Alton

Piasa

The Piasa, roughly translated from the Illini as "Giant Bird that Devours Man." is today

known from the lore that issued from near the present day city of Alton, Illinois, in the

1600's-1700's. In 1673, the French explorer Father Jacques Marquette, in recording him

famous journey down the Mississippi River with Louis Jolliet, was the first to describe

this beast from his contracts with the Indians who lived along the Mississippi River.

Immortalized in a rock bluff painting near Alton, the monster was shown with huge wings,

horns, and scales. Father Marquette describes the creature as, "While Skirting some rocks," the priest wrote, "which by Their height and length
inspired awe, We saw upon one of them two painted monsters which at first made Us afraid, and upon Which the boldest savages dare not Long
rest their eyes. They are as large As a calf; they have Horns on their heads Like those of a deer, a horrible look, red eyes, a beard Like a tiger's, a
face somewhat like a man's, a body Covered with scales, and so Long A tail that it winds all around the Body, passing above the head and going
back between the legs, ending in a Fish's tail. Green, red, and black are the three Colors composing the Picture. Moreover, these 2 monsters are
so well painted that we cannot believe that any savage is their author; for good painters in France would find it difficult to reach that place
Conveniently to paint them. Here is approximately The shape of these monsters, As we have faithfully Copied It."

The pictograph was seen subsequently by LaSalle and other French explorers in the 17th century after which the record is silent for a hundred
years. Then additional sightings are reported in the early 19th century, and the earliest-known artist's sketch was made in 1825 by William Dennis.
He labeled his creation the "Flying Dragon."

In 1836 John Russell of Bluffdale, Ill., published an article entitled "The Bird That Devours Men," and called the monster the Piasa Bird for the first
time. Russell related a legend, much of which he created, which persists as the explanation of the pictograph. The Piasa Bird, Russell wrote, was
a huge flying monster which lived on the cliffs, destroyed Indian villages, consumed its captives, and resisted efforts to destroy it. Chief Ouatoga,
however, during a dream inspired by the Great Spirit, conceived a plan to kill the terrible bird. Using himself as bait and 20 of his bravest warriors to
launch poisoned arrows, Ouatoga's plan succeeded and the Piasa Bird fell into the Mississippi and drowned. In commemoration of this event,
Russell contended, the grateful Indians placed the image of the Piasa Bird on the bluff.

There are many legends regarding its origin. One of the more popular accounts goes like this:

Many moons ago, there existed a birdlike creature of such great size, he could easily carry off a full grown deer in his talons. His taste, however,
was for human flesh. Hundreds of warriors attempted to destroy the Piasa, but failed. Whole villages were destroyed and fear spread throughout
the Illini tribe. Ouatoga, a chief whose fame extended even beyond the Great Lakes, separated himself from his tribe, fasted in solitude for the
space of a whole moon, and prayed to the Great Spirit to protect his people from the Piasa. On the last night of his fast, the Great Spirit appeared
to Ouatoga in a dream and directed him to select twenty warriors, arm them each with a bow and poisoned arrow, and conceal them in a
designated spot. Another warrior was to stand in an open view, as a victim for the Piasa.

When the chief awoke in the morning, he told the tribe of his dream. The warriors were quickly selected and placed in ambush. Ouatoga offered
himself as the victim. Placing himself in open view, he soon saw the Piasa perched on the bluff eyeing his prey. Ouatoga began to chant the
death song of a warrior. The Piasa took to the air and swooped down upon the chief. The Piasa had just reached his victim when every bow was
sprung and every arrow sent sailing into the body of the beast. The Piasa uttered a fearful, echoing scream and died. Ouatoga was safe, and the
tribe saved.

Modern reports of Thunderbirds have been recorded from the same area of Piasa. Late in the 1990's the Piasa, through the efforts of citizens,
government, and business advocates, was repainted and restored to its former pristine state. It can be seen on the bluff just north of Alton, Illinois
on the Great River Road.

