Halloween is a holiday dedicated to the spooky, the creepy, and the unexplained. It is a day best spent telling ghost stories… and every town has their own. The following are some spooky haunted stories of the LT area. 

Resurrection Mary: The story begins in the late 192’s, a time when ballroom dancing was all the rage. People would spend their weekends all dressed up, waltzing and twirling around ballrooms. One stormy night, a young girl named Mary went dancing with her boyfriend at the Oh Henry Ballroom (now known as the  Willowbrook Ballroom) located at 8900 Archer Ave., