Meet Chicago's Most Famous Ghost

Today is Halloween- a day for trick or treats, costumes and spooky tales. Chicago has no shortage of scary stories ranging from urban legends to brutal history. When it comes to ghosts and cemeteries there is one tale that come up over and over- Resurrection Mary.

Artist unknown

The legend Resurrection Mary is known by most Chicagoans. The quick story is that she's a hitchhiking ghost who disappears from the moving vehicle after being picked up. But why is she so famous and is the story real?

The first reported sighting of Resurrection Mary was in 1939. A young man named Jerry Palus met a blonde woman in a white gown at a local dance hall. As they danced, Palus noticed that she was "cold to the touch". When the dance ended he asked if she wanted a ride home.  She accepted. As they drove down Archer Avenue in the far south side suburb known as Justice, Il. he repeatedly asked her where her house was. The only answer he got back, over and over,  was " I want to go home,  I want to go home." When they passed by Resurrection Cemetery, the woman mysteriously disappeared from Palus' car.

Resurrection Cemetery

There are 2 different tales about what happened next. In one version, Palus had gotten the name of his dance partner. He tracked her down and went to her house. The people who lived there said that the girl he danced with sounded like their daughter Mary, but Mary had died in a car crash several years before. The other version of the story had Palus giving his sweater to his chilly companion during the ride home. The day after she disappeared he went into Resurrection Cemetery and found his sweater folded up neatly on top of as gravestone of a woman named Mary.

Who was "Mary"? There are 2 possibilities. The first was Mary Bregovy who died in a car crash in 1934. The second was a girl named Anna Norkus who died in a car accident in 1927. Both were coming back from the Oh Henry Ballroom which later became the Willowbrook Ballroom.

The Willowbrook Ballroom in October 2016- 2 weeks before it burned down

Mary Bregovy

Anna Norkus

The story of the disappearing woman continued past Palus' account. There have been numerous sights over the years of a woman hitchhiking on Archer Avenue. After being picked up, this woman requests of the driver " I want to go home,  I want to go home." When the vehicle passes by Resurrection Cemetery the woman disappears. Sometimes people have seen her in the cemetery holding the bars of the front gate. These bars are warped, supposedly due to the ghostly lady holding them. Although the authorities have chalked this up to an accident with a truck, the rumors of the mysterious woman burning the bars with her hands have persisted.

The gate bars of Resurrection Cemetery

It must be noted that Archer Avenue outside of the cemetery has had many paranormal stories attached to it. From ghost lights and a phantom funeral horse drawn carriage on the street to the mysterious "laughing man" haunting the interior of the cemetery, the area is said to be quite haunted. It is a very spooky place.

But is any of this real?  As a lifelong  Chicagoan I had been quite skeptical until I started taking Visitations to comic conventions. I always tell people coming by my table ghost legends. However, in the case of Resurrection Mary, people started describing their experiences to me.

"My mom saw Resurrection Mary. She grew up by Archer Avenue and Mary was outside the cemetery."

"I saw Resurrection Mary when I was a little kid. My family stopped at a gas station one night when we were out driving. I looked out the back window and saw a semi-truck pick up a woman who was hitchhiking. When they passed the cemetery, the truck slammed on the breaks. The woman had disappeared!"

"As teenagers we used to hang out on Archer Avenue. She used to be out there all the time"
"Did you go over and say hi?" I asked.
"Absolutely not! We weren't going to go anywhere near her!"

"Pfft! All those stories are nothing - My grandfather actually picked her up! She disappeared when they went past the cemetery. He thought it was weird, but she was gone. Later when he headed the stories about Resurrection Mary he knew it was her."

Oddly enough, if you drive down Archer Avenue looking for Resurrection Mary she is nowhere to be found. Famous Chicago ghost hunter, the late Richard Crowe, drove up and down Archer Avenue several time to no avail. Apparently Mary only wants to be found by people who aren't looking for her.

Is Resurrection Mary real? You decide.

Happy Halloween!

Check out some more chilling ghost legends with Visitations Creator Scott Larson on these Halloween podcasts:

Visitations creator Scott Larson Speaks to the students of Glenbrook South High School

The Jock And Nerd Halloween Podcast 2016

Greeks Worldwide Halloween Spooktacular Podcast 2016

The Geekside Ghost-to-Ghost  Halloween Podcast 2017

The Geekside All Hallows Eve Horror Fest Podcast 2018

Interested in Halloween audio dramas? Our friends at Locked Into Vacancy Entertainment have adapted Visitations: The Victrola Of Doom and Orson Well's classic War Of The World broadcast. Listen to them here:

Locked Into Vacancy Entertainment presents Visitations: The Victrola Of Doom!