Bibliography: Harnett, Charles . (1958) Puzzle Of The Piasa Monster Bird. Retrieved 3/13/03, from East St. Louis Action Research Project:

<http://www.eslarp.uiuc.edu/ibex/archive/vignettes/piasa.htm>

Chicago

Fireman's Hand

This is one of the strangest cases in Chicago fire history. This story happens to Francis X. Leavy, and his fellow firefighters, on Good Friday, April
18, 1924. Leavy was retiring from the department after being a member for 13 years. One of his friends noticed, Edward McKevitt noticed that he
looked depressed so he asked him what the problem was and he replied, "This is my last day on the fire department," and shrugged his
shoulders. His soapy palm rested on the glass window that he was cleaning, and he continued to wipe at the window with his wet cloth in his other
hand. That morning he was excited and he wanted to retire from the department, so he thought that his change of heart was kind of strange.

Later that day, Curran Hall was engulfed in flames, and the building housed a number of small businesses. The heaviest smoke seemed to be
pouring from the upper floors. Truck 12's crew was ordered onto the roof to chop a whole to ventilate the upper floor. Firefighters could then reach
the center of the fire. Frank Leavy and the men were on Engine 107 were told to make their way to the second floor. On their hands and knees, the
men groped their way to the a stairwell through the choking smoke. Once they reached the second floor, the men had to take turns going out onto
the fire escape for fresh air.

The minutes passed slowly. It seemed the firefighters were gaining the advantage over the flames. Suddenly, a cry rang out, "Get out! Get out!"
Supervisors on the ground saw what the men inside could not- the outside wall was crumbling. Leavy and the others scrambled to the fire escapes
and started down. But it was too late. The wall caved in with a sickening crunch. The next day, Holy Saturday, Edward McKevitt slumped in his
chair as he tried to explain to his fellow firefighters what had happened the day before. It was not easy- eight of his cohorts were dead; twenty
other firefighters were injured, two critically. And yet, McKevitt found himself the most troubled by Frank Leavy's premonition of death, "This is my
last day on the fire department."

As McKevitt glanced around the fire station, trying to understand the senseless events, his gaze rested on the window Leavy had been washing
the day before. His eyes focused on what seemed to be a blemish on the window. He rose and looked closely at it, and unmistakable outline of a
man's hand, Frank Leavy's hand. He knew it was his because he clearly noticed that he had rested his hand at that spot a day earlier. They tried
numerous times to wash away the print. They tried ammonia, strong soaps, and razorblades to try to get rid of it but they all failed. A city official
compared a copy of Leavy's thumbprint to the thumb mark on the window, and he said that the print matched. On April 18, 1944, twenty years to
the date on which Leavy died, a newspaper boy threw a rolled-up newspaper toward the firehouse, shattering the window into pieces.

Hull House and the Devil Baby

This house supposedly has five spirits, four of them being hooded phantoms that are possibly monks, and the other one is the Devil Baby. The Hull
House was first built in 1856 by Charles Hull as a shelter for immigrants struggling to find a new life in America. In the 1800's, patrons of the poor
Ellen Starr and Jane Addams converted the large building into a settlement house to serve Chicago's most impoverished residents. Despite a
steady stream of people coming and going, no ghostly activity was reported until the early 1880's

The first supernatural event surrounding Hull House took place in 1913, when the so-called Devil Baby arrived at the home. There are a couple
different legends of where the Devil Baby originated. Here is the most popular three:

1. The child was born to a God-fearing Italian woman who had unwisely married an atheist. A few months later and pregnant with her first child, she
hung a painting of the Virgin Mother on the bedroom wall. When her husband returned from work that night, he ripped the picture from its frame,
and burned it. He shouted that he would rather have the Devil himself in the house than a holy picture. His loose tongue created an invitation to
Satan. The evil one implanted himself in the unborn child. At his birth, the child was cursed with the Devil's appearance including cloven hooves,
scaled skin, pointed ears, and a small tail, and the weird child ran and talked, skipping around the kitchen table, shaking his finger at his "father."
The woman's fearful husband took it immediately to the Hull House and left it on the steps.

2. The youngest daughter of a very pious Jewish family supposedly married a gentile without her parents' approval or knowledge. When her father
heard of the girl's marriage, he exploded in a rage- "I would rather have the Devil as a grandchild than a gentile as a son-in-law!" That indiscreet
remark came to pass, for his daughter soon gave birth to the Devil child. The horrible offspring was deposited at Hull House since the young
mother had been attending classes there.

