they passed the entrance to the cemetery.
By all accounts the description of Mary was virtually the same from one witness to the next. She had long blonde hair with blue eyes. She was always wearing a white party dress and some noted she had a shawl on and dancing shoes and sometimes held a small clutch purse. Those brave enough to try always reported that she was cold to the touch. Very cold.
Perhaps the most famous encounter, and one that was featured on Unsolved Mysteries, was that of Jerry Palus. Palus claims to have had his encounter with Mary in 1939 and stuck by his story to the letter until his death in 1992.
Palus met a young girl at the Liberty Grove and Hall, a dance hall that was near 47th Street and Mozart. He had apparently seen her there many times before and finally got up the nerve to ask her to dance. He noted in later interviews that he did not recall ever actually seeing the girl come into the dance hall. He looked away and then looked back a few moments later and she just seemed to appear near the wall.
He said they spent the night dancing every dance even though, according to Palus, she seemed very distant as if her mind was elsewhere. He also noted the coldness of her touch and when he kissed her later that night, her lips were cold and clammy.
At the end of the evening, Palus offered the young woman a ride home and was delighted when she accepted. As they left the dance hall she directed him to drive down Archer Avenue, which confused Palus since the woman had told him where she lived and he knew that it would be far out of the way for them to travel there via Archer. When he asked her about it, she simply told him again that she wanted to go down Archer Avenue.
Upon hitting the boundary where Resurrection Cemetery starts, Palus said the woman seemed to snap out of a trance and gazed in the direction of the cemetery. When they reached the gates she asked him to pull over saying she had to get out. Palus became further confused, as there was nothing else in the area save the cemetery and didn’t want to leave her in a desolate area. The young woman absolutely insisted and he finally relented on the condition that he walk her to where she wanted to go. The beautiful girl turned in her seat and faced Palus. “This is where I have to get out,” she spoke softly, “but where I’m going, you can’t follow.” Before he could respond the young woman exited the car and ran towards the entrance of the cemetery. She then vanished right before Palus’ eyes.
The following day Palus went to the address the young woman had given him the night before. The woman who answered the door told him that he couldn’t have possibly been with her daughter the night before because she had been dead for several years. However, Palus was able to correctly identify the girl from a family portrait in the other room.
Who is Resurrection Mary? Who was she when she was alive? There is no conclusive evidence one way or the other but there seems to be one theory that most researchers consent to being the most likely.
It is universally agreed amongst those who have done the research that the most accurate version of the story concerns a young girl who was killed while hitchhiking down Archer Avenue in the early 1930’s. Apparently, she had spent the evening dancing with a boyfriend at the O Henry Ballroom. At some point, they got into an argument and Mary (as she has come to be called) stormed out of the place. Even though it was a cold winter’s night she apparently would rather face a cold walk home than another minute with her boorish lover.
She left the ballroom and started walking up Archer Avenue. She hadn’t gotten very far when she was struck and killed by a passing automobile. The driver fled the scene and Mary was left there to die.
Her grieving parents buried her in Resurrection Cemetery, wearing a white dress and her dancing shoes. Since that time, her spirit has been seen along Archer Avenue, perhaps trying to return to her grave after one last night among the living.
How did she get the name “Mary?” It is believed this occurred during the earliest research. Many investigators came across the story of Mary Bregovy, who was killed in an automobile accident in 1934. The only common link with Bregovy and the “real” Mary is that they are both buried in Resurrection Cemetery. Bregovy, however, was killed on Wacker drive in downtown Chicago. Furthermore, Bregovy did not resemble the descriptions of the ghost seen on Archer Avenue. Bregovy had short, dark hair. Lastly, it was confirmed by the undertaker who prepared Bregovy for the funeral that she was buried in an orchid colored dress and not the white dress of lore.
That the mystery of her identity has only deepened through the years truly makes one wonder if she ever existed at all.
Sightings of Mary increased dramatically in the 1950’s. Most accounts have her running in front of a passing car right in front of the cemetery. Sometimes the girl, dressed in white as always, would simply vanish. Other times the driver would feel the thud of contact and see the girl crash to the ground. When they would get out to check on her, she was gone.
The mid 1970’s seem to be the absolute height of Mary sightings. Just happening to coincide with a major renovation at Resurrection Cemetery, it is believed her spirit was at its most restless during this time. Businesses had opened across the street including several incarnations of the same bar, which is just down the road. In 1973 the bar owner reported that on more then one occasion a miffed cab driver would enter the bar looking for a fare that had skipped out on paying. Always describing the woman as young and in a white dress, the owner would tell the cabbies that no one had entered the bar looking like that, leaving them scratching their heads as they left.
August 10th, 1976, was the one and only (up to now) time that Mary’s appearance resulted in actual physical evidence. Passing by the cemetery at around 10:30 p.m., a driver noticed a woman in a white dress on the inside of the cemetery at the gate. She was clutching at the bars as if trying to get out. The driver went to the nearest police station to report the incident and when an officer arrived at the scene, no woman was to be found.
The officer inspected the area and what he found frightened him, as he had no explanation for what he was seeing. In the area where the woman was seen he inspected the gates and found that two of the bars had been pulled apart and bent at sharp angles. The green bronze bars had been scorched and were black at the height where a woman might have grabbed them. Within these marks was what looked to be skin texture and handprints that had been seared into the metal with incredible heat.
