Is it safe to build an airport runway over a cemetery? Not safe in terms of flight safety, but in terms of bad karma, bad mojo, and bad luck. Here in Chicago our O’Hare Airport has acquired a historic cemetery that was in the way of building a new runway. They will pave a new runway over it. The news article is below:
If you use a Google satellite map for St. Johannes Cemetery you will see this tiny cemetery surrounded by the vast O’Hare Airport. Soon it will vanish.
Here is a quote from the article:
“That heavy equipment should not be in that cemetery in the first place because that is consecrated ground,” Karaganis said. “The only people who know where area markers and the religious headstones are the members of the church. So we’re hoping the appellate court will cease the damage and religious sacrilege being done at St. Johannes.”
I can understand an airport not wanting a small patch of cemetery blocking their plans. However something about this strikes me as wrong. Call me superstitious, but removing the graves from consecrated ground sounds a lot like inviting trouble of the spiritual kind. Who knows if all the graves will be accounted for? The desecration of a cemetery may not seem like much of a concern. Yet, desecration has led to the haunting of cemeteries such as the infamous Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery. In Ireland and Iceland, roads have been diverted around a fairy mound or a sacred tree.
I don’t know if I’d want to be on the airplane that is taking off over a former cemetery. Sort of like whistling in a graveyard. Hopefully superstition is only superstition and all will be well. Regardless, let’s keep an eye on this particular new runway.
In the Chicago area we had the horrible story about a local cemetery named Burr Oak. The people running the place allegedly dug up the dead to make room for new graves, for a profit. Is this a rare occurrence? We assume our deceased loved ones are resting undisturbed. But…how do we know?
Below is an article from the Chicago Sun-Times about the discovery of a human bone in another cemetery outside Chicago at Mount Glenwood cemetery. After the tragedy at Burr Oak Cemetery, people are wondering if their deceased loved ones are safe. Some of the comments in response to this online story are very interesting. They include ghostly stuff!
A single human bone was discovered in this cemetery. That might not seem very significant, but where did a human bone come from? Human bones are not exactly something we find laying around. If there is even one bone, it means it had to come from an entire skeleton.
I wonder if grave robbing is more common then we imagine. Is there a criminal enterprise we are unaware of in our cemeteries? Is someone digging up the dead? If not to resell the same plot for a profit, then perhaps for their grave goods. Could someone who does not fear the dead seek any jewelry left behind with the deceased? That is a chilling thought. How do we know?
There are cemeteries that are in bad shape, abandoned or nearly abandoned. I had a friend tell me about a cemetery where the homeless sleep at night, with trash scattered about. In such places, anything can happen. Who is roaming such places at night?
The threat of grave robbing might be a good reason to visit our deceased loved ones regularly. If we often leave flowers behind, maybe a grave robber would likely leave that site alone. There are plenty of graves that haven’t been visited in years, or decades. This is what happened at Burr Oak Cemetery…the criminals victimized the graves nobody visited. We all need to visit our deceased ones and lay flowers for them. It really is the only protection we can offer them.
In the news has been the historic Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip IL, a cemetery outside of Chicago. It is the scene of a gruesome and unsettling series of cemetery crimes. Four cemetery workers allegedly dug up existing graves and dumped the bones in a mass grave to make space for others to be buried. This was grave robbing for profit. I know someone who has relatives buried there, I just talked with him. He told me that since the cemetery has been closed, he does not know the status of his relatives’ graves. I wished him good luck with this. What a terrible thing, who would have imagined such a thing could ever happen?
I will approach this ghoulish story from a different perspective. Can a cemetery’s desecration cause it to become haunted? There is a belief that by ruining a cemetery the spirits of the dead will become unsettled leading to a haunted environment. A prime example is the infamous Bachelor’s Grove, an old cemetery that has long been abandoned. It suffered terrible desecration over the decades and developed a reputation for multiple hauntings experienced by first-hand witnesses.
Will the dark deeds at Burr Oak Cemetery give it a similar dark reputation in the future? Shall it become the source of ghostly legends years from now? Will Burr Oak Cemetery become haunted?
I’d suggest that the idea of a haunted cemetery is misunderstood. A cemetery is actually the last place we’d expect to encounter the ghost of a deceased human. Ghosts behave as we would in life, but often act as if they are trapped in a dreamlike state, with varying levels of consciousness. A ghost is most likely to be present at the source of the trauma that resulted in their unwillingness to disconnect from the physical world. Ghosts frequent places they were intimately familiar with in life. Just like you or I would not want to roam a cemetery, neither would a ghost. Once a ghost truly “dies” and leaves this world, they leave it permanently and don’t come back. Outside of human criminals, Burr Oak Cemetery is safe.