3. Another Jewish version is that two young women had gone to see the play "Faust" shortly before one of them was due to give birth. A neighbor
of one of the women reported that the pregnant woman had looked too intensely at the "stage" devil, thereby adversely affecting her offspring. Sure
enough, her newborn infant was the spitting image of Mephistopholes. A visiting nurse, assigned to look after the unwed mother, took the demonic
child to the Hull House

Within days, news of the Devil Baby leaked into the immigrant neighborhoods surrounding Hull House, causing widespread panic. Throughout the
uproar, Addams maintained that no such creature existed, although many reports indicate that she was hiding the monstrosity in the attic in an
attempt to protect it from mob violence. Eventually, the panic subsided, leaving mystery of the Devil Baby unsolved. But years later, the legend of
the creature reemerged. For decades now, people passing the house have spotted a wild, bestial creature peeking from one of the attic windows.
This apparition has been tentatively identified as the ghostly remains of the Devil Baby, which may have died in the house while still a child.

Aside from the creepy Devil Baby, Hull House has several other phantoms in residence. Ghost hunters exploring the site have reported encounters
with floating balls of light that wander down the attic staircase. The apparition, along with a strange ectoplasmic mist, have been caught on film by
a number of researchers. In addition, four hooded phantoms, often described as monks, have also been sighted and photographed in recent years.
All of Hull House's ghosts, other than the Devil Baby, have yet to be identified, largely because of the list of candidates is so long. The home's
founder, Charles Hull is also a prime candidate in the current hauntings, or Jane Addams, who eventually received a Nobel Prize for her efforts on
behalf of the poor and the women's movement.

In 1963, the settlement house relocated to a larger facility. At that time, the original building was converted into a historic museum, which is now
open to the public. The current staff denies all knowledge of any hauntings and has reported no unusual phenomena. Jane Addams wrote of the
Devil Baby uproar: "During the weeks of excitement… it was the old women who really seemed to have come into their own, and perhaps the most
significant result of the incident was the reaction of the story upon them. It stirred their minds and memory as with magic touch, it loosened their
tongues and revealed the inner life and thoughts accustomed to sit at home and to hear the younger members of the family speak of affairs quite
outside their own experiences in a language they to do not understand."

Resurrection Mary/Resurrection Cemetery

The most beautiful and evasive ghost in Chicago is a blond haired, blue-eyed girl in her late teens. When she is seen she wears a long, off-white
ball gown and dancing shoes in which she died in the year 1934. In life her name was Mary Bregavy who was killed in a car accident and she to
love to dance at the Willowbrook Ballroom. Now she is known as Resurrection Mary after Resurrection Cemetery which she was buried in. She
has been appearing for the past fifty years and have become accepted by it's residents.

She first made her presence known in 1939, five years after her death, when motorists complained that a mysterious girl in a formal gown tried to
jump onto the running boards of their automobiles. In some cases she actually hitched a ride to the ballroom, in which the drivers didn't know she
was actually a ghost because she looked so real. She would dance all night with some of the single men who frequented the night spot, but she
was always quiet and vague about where she lived. They also said that her skin was icy cold. After the last dance, she would ask for a ride back
to her home, and would have them head north to Archer Avenue. She usually disappeared from the vehicle as it passed Resurrection Cemetery.
Most of the time she wouldn't open the door before disappearing, but she usually gave the man a goodnight kiss before leaving. Other times, Mary
asked the driver to stop just short of the cemetery, and she got out of the car and vanished as she ran through the locked cemetery gates.

The young girl has also been seen inside the cemetery. On one occasion, a man passing the graveyard late one night, happened to glance toward
the locked gates, and a young girl peered back at him through the iron bars. He thought that she might have been locked in when the cemetery
closed at dusk, and he left to phone the police. By the time the officials arrived, the girl was gone. The policeman shone a spotlight at the gate and
two bars had been spread apart, directly in curve with each bar, were the outlines of two feminine hand prints embedded in the metal. The bars
quickly drew many visitors and too much attention so they were quickly removed and replaced.

A more recent sighting was by a cab driver who was returning to the toll way after dropping off a fare in Palos Park. It was a few minutes past
midnight on a snow-swept January night. The cab driver was driving up Archer Avenue when he saw a coatless girl standing near the entrance to
the Old Willow Shopping Mall. The man thought that the girl had encountered car trouble so her stopped to help. She climbed in the front seat, and
he noted that she was wearing a beautiful white gown with black patent leather dancing shoes. The mysterious passenger told the driver that she
had to be home and gestured northward. The cab driver later recalled that the young woman was vague, giving unclear answers as he asked her
questions. He thought that perhaps she may have had a few too many drinks. The only thing she said he clearly remembered was, "The snow
came early this year." After the pair had traveled several miles up Archer Avenue, the girl shouted, "Here!" The cabbie pulled to the curb and
looked out his window at the area toward which the girl had pointed. A small shack was all he saw. But when he looked back toward the girl, she
was gone, vanished, without even opening the door. The shack was located directly across the road of Resurrection Cemetery.

