GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #274: LETTERS FROM NOWHERE

As I arrived at the train station, I noticed a piece of paper taped to the wall of the south side platform. I wondered, would it be political or religious? I leaned toward the latter, as the midterms are over, and politicians no longer feel the need to send their servants out to local train stations.


It was addressed to "you." As in me. As in anyone who would care to stop by and read it. The writer went on to talk about how we are strangers and have no idea who each other are. And it went on to say that "I love you" and "you are important." Okay, even a jaded asshole like me can admit that that's kind of touching. It's nice that someone went out of their way to bring a ray of sunshine into someone's day.


But as always, the dark side of me kicked in. What if I was a serial killer? Or a pedophile? Or even worse, a politician trying to get elected?


Maybe it doesn't matter, though. If one were to ask, say, Jesus (the one in the Bible, not the legions of backwards Christians who claim to follow in his footsteps) about this, he would probably say that love is the answer, one way or the other. I don't buy it, but then again I'm not the son of God. Unless Mom forgot to mention something to me, that is.


It reminded me of the first time I'd ever gone to Bachelors Grove. I found a whole bunch of notes, identical, on each gravestone. It was from a lonely goth girl looking for people who might want to hang out with her, maybe become friends. I wonder whatever happened to her. I hope she found what she was looking for.

THE JOHN BRUNI MUSEUM OF MEDIOCRE (AT BEST) SHIT #16: FIRST HAND (SIDEBAR TO LOCAL HAUNTS)

[This sidebar accompanied my Local Haunts piece in the Elmhurst College Leader. It was true then, and it’s still true today: the Country House makes the greatest cheeseburger in the world. I go at least once or twice a month. I also go out to Bachelor Grove Cemetery every once in a while. One time I went with my friend and co-creator of THE COCAINE! BROS. Robert Tannahill. He took a picture of the double grave all the way back and left from the gate. It looked like someone had been digging in it. When we got the film developed, he saw fog in the shape of a face. Sure enough, it was clearly a face, and it took us a moment to see a second figure, this one head and shoulders with two cigarette burns for eyes. I would love to post that picture here, but goddammit. That asshole lost the picture when he moved away from Chicago. As for Munger Road, it is no longer as creepy as it used to be. It’s paved and well-lit. The house by the railroad tracks is gone. There are no more frogs or even fog. Too bad.]

I went to a lot of these places in order to research them, and given the number of sites I visited, I had a minimal amount of “supernatural experiences.”

The first was at the Country House. I had just finished my interview with David Regnery and was unlocking my car door when I heard a knocking sound on the hood of my car. It wasn’t anything weak like a tapping, it was an actual knocking. It was my second trip to the restaurant (of three), and I have not experienced anything else there. I don’t know what to make of it, but spooks or not, the Country House makes the best cheeseburger I’ve ever had.

At a second trip to Bachelor Grove Cemetery (again, of three), I didn’t have any experience while I was actually there. I took a few pictures. Nothing fancy, just a point and click camera. When the film developed, all the pictures except for one came out with a strange white streak through them in the dark background. I don’t know what to make of these pictures, but I’ve been asking around. So far, there hasn’t been an explanation, but I’m having a friend of Richard T. Crowe look at them.

Aside from that, I just went to very spooky places. In fact, the first time I went out to Munger Road, it was 3 am, and raining fiercely, complete with thunder and lightning. Fog covered everything, but I saw no dead children. Whether these places are haunted or not, I don’t know, but they certainly are scary places to be.

And yes, I do have a pinch of dirt from Mary Alice Quinn’s grave. I experienced the smell of roses while I was there, but that was because someone actually left a couple of roses there that time.

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #221: BACHELORS GROVE AND BEING ALONE

Remember when I used to write a bunch of reviews for my blog? When I first started up Tales of Unspeakable Taste I thought it would be funny to do cemetery reviews. Who the fuck does cemetery reviews? I did a few before I got bored with the idea. One of them was on Bachelors Grove. If you want to read it, here it is. It might help you understand where I'm going with this GF tonight.


I was thinking about Bachelors Grove because a friend mentioned it earlier today. I realized that there was one thing I left out of my review. Let's rewind 17 years.


In 1999 I won an honorable mention at a State of Illinois journalism competition sponsored by the Trib. It was for feature story. When I worked for the Elmhurst College Leader it was suggested to me, because I was the fuckin' weirdo on staff, that I should write a feature piece on local haunts. So I did. I'd heard about Bachelors Grove a few times over the years, but I'd never gone down there.


I decided to make the trip for the story. I was floored by how spooky that place is. If you read the review in the link above you'll see a double grave that someone had slightly dug up. Years after my first visit a friend of mine took a picture of that grave. When he developed the film he'd captured what looked like two ghosts. I've seen the picture. I'm an incredibly skeptical guy when it comes to things like this, but I'll be damned if it didn't look like two ghosts. It was hazy, but they had human form, and I could see their eyes. One was obviously male, the other female, which matches up because a man and woman are buried there. I don't know what to make of it. I'm just going to say it's something I don't understand.