This event became a big local news story and soon after people were flocking to the cemetery to see the bars for themselves. In an effort to discourage the crowds, cemetery officials attempted to remove the marks with a blowtorch, making them look even worse. Finally, they cut the bars off and installed a wire fence until the two bars could be straightened or replaced.
The cemetery refused to admit anything supernatural had happened to the bars. Their version of the story was that a truck had backed into the gate while doing sewer work and the scorches were caused by repair workers trying to fix the bars with a blowtorch. They further added that the imprint was made by a workman trying to push the bars back together. While this is a rational explanation, the cemetery failed to explain the handprints that were clearly visible in the metal.
To further discourage nosy onlookers and unwanted press, the cemetery removed the bars, which only made things worse as people began wondering what the cemetery had to hide. Local officials, annoyed and embarrassed by the whole matter, demanded the cemetery return the bars to the gate. When they were returned, the bars had been straightened and re-painted to hide the scorch marks. Unfortunately for the cemetery, the scorch marks could never be hidden when painted over, something even professional painters couldn’t understand, and the obvious twisted metal was still visible. The bars remained that way until the cemetery finally removed them for good a few years ago.
On August 12, 1976, just two days after the gate incident, police responded to an apparent hit and run just down the road from the cemetery. Police arrived to find a near hysterical woman standing next to her car. She claimed to have seen the body of a woman lying in the grass and pointed out the spot to the officer. He checked the spot and found an impression in the wet grass that matched that of a human. The woman claimed the body vanished from its spot as the police car pulled up.
In May 1978, a minister was heading to church extra early as he had a busy day ahead of him. He claimed to have hit a young woman as she crossed in front of his car. He got out to check on her and, discovering she was badly injured but still alive, drove to the police station and reported the accident. An ambulance was called and the minister, with the police in tow, returned to the scene to find the woman was gone but an outline of a human body was clearly visible on the wet pavement.
In the 1980’s and 1990’s the number of sightings for Mary has dwindled but never fully stopped. The owner of the bar just south of the cemetery offered up the most unusual story in the last 20 years. One early morning in 1996 he was leaving the bar at 4 a.m. when a man ran up claiming to have just run over a woman on Archer Avenue. The owner was skeptical until a truck driver approached from the other direction claiming to have witnessed the accident. Both men claimed she “vanished into thin air” when they approached to see how she was. Police were called and investigated but found no trace of the woman.
One of the most credible stories happened in July 2001 when a young couple claimed to have seen Mary on Archer Avenue. The couple was traveling along Archer Avenue, to take the young woman home, and spotted an odd figure near Resurrection Cemetery. The witness noted that, just before the sighting, he spotted a police officer that had pulled over a motorist on the left side of the street (down a side street). He would later use the police car as a point of reference when he and his girlfriend came back for a second look.
As they drove past, both of them spotted a woman walking northbound on the road with her back to their oncoming car. She was wearing a white gown that blew crisply in the wind. As they passed the woman noted that there were no facial features visible but what looked like a black void where her face should have been. After the sighting had registered, the witness quickly related the legend of Mary to his girlfriend and he also called his sister on his cell phone, marking the moment of the sighting. After he explained to his girlfriend what they had seen, she insisted that they go back for another look. They turned around and headed in the direction they had come from, keeping their eyes open for the woman coming toward them. In a few moments, they had passed the police car that they had seen earlier, but there was no sign of the woman in the white dress.
What made this account more credible then most was that the girlfriend was Lithuanian and barely spoke English. She had only been in the country a month at the time of the sighting and knew nothing of the legend of Mary.
The last reported sighting was in 2002 when the new owner of the bar down the road claimed to have finally seen Mary. On nights when it is not too cold he keeps the front door propped open. This particular night the bar was empty and he happened to look at the door and saw a woman dressed in white walk by the entrance. Since there were no other open businesses in the area at that time of night, the owner was intrigued and went outside for another look. As he glanced to his left he saw the woman turn the corner and he quickly followed. When he turned the corner the woman was gone. Ever since then the owner has made it a nightly ritual to make a bloody Mary, setting it on the end of the bar closest to the entrance, just in case Mary gets thirsty and wants to come in for a free drink. To this day Mary has yet to take him up on the offer.
I, myself (along with my wife and another couple), took the jaunt to Archer Avenue in search of Mary. Resurrection Cemetery is a large place stretching several blocks and is quite eerie to look at in the darkness. Unfortunately we picked a bad time to go as it was Halloween week and there were dozens of cars driving up and down and up and down again on Archer Avenue in search of the elusive spirit. Police presence was notably high as well, no doubt causing Mary to stay hidden until a more opportune time when there are fewer cars around.
Legend has it that Mary is most often seen in the hours after midnight on nights when there is a full moon. It is quite possible to see Resurrection Cemetery and let your imagination run wild. Most likely many of these sightings are just that – figments of someone’s wild imagination, but what about the rest of them?
Urban legend or not I would tend to take the words of Robert Stack to heart. In closing the Resurrection Mary story on Unsolved Mysteries Stack noted, “If you find yourself on Archer Avenue and you see a woman dressed in white, you may want to think twice before you stop and offer her a ride.