Rubio Woods Forest Preserve

Magic House & Bachelor Grove Cemetery

A "magic house" occasionally appears in a shroud-like mist on the rutted trail leading to the abandoned Bachelor Grove Cemetery, west of
Crestwood in Rubio Woods Forest Preserve. The house floats only into view only rarely. People who have seen the place describe the same
scene: a porch swing sways gently on a large, wood-colonnaded front porch. The two-story house is vagely Victorian with a faint glow of light
seeping through heavily-curtained windows.

No house was ever known to have been built on that property. And no one has ever reported enterting the home. At least, no one has ever left the
house to report on it's "occupants." Bachelor Grove Cemetery also features a "ghost light." Eyewitnesses say a blue orb often bounces across the
cemetery on clear, moonlit nights. Its origins are also unknown. Tombstones in the weed-choked cemetery have also been rearranged on
occasion.

Watseka

Vennum House

The Watseka Wonder first appeared here on July 11, 1877. That was the first time that thirteen year old Lurancy Vennum first fell into a strange
catatonic sleep, during which she "traveled to heaven and spoke with spirits". The sleep attacks continued to occur three to twelve times per day
and sometimes lasted eight hours. During her trancelike state, Lurancy would speak in dozens of different voices and reported conversations with
discarnate souls. When she awoke she remembered nothing. News of the girl who conversed with spirits quickly spread throughout the state.
Doctors diagnosed the young girl as mentally ill and recommended committing her to the State Insane Asylum at Peoria. Finally, on January 31,
1878, a man named Asa Roff, visited the Vennums and told them that his daughter had been afflicted with the same condition. The man was
convinced that his own daughter, Mary, had actually communicated with spirits. Mary died in 1865, after being committed to the Peoria asylum.

Roff wanted to spare Lurancy a similar fate and brought Dr. E. Winchester Stevens to their home, a physician who believed in spiritualism. The
Vennums agreed to allow Dr. Stevens to examine their daughter. During his examination, two spirits spoke through the girl for over an hour, until
she fell to the floor, rigid as a board. Dr. Stevens proceeded to "mesmerize" the girl, who responded to the treated and finally relaxed. While still in
her trance, the voice of another young girl started talking through Lurancy. It was Mary Roff, Asa's daughter. The spirit had sensed the presence of
her father and wanted to go home with him. To everyone's amazement, the spirit described intimate details of the Roff family life. Mary possessed
Lurancy's body throughout the night and into the next day. Roff sent for his wife. As they approached the Vennum house, Lurancy shouted out
their nicknames known only to family members. Mary refused to leave Lurancy's body and pleaded to be allowed to return home.

On February 11, the Vennums agreed to allow their daughter to be taken home with the Roffs. They hoped the act would in some way speed
Lurancy's recovery. Lurancy-as-Mary stayed with the Roffs for three months, during that period, she recognized visitors, told of family outings,
identified her favorite possessions and clothing, and related incidental facts that were only known to the family. Then on May 21, Lurancy surfaced
and announced that she wanted to go home. She was completely cured of the alarming condition which had afflicted her for over ten months. As a
way of thanking Mary for her help, Lurancy periodically returned to the Roff house and allowed their daughter to enter her body. At such times,
they visited with their dead daughter as if she were alive.

Bibliography: Hauck, Dennis. Haunted Places: Ghost abodes, sacred sites, UFO landings, and other supernatural locations. New York: Penguin

Book, 1994.

Blackman, W. (1998). The Field Guide to North American Hauntings. New York: Three Rivers Press.

Scott, Beth & Norman, Michael. (1985). Haunted Heartland. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.

Scott, Beth & Norman, Michael. (1985). Haunted Heartland. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.

Hauck, Dennis. (1994). Haunted Places: Ghost Abodes, Sacred Sites, UFO landings, and other supernatural locations. New York: Penguin Book.

Illinois