However, there is another side to the concept of the haunted cemetery. A handful of cemeteries are actually haunted. What is going on with those? Bachelor’s Grove is a perfect example. In these situations, I believe we are not dealing with human ghosts, but with non-human negative entitles. Cemeteries that suffer from desecration are usually abandoned. What happens with these abandoned cemeteries is they attract the attention of those who wish to use the cemetery for their own purposes. This includes practices such as necromancy and the darker visions of sorcery. If an abandoned cemetery is frequently used as a location for the evocation of the demonic, it could eventually create something like a portal where negative entities will linger. The same idea could apply to some other locations like a “haunted” house where an imprint, a stain was left behind.
The state is taking over Burr Oak and it will not be abandoned. The authorities will make sure the cemetery is properly managed. The grave robbing crimes at Burr Oak are terrible and disturbing, but in themselves won’t awaken the dead, nor cause a gateway to lower spiritual entities. Unless the criminals responsible also practiced necromancy or even worse over the years. Then we might have a problem. I wonder if there is more to this story then meets the eye.
I talked with my friend Brad. His mom and other relations are buried in Burr Oak, and he has no idea what is going on. He is really disturbed. He is getting calls form his relatives from out-of-state asking, “What the hell is going on in Chicago?” He has no answer. He is watching the situation in the news, but the cemetery is closed now. Here is a video that someone took before the cemetery was closed. It shows how important we value our deceased loved ones.
Vampires exist. Of course this reality is based on how we define “vampire”. The vampire of fiction, a walking, blood-sucking sexy corpse, is not real. However the vampire of folklore actually did exist, if only in people’s beliefs. People actually believed in them enough to act on that belief. In past centuries villagers would go through the trouble to dig up a grave, sometimes entire graveyards, exhuming the buried in search of corpses that did not decay properly. When such a corpse was found, it was killed a second time to make sure it was dead. It could be staked to keep it “down”, or it would be cremated by fire. The goal was to make sure the dead stayed dead. It was believed that the dead could truly be undead.
There was a recent story about the discovery of such a “vampire”. Check out these links below, they include images:
The source of this superstition seems to have emerged from people’s lack of understanding concerning the process of decay. There are factors that can slow down decomposition. Temperature, soil conditions, lack of oxygen in a grave and so forth. In the past people were not familiar with such things and if they encountered a grave where a corpse had not decayed but looked “fresh”, they logically assumed it was somehow still “alive” in some fashion and called it a vampire. The best look at the source of this folklore would be Paul Barber’s book “Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality”. He explores the causes behind the vampire folklore. It is the definitive word on the topic and highly recommended for anyone interested in the topic.
However, there remains a mystery. Why would people feel the need to dig up the dead in the first place? What could motivate people to such extreme action? It was an action taken when a community experienced sudden, unexplained illnesses accompanied by haunting phenomena. People back then felt the dead could be a source of menace to society…the vampire.
There was a belief that someone was not truly dead until the skeleton’s bones were bare and decomposition was complete. It was felt that the soul could linger as long as there remained cellular activity continuing on the body. A corpse is still alive in many respects…the process of decay is filled with microorganisms breaking down the body. The soul could remain connected to their body until nothing was left but the bones. This explained the need to kill a corpse a second time.
The vampire was sometimes mistakenly thought of as a walking corpse. However if we examine the folklore carefully, we see is that the vampire’s physical body did NOT leave his grave, only his or her spirit did. What people reported seeing was a predatory ghost that would feed off the life of the living, not sucking blood but one’s life, their chi or ka, causing illness. This ghost still had a connection to their physical corpse and it was thought to return to its body in the grave after feeding. These life-consuming spirits needed to feed to continue their halfway existence. This supposedly prevented the corpse from disintegrating into bones.
In spiritualist and occult theory, there is thought to be an intermediate stage between physical death and the point of permanently leaving the world of time and space. This intermediate stage is commonly referred to as our ghost. A ghost can still interact with the physical world in a subtle way. At death, the path to our final destination is usually swift and our ghost lingers only minutes. But it is possible for our soul to linger far longer for different reasons. Often a tragic death can shock a soul into remaining at the site of the tragedy, attached to it. Or a spirit may become attached to a place they knew in life. A soul may also remain attached to their physical body after death. When a spirit continues this attachment to their body after death, it becomes a vampire…a different and more dangerous type of ghost.
In my next post I will go into further detail about what spiritualism has to say about the nature of the vampire spirit. Ghosts are common, but vampire spirits extremely rare. Why? The answer next.
