Experiences, articles, book excerpts,
investigation reports, news and photos from
our readers, fellow ghosthunters,
tour guests . . . and beyond.
Ona Norkus, a.k.a. Resurrection
Mary
Submit
your own Chicago ghost stories, news, photos and investigation reports
for
this page to info@hauntingchicago.com
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Scroll down to read more about . . .
-Announcing the first ever Chicago Ghost Conference!
-New Excerpt: "Strange Energy: The Secret of Red Gate Woods" -
Ghosts of Chicago DVD Now Available - Rico D's Becomes Frankie's Roadhouse and Bed & Breakfast!
- Guest report from latest Archer Ave tour
-Dead Whispernow out on DVD!
-NewExcerpt: "The
Museum of Science
and Industry" from Ghosthunting llinois by John Kachuba
- Exclusive NewArticle: "Bad Memories: The Dead Secrets of Marshall Field"
- Excerpt:"Fort Meigs" from Jeff Belanger's
Ghosts of War
- Rest in Peace, Ed Warren
- Link to "Chicago's Strange Angles" on
GhostVillage.com
- Is Borley Still Haunted?
- Excerpt
from Rocco and Dan
Facchini'sMuldoon:
A True Chicago Ghost
Story
- Excerpt:"Saints
and Sinners: Mt. Carmel's
Motley Crew"from Ursula Bielski'sChicago Haunts
- Excerpt:"The Hand of Death"
from David
Cowan's Great Chicago Fires
- Exclusive Article: "Meat is Murder:
The Butcher of Palos Park"
_________________________________________
Announcing the First Ever Chicago Ghost Conference! The city's first ever paranormal conference will be held in October of 2007. This will be an
all-day event featuring Chicago's most respected ghosthunters, book signings,
panel discussion, tours hosted by Chicago's most popular ghost tour guides, an
overnight investigation, and much more! More information to come. To be placed
on our conference mailing list, or to register for booth space or apply for a
speaker slot, contact info@hauntingchicago.com.
_________________________________________
Strange Energy:
The Secret of Red Gate Woods
by Ursula Bielski
Red Gate Woods have long been known as
haunted, running as they do along notorious Archer Avenue. It is
these Woods that shiver with the chanting of an invisible chorus, and
these Woods that host apparitions of monks seen both here and at the
adjacent churchyard of St. James-Sag. It has been ventured that
the haunting of Red Gate Woods may be connected to gangland days, when
neighboring homes and business were connected by long underground
tunnels for use during the Prohibition era. According to some
tales, a number of such tunnels ran to still-remote areas like Red Gate
Woods from roadhouses as much as a mile away, making it simple work to
do away with a rival in the basement and cart off the body for burial
in the surrounding, as yet uncharted woodland.
History may never verify these events, but one other, much stranger reality seemingly cannot be denied.
As a child growing up in the deeply forested Palos
area Southwest of Chicago, acclaimed advocacy writer and
environmentalist John James Bell remembers that aimless hikes in the
area’s seemingly endless preserves were what little boys were
made of. But, as Bell recalls in his essay, “The Many Faces
of Apocalypse,“ fossils and turtles were not the normal loot such
treks revealed, especially one surreal afternoon:
As
kids, my friends and I stumbled across the old
piece of plywood while hiking. Such
large junk was a familiar site — these woods
on Chicago’s South Side near
Palos Forest Preserve were really not woods
at all, but overgrown underbrush along the
industrial Illinois &
Michigan canal corridor. The
piece of plywood was almost overlooked, but I
noticed that if you jumped on it there was a bit of
a bounce. We cleared off the
dirt and grass. There were hinges; it was a
makeshift door. With some effort we
opened it and
within seconds we pledged to keep our discovery
secret. After all, it’s not every day that you
find buried in the woods a nuclear fallout shelter . . . .
This was Red Gate Woods. Before speaking with
Bell, I had heard about the woods from Ed Shanahan, an expert on
Southwest side paranormal phenomena, who had informed me, after a
lifetime of my unknowing, that the nation’s first nuclear reactor
was established here in 1943. To this day the reactor reposes
under the forested landscape along Archer Avenue. In fact,
nuclear engineers from the nearby Argonne National Laboratory are in
charge of environmental monitoring of the Woods for the U.S. Department
of Energy.
