Possibly one of the most haunted places in the world is a one
acre graveyard stuck far off the beaten path called Bachelors Grove
Cemetery. Located in an isolated section of the Rubio Woods Forest
Preserve in Chicago, Illinois, this one acre plot of land holds an
unbelievable amount of unexplained phenomena. It is also the location of
one of the world’s most recognizable ghost photos that captures a woman
in white sitting on a tombstone (pictured above).
The cemetery
was founded in the 1820’s and for years, was considered a peaceful,
serene resting place for the departed. But by the 1960’s, it was
increasingly isolated and abandoned and was often the site for wild
parties, vandalism and possible satanic rituals. The chaos at the
graveyard was so great that many bodies were moved to other cemeteries
to avoid being desecrated and a large number of tombstones have been
either stolen or knocked over.
This cemetery has reports of every
type of paranormal activity. Many strange lights are seen in and around
the tiny cemetery. A flashing blue light, similar to a police car’s
light, was spotted many times flitting noiselessly amongst the
tombstones. Orbs, bright lights, ectoplasm, unexplained mist, cold
spots, and apparitions are frequently encountered in and around the
cemetery.
But the oddest repeated sighting is that of a “phantom farm
house”. What makes these reports so credible is that they come from
people who had no idea that the house doesn’t actually exist. Each person
who has seen the house describes an old, two-story farm house that is
white washed, a large front porch with post to either side of the porch
entrance, a porch swing and a
light that cheerily burns in the front window. As people approach the
old house, it is reported that it seems to shrink until it finally just
fades away. Local legend says that if a person does enter the house they will never return.
Millie and Christine McKoy were born, joined at the base of
the spine, on July 11, 1851, the eighth and ninth child of Monimia and
Jacob McKay, slaves owned by a blacksmith in the small town of Welches
Creek, North Carolina. At only ten months old, they were sold along with
their mother to a showman, who in turn sold them on to two more men in
the same trade, looking to make a quick buck. It seems to have been
around this time that their last name was changed to McKoy.
While still very young, the McKoy twins were kidnapped at an
exhibition in New Orleans by yet another showman, who exhibited them
another year, including at Barnum’s American Museum. Sold yet again in
1855, this time to a professor, they ended up in Canada, and then
Europe, where former owner Joseph Smith reunited them with their mother
and brought them back to the United States.
Joseph Smith and his wife educated the McKoy twins, focusing
on music and languages. The girls had a gift for singing and could soon
also speak in four or five different tongues. Yet, while to some extent
it is true that the sisters enjoyed a successful career in museums and
the circus, it should not be forgotten that they were also exploited
since they were young girls – and, as female slaves, more so even than
the other conjoined twins listed here. Indeed, they are held to have
been overworked, beaten, raped and sexually abused – including, it’s
suggested, during the numerous medical ‘examinations’ they had to
endure.
Free at last following the Emancipation Proclamation, in the
1880s the McKoy sisters retired from show business and went back to
their hometown in North Carolina, where they bought a small farm.
However, after a fire that weakened their health, the twins’ lives were
claimed by tuberculosis, contracted by Millie, and died on October 8,
1912. They lived until the ripe old age of 61, the oldest female
conjoined twins to date.
Halloween’s origins date back more than 2,000 years. On what
we consider November 1, Europe’s Celtic peoples celebrated their New
Year’s Day, called Samhain (SAH-win). According to Irish mythology,
Samhain was a time when the ‘door’ to the Otherworld opened enough for
fairies and the dead to communicate with us; Samhain was essentially a
festival for the dead.
On Samhain eve—what we know as Halloween—spirits were thought
to walk the Earth as they traveled to the afterlife. Fairies, demons,
and other creatures were also said to be abroad. It is still the custom
in some areas to set a place at the Samhain feast for the souls of dead
kinfolk and to tell tales of one’s forebears. However, the souls of
thankful kin could return to bestow blessings just as easily as that of a
murdered person could return to wreak revenge. Fairies were also
thought to steal humans on Samhain and fairy mounds were to be avoided.
People stayed near to home or, if forced to walk in the
darkness, turned their clothing inside-out or carried iron or salt to
keep the fairies at bay. The Gaelic custom of wearing costumes and masks
was a bid to befuddle the harmful spirits or ward them off. In
Scotland, young men would dress in white with masked, veiled or
blackened faces. They were known as ‘guisers’ and the practice was
common in the 16th century in the Scottish countryside. Candle lanterns,
carved from turnips, were part of the traditional festival. Large
turnips were hollowed out, carved with faces and set on windowsills to
ward off evil spirits.
Samhain was later transformed as Christian leaders co-opted
pagan holidays. In the seventh century Pope Boniface IV decreed November
1 All Saints’ Day, or All Hallows’ Day. The night before Samhain
continued to be observed with bonfires, costumes, and parades, though
under a new name: All Hallows’ Eve—later “Halloween.”
Children going door to door ‘guising’ or ‘galoshin’ in
costumes and masks, carrying turnip lanterns, offering entertainment of
in return for food or coins, was traditional in the 19th century and
continued well into the 20th century. At the time of mass transatlantic
Irish and Scottish immigration, the custom of Halloween in North America
began.
While not necessarily a masterful design, Italian M. Goventosa’s
1930s single-wheeled motorcycle is certainly a testament to human
imagination.
Vampira, queen of low-budget horror movies in the 1950's, reads a book on self-taught embalming.