I like cemeteries…old cemeteries, not modern ones. Modern cemeteries are sad and sterile places. They serve their purpose, but they are not a place to visit outside of paying our respects to the deceased. However, old cemeteries can be interesting places to visit, trying to find the oldest tombstone at a site. Some people like to make paper rubbings of old or exceptional tombstones. There is artistry in the stones and statuary found in older graveyards. Some cemeteries really are places to visit just for site seeing.
My favorite cemetery around where I live is Forest Home-German Waldheim Cemetery outside of Chicago. It was started in the 1876, has 288 acres and nearly 200,000 people are buried there. A major reason this cemetery is so interesting is because it was the only non-denominational cemetery around Chicago back then. It was open to any ethnicity and faith, or no faith at all. Along with local folk both famous and anonymous, buried here are American Indians, masons, gypsies, evangelists, druids, atheists and famed labor activists. This mixture of beliefs has created a wide variety of fascinating things to see at every turn.
United Order of Druids
Most famous would be the Haymarket Martyr’s Monument that was designated as a Historic Landmark. It commemorates the workers slain in the Haymarket labor riot in 1886. Labor activists from around the world come to visit this monument. The gypsy graves are of special interest as an example of their unique culture. There is a monument for the United Ancient Order of Druids. It really is striking and unique, with a druid on a pillar, the ground surrounded by stone circles carved like wood. Ancient burial grounds were discovered here containing mastodon bones and tusks and the Potawatomi Indians had burial mounds at these grounds. It is definitely a place to visit if anyone is in the vicinity.
In a previous post I wrote about a visit to the abandoned cemetery Bachelor’s Grove, joined by some other ghost enthusiasts. I did a tarot card reading on a tombstone, attempting to communicate with any entities in the infamous graveyard. Not really a good idea. Afterwards I experienced a bout of bad luck, and I alluded to the idea that something might have followed me home. http://occultview.com/2009/01/11/tarot-reading-at-bachelors-grove/
Bachelors Grove
A couple of months after my visit to the graveyard, I had an unnerving experience. I was asleep in my bed when I was awakened by a sound…a growling sound, loud enough to stir me from my sleep. It sounded like there was a growling dog in my bedroom and close to my bed. I don’t own pets. I became wide-awake; it was not a lucid dream or anything like that. I laid face away from the sound, and I did not move…I stayed perfectly still and listened to this low growl. I was afraid to turn and look at what was in my room. Instead I said a mental prayer for God to protect me from whatever was there and send it away. After the prayer…the growling just…stopped. Yet I still did not turn to see what could have been there. Afterwards, I wondered what I might have seen had I turned around…anything? Or maybe I’d be discovered the next day in my bed, dead from a failed heart.
I know someone who had her own personal encounter with a growling ghost. Once, seemingly from nowhere, this lady’s home began to experience a haunting. She knew of nothing that would have provoked this to happen. But she said, there came strange sounds like footsteps on the stairway. Her daughter caught a brief glimpse of someone in the house, who then disappeared. Her microwave oven would turn itself on spontaneously. The final straw was after an incident with the microwave oven in the kitchen, she heard a loud growling outside her open kitchen window. She went to the window to look outside…and there was absolutely nothing out there. She had enough. Being a Catholic, she lit candles every night for a week and prayed to God that whatever was in her home would leave. After a week of this…she never experienced any sign of a haunting again.
What to make of this growling ghost? Ghosts don’t growl. Ghosts are deceased human beings and a ghost of a human is still human and humans don’t growl. These growling ghosts are not ghosts, but inhuman spirits.
There is the folklore of the Black Dog, or Barghest. This spectral hound with glowing eyes is said to prowl cemeteries at night. It is considered an evil omen to see one, an omen of death, and is said to be associated with the Devil. There are many legends concerning these Hell Hounds who haunt the graveyards. They are not considered to be the ghosts of men or even dogs. But the spirits of something inhuman. To encounter one is to bring doom. According to demonology, demons cannot take human form, but appear as grotesques, human/animal hybrids and monstrosities.
When I visited Bachelor’s Grove, maybe a “black dog” of that sad, haunted cemetery did follow me home. Maybe the Black Dog is not only folklore. Beware of the Growling Ghost.
Quite a while ago I visited the infamous Bachelor’s Grove cemetery with a couple of fellow ghost enthusiasts.Bachelors Grove is a decrepit abandoned cemetery outside Chicago with a famous reputation for being haunted.
It was really overgrown when I visited it. We all had our cameras ready, our recording devices on.We looked around examining the area, took pictures and wondered if we’d possibly capture something out of the ordinary.What I like to do when I visit a haunted place is to do a tarot card reading there.It is my personal way of trying to make contact with whatever might be around.I will do a layout with my deck of cards which I have owned since I was a teenager.It is the only deck that I seem to get results from.Perhaps my years of ownership with it is responsible for that.I have had some interesting readings with that particular deck over the years.