Argonne National Laboratory, which sprawls over more
than 1500 acres in DuPage county, was the nation’s first national
laboratory, having been chartered in 1946. Argonne’s
mission began with the Manhattan Project, the monumental World War II
venture which saw its success at the University of Chicago, when Enrico
Fermi and more than four dozen colleagues accomplished the
world’s first controlled nuclear chain reaction. When
the war ended, Argonne was founded to develop nuclear reactor sites for
peaceful use. Red Gate Woods had already been established at the
time of Argonne’s founding, and the new laboratory was naturally
put in charge of it at once. The University of Chicago
reactor--known as Chicago Pile-1--was moved after the War to Red Gate
Woods to be buried next to Chicago Pile-2, which was developed at Red
Gate itself. But while the area is consistently declared safe, as
Shanahan asserts, there may be “a very good reason why paranormal
tools may go a bit out of whack when taken there. " As, indeed,
they do. In fact, the presence of the reactors may even explain
some of the paranormal phenomena experienced here, including
apparitional sights and sounds, perhaps given life by the long-buried
energy on site.
_________________________________
"Chicago Ghosts"
Documentary now available
on DVD!
Chicago Ghosts is a one hour arm-chair tour of haunted Chicagoland locations produced and filmed by Karen Barrett of Blue Ghost, Inc. Some of the featured locations include: Bachelor's
Grove Cemetery, Robinson Woods Indian Burial Grounds, Resurrection
Cemetery, Widow McCleary's, the Rialto Theater, Ethyl's Party . . . and a look into a "real" haunted private home in Bartlett, Illinois!
It's
true! Rico D's, center of some of of Chicago's most enduring and
active ghost stories, is now a roaring old roadhouse with new bed
& breakfast accomodations. The new venture, Frankie's Roadhouse and
Bed & Breakfast, will still feature the same fantastic dining as
always, but with some haunting new features.
The upstairs rooms has been restyled into guest rooms--including a
double room suitable for family accomodations--and offered to anyone
daring enough to spend the whole night at this legendary Archer Avenue
location. The restaurant will also be featuring special dinner
packages each week to feature a delicious family style dinner and full
tour of the haunted structure. AND Rico D's will be hosting
overnights of their own beginning the night of February 2nd!
The overnights will include a buffet dinner, coffee and cookies in the
wee hours, and a continental breakfast at dawn. Reservations are
now being accepted for bed & breakfast reservations and for the
first haunted overnight in February. For more information or to
make reservations, call Shane at Frankie's Roadhouse or visit their website: www.ricods.com
_____________________________
A Night on Archer Avenue . . .
On
the evening of Sunday, October 29th, I led a wonderful group on a tour
of one of the nation's most haunted roadways, Archer Avenue. The
night was superb. Everywhere we went, we were greeted by old
friends: at Chet's Melody Lounge, at Rico D's, and at the Willowbrook,
where the staff laid out a beautiful and delicious spread for us amid
the surreal swing atmosphere. It was a magical night, shared by
wonderful guests. One of these guests, a ghosthunter from Coal
City, documented some impressive phenomena during the course of the
evening. I asked her to share her experiences with all of you,
with many thanks. Here is her story:
"When
we entered Chet's bar I immediately was drawn to the back area. I set
down the equipment and pulled out the divining rods. I proceeded to
walk closer to the walls and circle in front of the television. I got
the first reading to the left of the TV (when you face it) when the
rods where drawn together. I started shaking and asked my friend Bonnie
to get out the Temperature Gage and the EMF (meter). I figured the EMF
would go crazy because of all the electronic stuff back there (and it
did!), so I asked Bonnie to take the rods, and I took the temperature
guage and recorded the base temperature of 72.4 in the bar. As I walked
with the guage it began to fluctuate instantly from anywhere from 67.8
(which you saw while we talked! to 85.4!). I was so excited! Then we
were able to go down to the basement, and I took the divining rods
while Bonnie took the temperature. They immediately touched and
centered. After you spoke I gave you the divining rods, and the other
group was sent down to witness this event.
When you came up, you told me they continued to stay touching the whole time. Amazing!
After
the wonderful reception at the Willowbrook and the tour through the
woods and by the church we got to spend 5 or 6 minutes at the infamous
Hull House. I was immediately drawn to the courtyard; I felt I could
not walk in the grass. I gave Bonnie the Temperature guage and she
called out the reading of 49.5 degrees outside. I took the divining
rods. At the stone memorial base facing out to the road, I began using
the rods. Not until I walked to the left and stopped at the side of the
fountain did the rods touch--while they faced into the courtyard. I
realize that these rods are also used for divining water, so I
continued pointing them inward to the courtyard and came to the top of
the sidewalk facing the fountain and out to the road. Again they
touched. Bonnie was up on the porch and called me to join her at the
window where we watched the curtains fluttering inside the house. We
also witnessed something not visable poking at them. I asked Bonnie
for the guage and went down to the last side of the courtyard sidewalk
with my back to the house. Once again I used the divining rods and
again they touched. I lowered them and turned on the temperature guage.
It first registered at 48.7 then began to fluctuate between anywhere in
the 30s and 40s. I held it for a few seconds more, and suddenly I felt
extremely cold and looked down at the guage just as something moved
through or past me. It read 21.7 degrees! I exhaled and saw my breath
come out as white steam! I was not frightened but wanted someone else
to witness this, so--not moving--I began to call Bonnie. She noticed
everyone on the bus and called me to come away. I was ecstatic as I ran
to tell you, and to get back on the bus. I felt like I was on cloud
none the rest of the night! I did not experience any paranormal
activity when I returned home that night (remembering the story you
told us) but even today, I am still completely mesmerized by these
events.
Your friend in paranormal hunting, Laura Hennessy"
__________________________________
now available on dvd: Dead Whisper: A new documentary featuring Robbie Thomas, Michael McDowell and the Indiana Ghost Trackers What do the experts have to say about it?
"Four Stars!"
"Astonishing EVP"
"These
phenomena could give us some new insight into the nature of the spirits, EVP and
how they exist in the flow of time. Anyone fascinated by ghost phenomena and EVP
will find this DVD of interest, and I can recommend it." Stephen Wagner -
Guide to the paranormal for About.com
"Dead Whisper is going to knock
people's socks off!" Kevin Smith - syndicated radio host
"The
most important film in a very long time!" Lia Ramses - Ghost
Radio
"Dead Whisper is going to get a lot of people shouting -- for
more! It's destined to become a paranormal classic. It's the new benchmark in
paranormal video journalism." Bill Schreiner, Owner & GM, Achieve
Radio
(Webmaster's
note: I just watched "DWhisper," and I have to add my own review:
this movie shows just how meticulous, sensitive and effective ghost
investigations can be. I've admired and praised Michael McDowell
and the Indiana Ghost Trackers for years as the best in
the business, and this documentary shows McDowell and his
colleagues at their finest. You must have this in your collection.
--Ursula Bielski) For more on this phenomenal new documentary, click on the banner at left, or visit DeadWhisper.com
__________________________________________
"The Museum of Science and Industry" Ghosthunting Illinois by John Kachuba
(Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from "Ghosthunting Illinois" by John Kachuba. Published by Ellis Books. All rights reserved.)
Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry,
located at 57th Street and Lake Shore Drive, is one of the
country’s pre-eminent centers for informal science and technology
education.
It is also home to at least three ghosts.
The beautiful domed and columned building was originally built as the
Palace of Fine Arts for the 1893 Columbian Exposition and is the only
surviving structure from that exposition. The museum, which is situated
along the shore of the Jackson Park lagoon, looks more like an ancient
Greek temple than it does a center of science and technology. Perhaps
it is that feeling of antiquity that draws the ghosts.
One of the museum’s most famous ghosts is that of Clarence
Darrow, the celebrated lawyer whose battle with William Jennings Bryan
in 1925 over the issue of teaching evolution in schools—a trial
known as the Scopes Monkey Trial—has become a landmark case in
the annals of jurisprudence and was also the inspiration for the play
and movie, Inherit the Wind. Darrow figured prominently in many other
high-profile cases, including the 1924 Leopold and Loeb case, in which
he defended two stone-cold teenage murderers of a fourteen-year old boy
and won them life imprisonment instead of the electric chair.
Darrow lived in the Hyde Park neighborhood that includes the museum. He
died in Chicago in 1938 and his cremated remains were scattered in the
Jackson Park lagoon as he had requested. Every year a wreath-laying
ceremony honoring Darrow is held at the bridge spanning the lagoon. In
1957 the bridge was dedicated in his memory and is now known as the
Clarence Darrow Memorial Bridge.
Dale Kaczmarek, a Chicago ghost investigator who also operates area
ghost tours, reported that a man on one of his tours took photos of the
lagoon and captured the smoky image of a face near the bridge. Could it
have been the ghost of Clarence Darrow?
“His ghost has been seen here in the museum as well,” said
Travis*, a docent my wife Mary and me met at the Burlington Zephyr
exhibit inside the museum. Travis was a baby-faced, rosy-cheeked young
man whose new beard was just starting to grow in; it looked as though
he had augmented it with charcoal. Travis wore the blue uniform and cap
of a train conductor, but he looked more like a kid on Halloween trick
or treating as Captain Kangaroo.
“People have seen an elderly man dressed in a suit, walking in
the hall by the windows that overlook the lagoon. They say he matches
the description of Clarence Darrow. He’s there for just a moment,
then he disappears,” Travis said.
Travis told us how the ghost interrupted a children’s Halloween
story-telling session he was conducting at the museum. “I looked
up and there he was. In the next second he was gone.”
We were standing before the gleaming engine of the Burlington Zephyr,
one of the country’s first diesel streamlined trains, as we
spoke. The stainless steel Burlington Zephyr seemed to glow in the
vast, dark hall of the museum. Three cars were attached to the engine;
a mail car, a passenger car, and a passenger lounge at the rear of the
train that featured a curved exterior and panoramic windows. Travis
said he had more to tell us, but it was time for him to lead the next
tour through the train. Mary and I climbed aboard with him and a
handful of other visitors.
The tour began in the mail car, with the history of the Burlington
Zephyr given to us by Zeph, a robotic figure in the form of a talking
burro so lifelike that some of the little children in the group patted
its nose and tried to feed it some hay while it talked. The real Zeph
joined the Dawn to Dusk Club of eighty-four distinguished passengers on
the Zephyr’s maiden run from Denver to Chicago on May 26, 1934.
Zeph came on board when the Rocky Mountain News offered the Chicago,
Burlington and Quincy Railroad (CB&Q) a “Rocky Mountain
Canary” as a mascot for the trip. It was only when the burro was
delivered that Ralph Budd, CB&Q president understood he had
accepted a burro and not a bird. Budd quickly ordered hay to be placed
on board for Zeph, remarking, “One more jackass on this trip
won’t make a difference.” Zeph sped off into history as the
Zephyr broke all train speed records of the day, traveling 1,015 miles
in 13 hours and five minutes, the longest non-stop train trip the world
had ever witnessed. The Zephyr’s average speed was 77.5 miles per
hour, although it peaked at 112.5 miles per hour.
The Zephyr’s sleek styling and incredible speed made it an
instant celebrity and the train starred in the 1934 movie, The Silver
Streak. Streamlining became all the rage in design, copied in
everything from cars and airplanes, to toasters and vacuum cleaners and
Madison Avenue ad agencies appropriated the Zephyr for advertising
campaigns.
The next car was the passenger coach. Unlike the stuffy old Pullman
coaches, the Zephyr’s coach was as streamlined as its gleaming
exterior. The clean lines and sleek design were accented by indirect
lighting, plush upholstered seats, and colors in soothing pale green,
cool blue, and light brown. Passengers could order 20¢ hamburgers
and hot dogs, or other food from the kitchen. They were served by the
all-female Zephyrettes, on-board hostesses who saw to the
passengers’ every need. There were no Zephyrettes on board
that day to assist the life-sized plaster passengers who now sat
scattered among the plush seats. Each of the figures had a speaker
built into it so that it could “talk” to the others about
the train and the journey. It was an eerie feeling, sitting next to
these immobile figures, never knowing when the one right beside you
might suddenly speak. I noticed that those same little children who so
happily had fed the fake Zeph now clung to their parents.
The last car on the tour was the lounge car. Large windows completely
lined its sides and rounded back end. A film projected onto the windows
gave the illusion of movement while the jostling floor mimicked the
rocking of the train along the tracks.
As we stood behind a velvet rope we watched three robotic figures
dressed in the style of the 1930s, seated in comfortable upholstered
chairs. Ralph Budd sat on the left wearing a three-piece suit. His
sister, Mrs. Katherine Wilder occupied the center seat. To her left sat
her young daughter. They all moved as they chatted with each other,
subtle movements such as the turning of a head, a hand moving to one
side, the flexing of a foot. There was something secretive and
mysterious in these movements, as if the robots were afraid of being
caught in the act. I would look at the figure of Budd as it spoke,
turning its head to look at me and then detect some movement from one
of the other figures. Wasn’t Mrs. Wilder’s hands folded in
her lap before? Wasn’t the daughter looking to her left only a
few second ago? The figures were more than lifelike, they were just
plain creepy.
The tour ended in the lounge car and we all debarked from there. Travis
had a break for a few minutes so we resumed our conversation while Mary
wandered off to explore more of the museum.
“That was a great tour,” I said.
“Thanks.” Travis took of his conductor’s hat, wiped
the sweat from his brow with his coat sleeve, and put the hat back on.
Apparently, fake conducting on a train that couldn’t go anywhere
was harder work than I thought. “What did you think of the
animatronics?” Travis asked.
“The which?”
“Animatronics, the robots.”
“Really good,” I said, “a little freaky maybe.”
Travis nodded. “We have to turn them on, you know. They’re
not able to move unless we do.” One of the people who had been on
the tour was walking near us and Travis waited for her to pass by
before continuing. “So how come the figures in the lounge car
move on their own, without being switched on? Mrs. Wilder, especially.
She’s been seen moving her head when the power’s off.”
“Do you think the car is haunted?” I asked.
He shrugged and drew me to a display board near the train. One of the
panels described an accident at Napier, Missouri on October 2, 1939, in
which the engineer and another person aboard the Burlington Zephyr were
killed.
“Maybe there’s reason for it to be haunted,” Travis said.
We had walked around to the front of the sleek locomotive, its single
headlight piercing the gloom of the great hall. Though at rest, it
looked as though it could spring to life at any moment and hurtle
through the museum, with or without the dead engineer at its controls.
More people passed by and Travis lowered his voice when he said,
“The train isn’t the only thing in the museum that’s
haunted. Have you heard about the U-505?”
I knew something of the history of the U-505, the only German submarine
ever captured by the Americans in World War II. The U-505 was
commissioned in Hamburg, Germany in 1941 and was involved in several
battles and by 1942 was already responsible for sinking eight allied
ships. On June 4, 1944 the USS Guadalcanal task group in the
mid-Atlantic Ocean attacked the U-505. The Germans attempted to scuttle
the sub, were unsuccessful, and so, surrendered to the American forces.
The capture of the sub was the first time an American naval force had
captured an enemy ship on the high seas since 1815, when the USS
Peacock seized HMS Nautilus during the War of 1812. The submarine was
towed into port in Bermuda where U.S. and British military experts
could study it. Its capture was kept a secret until after the war.
In 1946, the U.S. Navy planned to scuttle the German submarine by using
her for target practice. The existence of the sub came to the attention
of the Museum of Science and Industry’s president, Leonard Lohr,
who revealed ten-year old plans for the museum that included a
submarine among its future exhibits. The people of Chicago raised
$250,000 to purchase the sub and tow it to the museum where it was
designated as a war memorial and became a part of the museum’s
exhibits.
But none of that was what Travis was talking about. He was talking about ghosts aboard the U-505.
“What kind of ghosts?” I asked.
“The commander,” Travis said, “a man named Peter
Zschech. In 1943, the sub was attacked with depth charges by a British
ship. The attack went on for a while and Zschech just lost it. While
the depth charges were exploding all around the sub, he killed himself
in the control room.” Travis told me that the
U-505’s First Officer took over and skillfully evaded the
attacking ship, bringing the sub safely back to port in France.
“Some people here think that Zschech is still aboard his
sub,” Travis said.
He said that before the museum opens, a staff person boards the sub and
walks through its length to turn the lights on inside. One day, as a
member of the staff walked through the darkened sub to turn on the
lights, he suddenly felt an unseen presence with him.
“The guy said that the presence ‘tried to enter
him’,” said Travis. “Those were his exact words,
‘enter him’.”
Another docent was straightening up the commander’s bunk, Travis
said, when he felt someone right behind him. He whirled around but
there was no one there.
Female docents especially seem to be having a tough time with the
commander’s ghost. One young woman had just made a rather
insulting joke about the commander, according to Travis, when a steel
door suddenly slammed closed on her hand, injuring her. Another woman
felt a hand come out of nowhere and grasp her shoulder. Of course,
there was no one else in the room.
The U-505 exhibit was undergoing major renovations when Mary and I
visited the museum. It will be interesting to see if the ghost of
Commander Zschech becomes even more active as a result of being stirred
up by the commotion, or whether he decides to ship out for some
otherworldly port. But even if Zschech leaves, the ghosts of Clarence
Darrow and those aboard the Burlington Zephyr remain to keep you
company when you visit Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. (Ghosthunting Illinois--and other books by John Kachuba--may be purchased at Amazon.com. See what else John is up to at JohnKachuba.com
_____________________
Bad Memories:
The Dead Secrets of Marshall Field by Ursula Bielski
The transformation of
Chicago's beloved Marshall Field & Company into Macy's is now
complete; the event which Field's loyal followers dreaded has come to
pass. But maybe it's a good thing. Indeed, Marshall Field &
Company was plagued with death and disaster--and their paranormal
ramifications--for more than 100 years.
In December of 1903, a
devastating fire at the nearby Iroquois Theater (now the refurbished
Oriental/Ford Center) took the lives of 602 Chicagoans, many of them
children attending a matinee performance at the site. As the
tragedy
unfolded, the 8th floor of Field's was converted into a hospital where
fire victims were bandaged with dishtowels from housewares; those
who died during treatment were wrapped in sheets and blankets from the
bedding department to await the coroner's wagons.
A
year earlier, an elevator cable "gave way in an unexplained manner,"
causing the car to plunge ten floors, from the 9th level into the
basement, killing the elevator operator and wounding one passenger.
In
1905, Marshall Field, Jr. was found shot to death in the bedroom of his
own home on Chicago's Prairie Avenue, reportedly the result of a
self-inflicted shotgun shot. Field's family told police the death had
been an accident: Marshall had been cleaning a hunting weapon when it
accidentally discharged. Neighbors weren't so sure, however, and the
press soon leaked rumors of Field's longtime dealings in the old Levee
vice district, where Chinatown sprawls today. Had Field taken his own
life to bow out of some untoward matter at Chicago's most prestigious
brothel, the Everleigh Club? No one really knows, but we do know that
for a century the enormous Field, Jr. house (known as the Murray house
from its first owner) stood abandoned: no one, it seems, could live in
it.
That is, until now.
For the past several years, the 30,000 square
foot property has undergone a massive gutting and reconstruction; the
43 rooms have been transformed into 6 condominiums, with price tags of
$870,000 to 1.7million. But are the new tenants really
comfortable?
We doubt it. Along with the sinister mark of its
previous tenant, the house bears another burden: like with the rest of
Prairie Avenue, it was originally built on the killing fields of the
Fort Dearborn Massacre of 1812. That Anglo-Indian battle resulted in
the scalping and killing of scores of Chicago settlers, whose bodies
remained on the windswept sand dunes for four years, until soldiers
returned to the burned out fort to rebuild it in 1816. At the turn of
the 19th Century, Prairie Avenue dwellers were already complaining
about the paranormality of their lovely digs; today, with a new
generation of affluence moving in, the new life in the neighborhood is
joined, again, by the dead.
Throughout the mid-20th century,
rumors arose of a number of employee suicides said to have occurred
from the 8th level of the then open-air atrium in Marshall Field &
Company; coworkers were said to claim that the victims all spoke of a
"heaviness" or depression while working on that floor. Could the use
of the floor as a hospital--and morgue--for the Iroquois victims have
left some kind of deadly impression on the building itself?
In
1972, a car rammed a crowd of pedestrians on the south side of Marshall
Field and Company, continuing through a display window, killing one
shopper and injuring seven others.
In 1973, almost exactly a
year later, a Northside Chicago woman jumped to her death from the
ninth floor of the landmark store, leaving behind a suicide note in the
housewares department.
The tragedy surrounding the Marshall
Field family and its world-famous department store has led some
paranormal investigators to speculate on the reasons for the problem.
Many Chicagoans believe that the trouble may stem from Field, Sr.'s
life of luxury on the Fort Dearborn Massacre site, sacred ground for Native
Americans. Could Field have built his mansion, as some claim, on the
mass grave of the Native American dead?
Today, the proud and historic
shell of the world's first modern department store has a new resident.
Like many Chicagoans today, it's from New York, and though the store
pays a lot of lip service to the "legacy" of the great Marshall Field & Company,
the new bosses likely have little idea of the history--and
mystery--they've inherited.
___________
"Fort Meigs" Ghosts of War by Jeff Belanger
(Reprinted, with permission of the publisher, from GHOSTS OF WAR (C)2006, Jeff
Belanger. Published by New Page Books, a division of Career Press, Franklin
Lakes, NJ. 800-227-3371. All rights reserved.)
War: War of 1812 (1812–1814) Dates of battle: April 30–May 8 and July 21–28, 1813 Location: Perrysburg, Ohio Participants: United States General William Henry Harrison against Tecumseh and his Indian forces and British General Henry A. Proctor Casualties:
400–500 who died in the two battles, in skirmishes surrounding
the fort, and from illnesses related to the living conditions
“Tell General Proctor that if
he shall take the fort it will be under circumstances that will do him
more honor than a thousand surrenders.”
--U.S. General William Henry Harrison in a note to British General Proctor, May 4, 1813
Fort Meigs marked a turning point in the War of 1812,
a war that wasn’t going well in the northwestern region of the
United States at the time. America had been defeated in Dearborn,
Mackinac, Detroit, and Frenchtown, and another rout could lead to the
loss of the entire region. The stockades and forces at Fort Meigs held
through two attacks and sieges, but not without its price. Today there
are still echoes from those who fought. Some have claimed that even the
spirits of Native Americans who lived here for centuries before the
fort was built still roam the grounds. Many people today report strange
glowing masses of light and even the apparitions of American soldiers,
but there is an even higher rate of unexplained occurrences around
blockhouse number three.
On
January 22, 1813, General William Henry Harrison and 900 of his men
were fleeing Frenchtown (modern day Monroe, Michigan) after a failed
American offensive against British General Henry A. Proctor. Along the
Raisin River in Frenchtown, U.S. Major General James Winchester let his
guard down and didn’t post enough sentries to watch the town at
night. By morning, British cannon fire was raining down from all around
and the Redcoats swarmed like angry hornets. Of Winchester’s 960
men, over 300 were killed and 500 were captured, including Winchester
himself, and the rest ran south to catch up with General
Harrison’s men. When the escapees caught up with Harrison, they
were panicked and warned that an exaggeratedly immense British and
Indian force was heading south to finish off any American forces in the
area. Harrison’s only choice was to give up Michigan territory
and keep moving south to find a position where they stood a fighting
chance.
When
Harrison reached a hill on the banks of the Maumee River in northwest
Ohio that evening, he ordered his 900 men to dig in—all the while
checking over their shoulders to the north to watch for advancing
British and Indian forces. The men dug and pick-axed through the cold
weather without rest because if their enemy closed in, this could very
well be the last stand for the northwestern United States. After almost
two weeks had gone by and no enemy came, General Harrison figured a
British attack wouldn’t come until spring, so he set his men to
building a more significant fort.
Soon
more American soldiers arrived from Kentucky and Virginia, bringing the
garrison totals up to 1,800 men. When completed, the fort’s log
stockade enclosed ten acres, seven two-level blockhouses, and five
emplacements, or prepared cannon positions. They dug large earthen
parapets on the river-side of the fort, offering protection from any
attack that might come from the water. When the basic configuration was
complete, General Harrison named the fort in honor of Ohio Governor
Jonathan Meigs.
Back
in Michigan, General Proctor was also building a force of more than
2,200—about 1,000 British and Canadian militia and 1,200 Indian.
On April 26th, they set out for Fort Meigs. Two days later, they began
to set up camps two miles from the fort. Gen.
Harrison’s scouts saw the British movement and reported in.
Harrison ordered the base to be readied for defense as British scouts
watched unabashedly from the opposite side of the Maumee River.