Locked Into Vacancy Entertainment presents War Of The Worlds!

Order a free PDF of Visitations 1 by emailing us here: visitationscomicbook@gmail.com

Poe, Ouija, and Cosplayers: Visitations goes to Baltimore Comic-Con 2019!

This year was Baltimore Comic-Con's 20th Anniversary. It is also my second time to the convention. However, it was the first time I was able to personally explore the famous and spooky legends of the city.

The first stop was the Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum. Famous Victorian-Era author Edgar Allan Poe lived and died in Baltimore. Built in 1830 and saved from demolition in 1941,  the current incarnation of the house where Poe lived became a museum in 2013 ( after the original 1949 version closed in 2011). Poe lived there from 1833 to 1835. He wrote many stores and poems within it's walls including MS. Found in a Bottle, Lionizing: A Tale, Shadow-A Parable, Berenice, Morella, and The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall.

The Edgar Allan Poe House 
203 N Amity St Baltimore, MD

The next stop after visiting the house was Westminster Presbyterian Church where Poe is buried. The site is an old graveyard and the church was built on top of it. It has been reported that spirits walk the catacombs beneath the building.

Graves seen under the building near Poe's monument.
This has the potential to be a haunted story!

Poe has 2 separate burial sites in the cemetery. The first is where he was buried after he died, under mysterious circumstances, in 1849.

In 1875 Poe's body was moved to a more prominent memorial at the front gate of the cemetery.

In addition to Edgar Allan Poe, Elija Bond is also buried in Baltimore. Bond is the creator of the Ouija Board. The Ouija was not the only "spirit board" in existence when it first saw the light of day in 1890. Occultists had long used different props to talk to the dead. The Ouija itself was seen as only a parlor game unrelated to the paranormal until World War 1, when it gained popularity. When Bond died he was buried in Baltimore's Green Mount Cemetery ( John Wilkes Booth is also buried here) with no headstone. There the grave sat empty until Robert Murch, the founder of the Talking Board Historical Society, raised donations to give him one. In 2007 Elija Bond's grave was given an appropriate memorial...

         

Front of Elija Bond's grave

Back of Elija Bond's grave

The Baltimore Comic-Con itself was a fun experience with lots of great activities and wonderful cosplayers. The following are the cosplayers who stopped by my Artist's Alley table at the convention and won the raffle to have their names on a tombstone in Visitations issue 5:

Eliza Evry

Ashley Alexander

Elizabeth Detzel

Olivia Peterson

Jamal Sealey

Pilar Morfin

Becca Harney

Josh Ryan

Timmy Billand

Tiffany Honig

Cosplayer Eliza Evry won the raffle to have
her name of a tombstone in Visitations 5. Check
out her other costumes HERE

Please be sure to check out these Cosplay winners and  many others on my Facebook page HERE

Order a free PDF of Visitations 1 by emailing us here: visitationscomicbook@gmail.com

Creativity that Helped inspire Visitations

I've always been a bit conservative when it comes to artwork.

When I was growing up, there was always a lot of incredible artwork around me, but few things created from imagination. With the exception of the comic books I read, almost everything was taken from life. Drawings of trees from the Chicago lakefront. Sculptures created from photographs. Toys and costumes built from plans and photos found in books. My sense of creating art came from recording what was around me. This never changed in my college courses, my work in commercials, and definitely not in my life drawing. Even my comic book work, which continues to evolve in my study of artists and practice in layouts has not changed things. I will use the script I've been given to push the limits of storytelling, and certainly see it move in my head as I'm reading it, but it hasn't changed my essential nature much. This is especially noticeable when I am drawing a story that bores me.

When I was in college art school I would walk around and look at the other student's work.  I still do that - whether I'm drawing or sculpting. Sometimes it's a matter of seeing what the other person is doing and filing a tip into my brain. Other times it's me quietly comparing my work to theirs. I almost always get something out of this - even when looking at a newcomer, or amateur's artwork.

When something comes along that knocks me over like a freight train, I know I've seen something incredible. Technique wise that rarely happens. Using imagination to create is a different story.

Anybody who's been following this blog knows that I've been studying sculpture. It's helped me tremendously in understanding the three dimensional aspect to objects. My approach to it has pretty much been my approach to figure drawing - record what you see, do not deviate from reality. A number of months ago I saw something that made me question this approach. Another sculptor took what was in front of her and created a fantasy out of what she was seeing.

