Graceland Cemetery

in and around Chicagoland with the late Richard Crow.

And for hours, they lamented about the ghostly hauntings of places like Graceland Cemetery, Bachelor's Grove, as well as Archer Avenue, Resurrection Mary, Montrose Point, the old lockup at the storied Maxwell Street police station, and so much more.

And a Halloween tradition we started nearly 15 years ago is with our guest tonight, Ursula Bielski.

Now a cultural and intellectual historian, folklorist, and parapsychologist, Ursula has been writing and lecturing about the world's supernatural folklore and the paranormal for more than three decades.

I was going to say, that's probably one of America's most haunted cemeteries is here in Chicago.

It's Bachelors Grove.

And I know we also have Graceland Cemetery that has not as the depth of the stories that Bachelors Grove did, but it's definitely haunted.

Graceland Cemetery was one of the places where I became interested in all this.

I think you wanted to talk about some of the work that you've been doing.

I know you have a new book out on Graceland Cemetery.

Yeah,

Graceland Cemetery Volume 2 came out last month.

And I've still got Graceland tours well into November.

Nice.

And, yeah, that's been keeping me busy.

And you can go to adamchicago.com for the seats that might be available.

i i have recently watched that animaniacs short but it's a little out of date

So our next grave is the grave of Inez Clark, and she can be found in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery.

She died in 1880, and her resting place was memorialized with a statue of her likeness enclosed in a glass case with a plaque indicating that she's the daughter of a John and Mary Clark who are buried nearby.

So it's like a little, not life-size, but like maybe like...

Yeah.

So Inez Clark never existed.

What? There's no one named Inez Clark buried at Graceland Cemetery.

No one with that name even died in the state of Illinois prior to 1916.

He works on the ornamental detailing for the auditorium's interior.

And later, as the firm's reputation grows and its commissions multiply, the Wainwright building rising in St. Louis, the Getty Tomb in Chicago's Graceland Cemetery, and eventually the extraordinary transportation building erected for the world's Columbian Exposition of eighteen ninety-three.

Frank finds himself entrusted with an increasing share of the firm's most demanding technical and decorative work.

He is not simply a draftsman among draftsmen.

Was that ever a real practice in the past? Or is it still? The life that serial killer Dennis Rader lived on the outside hid his dark secret inside, which he was so desperate to reveal, he began dropping breadcrumbs to the media.

A graveyard is typically a quiet place, but Graceland Cemetery in Chicago seems to be a bit too quiet, which might have something to do with its resident ghosts.

In 1888, London was terror-struck by the grotesque murders of Jack the Ripper, who was shortly about to claim his next victim – 47-year-old prostitute Annie Chapman.

Her dissection at the hands of the madman was nothing short of gruesome.

The character ADT Man on Mindhunter is also based on Rainer.

When Weird Darkness returns, a graveyard is typically a quiet place.

But Graceland Cemetery in Chicago seems to be a bit too quiet, which might have something to do with its resident ghosts.

That story is up next.

Those are bodies buried there.

And in the late 1800s, mid to late, they had to bring those bodies up and move them up north to the Garden Cemetery, which is what is now Graceland Cemetery.

Oh, you think there's anyone's...

They do believe that there are some leftover bodies back there.

Um, they were gonna relocate the bodies to newer cemeteries.

Um, there's Graceland and Rosehill Cemeteries on the north side, Oak Woods on the south side, Calvary Cemetery up in Evanston, that they were gonna start moving these bodies to.

Um, but they only, and this is, like, 1868, they only bring in a crew of 10 men to start moving what many estimate about 35,000 bodies, and this is with shovels.

[laughs]

But there's many, many mysteries surrounding the Couch tomb.

We really don't know why it was left there in Lincoln Park when most other remnants of the City Cemetery are gone, even the few things that survived the fire.

They did end up at least moving the headstone or mausoleum that survived to, uh, mostly to Graceland Cemetery on the north side.

But nothing really states why they left this particular monument there.