On
April 30th, a British gunboat drifted down the Maumee and fired at Fort
Meigs but it achieved little. Around 11 A.M. the next morning, General
Proctor opened up his cannon artillery on the Americans inside the fort.
General
Proctor’s hope for a quick surrender was quickly dashed. General
Harrison gave the order to his quartermaster: “Sir, go and nail a
flag on every battery where they shall wave as long as an enemy is in
view.” Until late that night the British fired heavy and light
rounds at the fort, and by midnight only two Americans were dead and
four injured, but a steady rain was turning everything to mud,
including the giant traverse dug just a few days prior.
May
2nd saw an all-day assault from Proctor and the British and Indian
forces. Fort Meigs returned fire sparingly, considering their supplies
of ammunition. General Harrison offered a reward of a gill (about 4
ounces) of whiskey for every six-pound British cannonball his men could
recover for firing back. The more whiskey the men received, the braver
they became at facing the British gunfire. Over 1,000 cannon balls were
recovered.
For
two more days, the British battering continued until a scout arrived
informing Harrison that reinforcements were only 45 miles away. Gen.
Harrison devised a plan to counterattack the British from Fort Meigs
while the reinforcements flanked the British troops on the opposite
side of the river and American gunboats could drift in and have their
pick of targets.
The
plan came together, and American forces chased the Indians through the
woods all the way back to the British camp two miles away. The
reinforcements successfully took out many of the British cannon
batteries on the opposite shore of the Maumee, and the British
retreated to their own camp to take up defensive positions. Of the 846
men under Colonel Dudley who chased the Indians back to the British
base camp, only 170 made it back to Fort Meigs. The American rout was
successful in securing their fort, but disastrous considering the
losses that could have been avoided had the men stopped once the
British fled their siege. Harrison sent out men from the fort to help
break the Redcoat defensive lines that were forming during their
retreat. The British came back for a few more cannon attacks on Fort
Meigs in the coming days, but when Harrison returned fire with great
number and fury on May 8th, Proctor conceded that the fort would not be
his and pulled out.
The
past is still alive at Fort Meigs in many ways. The site offers regular
tours from volunteers in period dress, and many have reported
experiences ranging the supernatural spectrum from simple uneasy
feelings to seeing strange balls of light and even recognizable
apparitions.
John
Destatte is a 52-year-old history buff who has been volunteering at
Fort Meigs since the early 1990s. He grew up in the area, and though he
hasn’t seen the ghosts himself, he’s heard many reports
from people who have.
“Blockhouse
number three always seems to be a place where a lot of people say they
see things,” Destatte said. “I’m one of the resident
skeptics. I don’t necessarily believe in these things, but
it’s food for thought when you hear a number of people repeatedly
give the same accounts and the same stories, and you say well maybe
there is something to this.
“Blockhouse
number three was destroyed during the first battle at the fort,
essentially from artillery fire from across the river. During the
original construction, there was found to be many remains of Native
Americans who are buried on that site, which is natural because
it’s a nice prominent point looking over the river. A lot of
people say they feel an Indian presence there, or they seem to see some
sort of Indian spirit. Then there’s the other people who say they
see a woman and child looking out of the upstairs of the
blockhouse.”
“Was there any record of a woman and child there?” I asked. “It
doesn’t really tie into anything we’ve ever come across.
Blockhouses were not used for people to stay in. We don’t know of
anything that would indicate why people would see that apparition. But
those two things always seem to be associated with blockhouse number
three. We know that there was probably some refugees from the local
area that might have taken shelter here. Some of them were probably
from Frenchtown, which is present-day Monroe, Michigan, and there are
some references to women at camp, but there really isn’t much to
go by.”
Destatte
explained how many of the Perrysburg locals will walk around the fort
in the evenings, walking their dogs, or just going for a stroll. Some
of these locals have contacted the fort to ask some peculiar questions.
“Off the east end of the fort there was a local kid hanging out.
His parents called a couple days after he was up there and asked what
was going on this last weekend. And I said, ‘Well, there
wasn’t anything going on. We didn’t have any events or
anything, why?’ And he said his son was up there and he heard
drums and music and horses, men marching over where the cemetery is.
And he was wondering if we were having a re-enactment up there.
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