The thing that makes what she did extra special is that there is more than one fantasy attached to them:  that of the sculptor and those of the viewers. They push the limits of everyone's imagination, which is a true gift of art. Below you will find pictures of some of the sculptures, created by Jordan Russell at The Palette and Chisel Academy Of Fine Art.  Jordan is a student of Audry Cramblit, who regularly teaches classes at the P&C

 I can not help taking a look at my own art, after viewing these sculptures, and thinking about ways to incorporate this type of imagination into my work. This type of thinking outside the box has lead to some interesting ideas within the story of Visitations. More to come...

Order a free PDF of Visitations 1 by emailing us here: visitationscomicbook@gmail.com

Origins Of Visitations

I had a strange experience a couple of years ago.

During an especially boring day at work, I randomly started googling family member names. For the most part nothing really popped up. Obituaries, house sales, things like that. Until, that is, I got to my Great Grandfather. A huge thread appeared with quite a bit of information - things about the family I never knew or heard of. It came from a distant relative in Sweden who was trying to find out what happened to the relatives that came to the  United States. Not only was the Larson family line traced back to the 16th century, but I now knew when, and why, my ancestors came to Chicago.

The Emigrants by Knut Ekwall (1843–1912) represents the artist's vision of what the 19th-century transatlantic experience might be like. Date unknown.

My Great Great Grandparents came to the United States from Sweden in 1869. Because the famine and crop failures in Sweden combined with the American Homestead Act, which offered affordable land to farmers, prospects seemed much brighter here than there. They were in Chicago for about two years before the Great Chicago Fire destroyed the city. They had 6 children and both died around the Turn Of The Century. I discovered that they are buried in Graceland Cemetery.

Graceland Cemetery in Chicago is no ordinary resting place. It's where the founding fathers of the city are buried, those that rebuilt the city after the fire and those that created the World's Fair of 1893. The monuments in the cemetery are extremely interesting. Because it's also a Victorian resting place, there are also a number of unsettling monuments.

Graceland Cemetery as seen from the Chicago Red Line train

I had walked past the cemetery on several occasions, but had never gone in. Because the first Larsons in Chicago were interned there, I felt I had to see it. During a tour in late fall, I was stuck at how bizarre the place truly is. This was just after Halloween. the leaves were off the trees, the skies were grey, and there was just a hint of a chill in the air. The first thing I saw was the grave of Dexter Graves known as "Eternal Silence"

Eternal Silence, or "Statue Of Death"

Legend has it that if you stare into the eyes you see a vision of your own death!

The statue used to be completely black before the elements washed the color away. There is some graffiti scratched into the statue in the bottom of the robes, but what was even more unsettling was that someone had placed coins at the statue's feet.

 During the tour, I watched as a female jogger run past me, using Graceland as her own personal running track. As I watched her go down the road I couldn't help but ask myself  " I wonder what she dreams about?"

Woman jogging through Chicago's Rosehill Cemetery

Visitations will explore that a bit. Taking place in turn of the century Chicago, we meet characters in a cemetery very much like Graceland. Who they are and what happens to them will be surprising. More information to come..

Order a free PDF of Visitations 1 by emailing us here: visitationscomicbook@gmail.com

Welcome To Gracehill Cemetery, Chicago. Enter At Your Own Risk

Visitations is  the history of Chicago as seen through the eyes of the residents from the city’s oldest cemetery.  This gothic action adventure horror comic book series spans the decades from the Victorian Era to the present day. It’s characters serve as a team of ghostly protectors.

The Chicago Underworld is ruled by Big  Jim Colosimo. When an artifact of Colosimo’s disappears, the trail leads to the oldest Cemetery in Chicago, Gracehill. Unfortunately for the gangster’s minions, they find more then they bargained for at the Graveyard. The array of ghostly beings that attack the henchmen are far from the deadliest beings to inhabit the cemetery. Soon a Pandora’s Box of curses and creatures is set loose upon Chicago and the city will be changed forever.

The Heroes that inhabit Gracehill Cemetery watch over and protect Chicago from threats to it’s present and future. They range from human magicians to ghost horses. Their kind has not been seen before...

Visitations blends horror, superheroes, action/adventure, and factual history into one exciting comic book narrative. 

Order a free PDF of Visitations 1 by emailing us here: visitationscomicbook@gmail.com