Resurrection Mary
Encyclopedia
Ghost story
A ghost story may be any piece of fiction, or drama, or an account of an experience, that includes a ghost, or simply takes as a premise the possibility of ghosts or characters' belief in them. Colloquially, the term can refer to any kind of scary story. In a narrower sense, the ghost story has...
. Of the "vanishing hitchhiker
Vanishing hitchhiker
The vanishing hitchhiker story is an urban legend in which people travelling by vehicle meet with or are accompanied by a hitchhiker who subsequently vanishes without explanation, often from a moving vehicle...
" type, the story takes place outside Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois
Justice, Illinois
Justice is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States established in 1911. The population was 12,850 as of 2006.-Geography:According to the United States Census Bureau, the village has a total area of , of which, of it is land and of it is water.A major road running through the town is...
, a few miles southwest of Chicago.
Since the 1930s, several men driving northeast along Archer Avenue between the Willowbrook Ballroom
Willowbrook Ballroom
The Willowbrook Ballroom is a dance ballroom and banquet facility located in Willow Springs, Illinois along Archer Avenue. It was founded in 1921 by John Verderbar and named Oh Henry Park. Today, the ballroom continues to host ballroom dancing events with a live orchestra weekly...
and Resurrection Cemetery have reported picking up a young female hitchhiker. This young woman is dressed somewhat formally in a white party dress and is said to have light blond hair and blue eyes. There are other reports that she wore a thin shawl, dancing shoes, that she carried a small clutch purse, and/or that she was very quiet. When the driver nears the Resurrection Cemetery, the young woman asked to be let out, whereupon she disappeared into the cemetery. According to the Chicago Tribune
Chicago Tribune
The Chicago Tribune is a major daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, and the flagship publication of the Tribune Company. Formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper" , it remains the most read daily newspaper of the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region and is...
, "full-time ghost hunter" Richard Crowe has collected "three dozen . . . substantiated" reports of Mary from the 1930s to the present.
The legend
She left the ballroom and started walking up Archer Avenue. She had not gotten very far when she was struck and killed by a hit-and-run driver, who fled the scene leaving Mary to die. Her parents found her and were grief-stricken at the sight of her dead body. They buried her in Resurrection Cemetery, wearing a beautiful white dancing dress and matching dancing shoes. The hit-and-run driver was never found.
Reported sightings
Jerry Palus, a Chicago southsider, reported that in 1939 he met a person who he came to believe was Resurrection Mary at the Liberty Grove and Hall at 47th and Mozart (and not the Oh Henry/Willowbrook Ballroom). They danced and even kissed and she asked him to drive her home along Archer Avenue, exiting the car and disappearing in front of Resurrection Cemetery.
There were said to be sightings in 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1989, which involved cars striking, or nearly striking, Mary outside Resurrection Cemetery. Mary disappears, however, by the time the motorist exits the car.
She also reportedly burned her handprints into the wrought iron fence around the cemetery, in August 1976, although officials at the cemetery have stated that a truck had damaged the fence and that there is no evidence of a ghost.
In a January 31, 1979 article in the Suburban Trib
Suburban Trib
The Suburban Trib was a three-day-a-week newspaper, albeit with its own staff and policies, inserted into suburban issues of the Chicago Tribune. The Suburban Trib operated from 1967 until it was discontinued in 1985 in favor of regional editions of the Chicago Tribune.-References:*Shapiro,...
, columnist Bill Geist detailed the story of a cab driver, Ralph, who picked up a young woman – "a looker. A blonde. . .she was young enough to be my daughter - 21 tops" – near a small shopping center on Archer Avenue.
- "A couple 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 no 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 car door never opened. May the good Lord strike me dead, it never opened."
Geist described Ralph as "neither an idiot nor a maniac, but rather [in Ralph's own words] 'a typical 52-year-old working guy, a veteran, father, Little League baseball coach, churchgoer, the whole shot'. Geist goes on to say: "The simple explanation, Ralph, is that you picked up the Chicago area's preeminent ghost: Resurrection Mary."
Who is Mary?
Some researchers have attempted to link Resurrection Mary to one of the many thousands of burials in Resurrection Cemetery. A particular focus of these efforts has been Mary Bregovy, who died in a 1934 auto accident in the Chicago LoopChicago Loop
The Loop or Chicago Loop is one of 77 officially designated Chicago community areas located in the City of Chicago, Illinois. It is the historic commercial center of downtown Chicago...
, Chicago author Ursula Bielski in 1999 documented a possible connection to Anna "Marija" Norkus, who died in a 1927 auto accident while on her way home from the Oh Henry Ballroom
Willowbrook Ballroom
The Willowbrook Ballroom is a dance ballroom and banquet facility located in Willow Springs, Illinois along Archer Avenue. It was founded in 1921 by John Verderbar and named Oh Henry Park. Today, the ballroom continues to host ballroom dancing events with a live orchestra weekly...
, a theory which has gained popularity in recent years.
Vanishing Hitchhiker
The Resurrection Mary story is a type of vanishing hitchhikerVanishing hitchhiker
The vanishing hitchhiker story is an urban legend in which people travelling by vehicle meet with or are accompanied by a hitchhiker who subsequently vanishes without explanation, often from a moving vehicle...
story, a type of folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
that is known from many cultures. One such story, written in 1965 by fifteen-year-old Cathie Harmon for a Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
newspaper, was picked up by psychologist-songwriter Milton Addington, who used it as the basis for Dickey Lee
Dickey Lee
Royden Dickey Lipscomb , known professionally as Dickey Lee , is an American pop/country singer and songwriter, best known for the 1960s teenage tragedy songs "Patches" and "Laurie ."-Career:Lee made his first recordings in his hometown of Memphis for Tampa...
's song Laurie (Strange Things Happen). There have also been a few low-budget horror films recently released that are based on this legend.
The Blackmore's Night
Blackmore's Night
Blackmore's Night is an English-American traditional folk rock duo led by Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night .-Early:...
song I Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore from their album The Village Lanterne
The Village Lanterne
The Village Lanterne is a fifth studio album by the renaissance rock band Blackmore's Night, released on Steamhammer US on 4 April 2006. It featured the single "Just Call My Name ".In 2006 the album went Gold in Russia...
is based on the legend.
On his 1996 album The Artful Dodger, singer/songwriter Ian Hunter
Ian Hunter (singer)
Ian Hunter Patterson is an English singer-songwriter. He was the lead singer of the English rock band Mott the Hoople from its inception in 1969 to its dissolution in 1974, and he again fronted them at the time of their 2009 reunion. Hunter was a musician and songwriter before Mott The Hoople, and...
included the song Resurrection Mary, in which a driver in or near Chicago picks up a beautiful young woman with an "incandescent glow" who asks him "I'm tryin' to get to Heaven/Can you tell me where that is?"
Further reading
- Taylor, Troy. Haunted Illinois: Ghosts and Strange Phenomena of the Prairie State. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2008.