After looking around, I did a card layout on one of the tombstones.There are not many intact tombstones left in Bachelor’s Grove, and few remaining I could lay my cards out on (picture above).Know what?I felt sort of weird doing a layout on someone’s gravestone.It almost felt like desecration.Heaven knows Bachelor’s Grove has suffered terribly from desecration over the years.The place has a sad atmosphere, a feeling of loss.I feel the cemetery’s abuse has been partially responsible for it’s haunted state.
Bachelor’s Grove has also been a place where people would practice occult rituals.Who knows what practices, what acts, have been performed there over the long decades?I can only imagine everything from amateurs trying to summon the dead or demonic, to genuine occultists, to criminal activity.An abandoned cemetery attracts this type of activity.If dark ceremonies are performed often enough in the same place, it will create a link with the darkest regions of the Unseen World.I believe this is what is responsible for the haunted status of Bachelor’s Grove, a corruption of its original purpose, by the invitation of dark spirits by those summoning them.
And here I was doing the very same thing, if only on a tiny scale.It is disrespectful to use anyone’s final resting place for such purposes.I was using the cards trying to contact whatever was there, like a form of channeling.If there were entities lingering around, the cards were an invitation to make contact.Spirits cannot force themselves on us, but we can invite them in.And that is what happened next!
After my visit to Bachelor’s Grove, I experience a bout of bad luck.Nothing remarkably awful, just random bad events, one after another.Enough bad luck that I began to wonder what the heck was happening, this was all very peculiar. Eventually I started to worry…I was getting a sense of unease which I can’t quite explain.I talked with one of my comrades who joined me at Bachelor’s Grove, and he said he was having some bad experiences after the visit as well.
One evening, sitting at home, I took some random pictures.I was startled to see orbs in some pictures.Never before had I ever see any orb in any photo at home.I don’t take orbs in photos too seriously, as there are many explanations for them, but sometimes orbs can indeed represent something more.I decided that something might have followed me home from my visit to Bachelor’s Grove.I had invited something in.So I thought it was time to purge any potential negative presence.
The ultimate protection from any possible entity is to have a connection with a higher spiritual source, depending on our belief system…our concept of God or a Higher Self.As living human beings, we are all mighty spiritual beings, stronger then an entity that we might encounter.But if we don’t realize this, then we can be victimized by an entity.Spiritual power is useless if we are passive and don’t understand our potential.On top of our own inner strength, we can call on a Higher Power, which is superior to our own efforts alone.We must truly believe in this Higher Power, but if we have this belief, we can banish any threat.Which was what I did.Afterwards, my bad luck also disappeared.I learned a lesson…maybe reading cards on a gravestone is not such a good idea.
Vampires exist. Of course this reality is based on how we define “vampire”. The vampire of fiction, a walking, blood-sucking sexy corpse, is not real. However the vampire of folklore actually did exist, if only in people’s beliefs. People actually believed in them enough to act on that belief. In past centuries villagers would go through the trouble to dig up a grave, sometimes entire graveyards, exhuming the buried in search of corpses that did not decay properly. When such a corpse was found, it was killed a second time to make sure it was dead. It could be staked to keep it “down”, or it would be cremated by fire. The goal was to make sure the dead stayed dead. It was believed that the dead could truly be undead.
The source of this superstition seems to have emerged from people’s lack of understanding concerning the process of decay. There are factors that can slow down decomposition. Temperature, soil conditions, lack of oxygen in a grave and so forth. In the past people were not familiar with such things and if they encountered a grave where a corpse had not decayed but looked “fresh”, they logically assumed it was somehow still “alive” in some fashion and called it a vampire. The best look at the source of this folklore would be Paul Barber’s book “Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality”. He explores the causes behind the vampire folklore. It is the definitive word on the topic and highly recommended for anyone interested in the topic.
I like cemeteries…old cemeteries, not modern ones. Modern cemeteries are sad and sterile places. They serve their purpose, but they are not a place to visit outside of paying our respects to the deceased. However, old cemeteries can be interesting places to visit, trying to find the oldest tombstone at a site. Some people like to make paper rubbings of old or exceptional tombstones. There is artistry in the stones and statuary found in older graveyards. Some cemeteries really are places to visit just for site seeing. 
In a previous post I wrote about a visit to the abandoned cemetery Bachelor’s Grove, joined by some other ghost enthusiasts. I did a tarot card reading on a tombstone, attempting to communicate with any entities in the infamous graveyard. Not really a good idea. Afterwards I experienced a bout of bad luck, and I alluded to the idea that something might have followed me home.
It was really overgrown when I visited it. We all had our cameras ready, our recording devices on.
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