And no, the picture no longer exists. My friend lives the life of a transient (he is currently in prison and will not have a home when he's released), and he lost the picture and the negatives. Sorry.


If there is any place that is truly haunted, it's Bachelors Grove. But that's not what I'm here to talk about. There is something I left out of my review, and I only remembered it this morning during the IM conversation with my friend.


On several graves someone had left identical copies of the same letter. I know I kept one, but I can't for the life of me find it now. The gist of it was that the writer was a very lonely woman in her late twenties, a Wiccan, and she was looking for fellow cemetery appreciators to talk with. It wasn't a sexual thing. She just wanted to find a friend because she didn't have any. It was one of the saddest things I'd ever read.


Back then I still had a shell around me. I was anti-social. I wanted to separate myself from the world. The only people I wanted to talk with were people I was already familiar with. I later discovered the joys of alcohol, which cured me of this horrible malady. I never wrote to her email address. Only two years later I would have, and that's a thing I regret to this day. Out of mere curiosity I would have contacted her. I'm sure she's an okay person, so there probably would have been a great friendship in that.


Being lonely and wanting to be lonely is one thing. That's what I wanted back then. But this person was lonely and didn't want to be lonely. That's something else entirely.


We didn't have social media back then. I wonder how she's doing now. I hope she's found friends online. Friends online almost always leads to real life friends. There are about two dozen people I was online friends with before I met them in person this year alone. Social media can be a terrible place (Reddit, I'm looking specifically at you; I've never seen a more merciless pit of vipers). But it can also be wonderful. A radio personality I used to listen to back in the early 2000's was fond of saying that he was a high touch guy, not high tech. He blamed the internet for distancing people from each other. I disagree. While there is an element to that, I find that it's brought me closer to humanity. I wouldn't know a majority of the people I know today without the internet.


I hope that lonely Bachelors Grove woman has discovered that truth, and I hope she has tons of friends. I hope she's no longer lonely.


Our solar system is a big place. Only this planet is inhabited. As far as we can see into the rest of the universe is unpopulated. But the math is against us being alone in existence. Still, that's a lot of space, and that's a lot of loneliness.


Tell your loved ones that you love them. In the end that is all we truly have.

BACHELOR'S GROVE: THE MOST HAUNTED CEMETERY IN THE CHICAGOLAND AREA: a graveyard review

Once upon a time, the Midlothian turnpike continued a few yards down into a wooded area that eventually dead-ended at a tiny cemetery that is mostly hidden from view today, but too many teenagers parked their cars down here for make-out sessions. Too many Wiccans parked down here for midnight ceremonies. Too many Satanists parked down here for animal sacrifices. And then, there was just the group of kids who liked to park down here, get drunk, and deface graves.

Now, if you want to head down to Bachelors Grove, you have to park at the forest preserve across the street, then cross a fairly busy road, and then take the short path that was once a part of the turnpike through the woods to the chain-link fence that marks the cemetery. On the way down, you’ll notice one thick branch hanging over the path. Do you remember, from when you were a kid, the story about the boyfriend being hung upside down over his car so his girlfriend could hear his fingernails scraping the roof? This is where the urban legend started.

At the end of the path is where another urban legend found its beginning. Do you remember the story about the mental patient with the hook for a hand? Once again, this is the place where the story started. This is not to say that either story is true, of course, but this is where these stories were first told.



When you first set foot into this boneyard, you will first notice that everything is overgrown. There are no caretakers, and no one has been buried here for quite some time. Dead trees are everywhere, and some have even fallen over cracked tombstones. In fact, more than a few graves have been knocked over, concealing the names of those who have been buried here presumably forever. It doesn’t look like anyone has an interest in taking care of this place.



Need more evidence? Turn left and go to the double grave near the back of the fence. Notice anything? Someone has been digging in this grave, and no one has bothered to fill it in. In fact, the grass is already beginning to grow over the missing divot.



Take a look around at some of the stumps, and you’ll see melted wax from candles. These are from the regular Wiccan visitors. If you find the bones of small animals, they’re from the Satanists.

Through the fence at the very back, straight ahead from the opening gate, there is a hole through which you can step through and look across the tiny loch at the highway beyond. The surface is usually scummed over, so it is hard to tell exactly how deep it is. The mob knows, though; this was a popular body dump for them back in the day, or so the legend goes. It is also here that the two-headed ghost wanders, along with a ghostly farmer/horse team. No one can explain the former, but the latter apparently was dragged to his drowning death when his horse spooked and pulled him into the loch.



These are not the only haunts to hang around Bachelors Grove. There is the usual lady in white, a ghostly house, and back when you could still drive down here, some people reported crashing into a ghost car.

Are these stories true? Who knows? One might even point out that it doesn’t matter. This is one of the spookiest graveyards the Chicagoland area has to offer. Just be sure to not get caught here at night. No, not because of ghosts, but because of the police. They patrol the cemetery on a regular basis to keep vandalism down, and you don’t want to be caught by them after hours.

But if you want to come down sometime in the day, bring a camera. Most people wind up capturing mysterious images on film.



Bachelors Grove Cemetery
143rd St. and the Midlothian Turnpike
Midlothian, IL 60445