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If your looking for a good fright this is the place to find it. Even during the day there is a feeling of fear that abounds in this small cemetery. It is on the edge of the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve, near Midlothian. Just west of Cicero Avenue, the Midlothian turnpike makes a curve to the right. Here, passing motorists see a path into the woods, blocked off by posts with a chain stretched between.
The rocky and weed-choked path is cool and shaded. The highway soon disappears from sight as you proceed into the forest, but its dull roar can always be heard. About one-half mile in, a chain-link fence will come into view on the right. This is Bachelor's Grove Cemetery.
This burial ground is infested with ghosts and more than 100 different reports of strange phenomena have been collected about it.... including actual apparitions, unexplained sights and sounds, and even glowing balls of light.
The haunted history of this cemetery began in 1844 when the area was set aside as a burial ground, called "Everdon's". The first burial was during that year and was used until 1965 when things began to drop off. The last actual burial was in 1989, when the ashes of a local where interred. However, before then (and since) it has been abandoned.
Trouble began for the cemetery when the road leading to the cemetery became a "lover's lane". At some point, vandels also discovered it and left it desecrated and forgotten. It got so bad that it was closed in 1965. Since then things have grown worse. Some people say that satanic and occultists groups perform ceremonies here, leaving behind the remains of grisly rituals. Most of the tombstones have been toppled or stolen, and sometimes returned, causing the story that the gravestones sometimes move by themselves.
Entrance to the cemetery is via a small gravel trail. It is on this road that many visitors have seen a ghostly farmhouse that appears and disappears at random. It is always described as a white house with porch pillars, a swing and a soft light burning in the window, but it is always in a different place. Many seperate witnesses reported the house, not realizing that it was unusual (until it disappeared) and all of whom have shown different locations as to where it was seen. It has been seen during both daylight and at night even though there is no record of a house ever being built there.
Just beyond the fence is a small lake which, it is said, was used as a dumping ground by Chicago gangsters. A number of bodies were found floating there in the past, and thus, the lake is said to be haunted also. One ghost linked to the lake is a two-headed creature which has been seen on several occasions. The one that is reported most though is that of an old farmer that was pulled into the water by his plow horse in the 1870's. The horse and the farmer were drowned by the weight of the plow. Two forest rangers spotted the farmer guiding the horse and plow more than a hundred years later.
Bachelor's Grove has many ghosts, images of people dressed in monk's robes to a glowing yellow man seen in 1984 by local psychic Norman Basile and a friend. The two were spending the night in the cemetery, with cameras and recording equipment, when Basile's skeptical friend saw a man in a yellow suit and hat, who quickly vanished. This was followed by red streaks of light darting about the cemetery, and a nearby tree shaking violently.
Many of these ghosts have been captured on film, like the image of a woman seated on a tombstone that was taken with infrared film a few years ago. Could she be the most famous ghost of Bachelor's Grove? This spirit is known as the "White Lady" or the "Madonna of Bachelor's Grove". She is said to be the ghost of a woman buried in the cemetery next to her young son. She has been seen on nights of the full moon, wandering the cemetery with a baby in her arms
The red lights have been seen on the trail leading through the woods and move so fast that they leave a streak behind them. The blue lights in the cemetery seem to dance in the air just out of reach of those who have seen them.
Even the turnpike near there is haunted, people have told of phantom cars that disappear along this road. One couple even had an accident with a car that disappered before their eyes, with no damage to their car, even though they heard the sounds of bending metal and breaking glass.
