Resurrection Mary

And it's a really cool idea.

They explore roadside folklore, urban legends, horror fiction, Mothman, think Resurrection Mary, think these things.

And they kind of talk about these different stories in the context of, you know, truck drivers late at night listening to these.

So many of those

But rather than it just being about like resurrection, Mary in Chicago, or The Vanderlite.

That episode's about trains, about haunted trains and haunted roads.

Whereas the Resurrection Mary episode's about the hitchhiker.

So it brings you to Phantom 309.

Somewhere along that road, according to the legend, a young woman died.

No one has ever conclusively established her identity, which is important because Resurrection Mary's story has been retold so many times that legend and history have become intertwined.

The most familiar version says she was a young woman who loved to dance and had spent an evening at the O. Henry Ballroom in Willow Springs.

Sometime during the night, she left the ballroom and began walking along Archer Avenue in a white or light-colored party dress.

Others simply say she was trying to get home.

Then came the car.

According to the legend, Mary was struck by a passing driver who did not stop.

She died along Archer Avenue and was later buried in Resurrection Cemetery wearing the clothes in which she had gone dancing.

However, not far from my childhood home, maybe a five minute walk give or take, is one of the state of Illinois' most haunted places.

It's central Illinois' answer to Chicagoland's Resurrection Cemetery and it's most famous ghost inhabitant, Resurrection Mary.

And like Chicago, we have our own local ghost forever confined to the supposedly haunted grounds of what is called the Old State Hospital.

This is the story of Old Book.

and suddenly the story feels as though it always belonged where it was and you sort of just get this feeling that it's become part of that local legend it's always existed in that place so yeah it's It is a strange thing that you've got this story that seems to evolve depending on wherever you find it or wherever you hear it.

But this brings us to one of the most important examples, Resurrection Mary.

Now, we'll be covering Mary as our final story.

so i don't want to tell that story here but resurrection mary is an excellent example of how the wider vanishing hitchhiker tradition can become localized into a specific ghost legend the story becomes attached to a to particular roads particular witnesses particular locations and eventually the hitchhiker acquire and acquires a name and instead of simply being a ghost who disappeared from a car she becomes a mary for example and that's when a generic piece of folklore starts becoming more like local mythology like i was just saying so why is this hitchhiker usually a young woman well this is something folklorists have noticed for decades in Beazley and Hankey's original collection 47 of the apparitions were young women compared with 14 old women and 14 figures whose age or identity was less clear That isn't necessarily accidental.

The story is often about a premature death and the person hasn't lived out their full life.

They were young, they were traveling somewhere, they were going somewhere, and now they're permanently stuck on the road.

And that is how this, you know, the true testament of this urban legend, if you will, is that it's so simple, it can survive and just keep going, and it probably always will.

Yeah, cool.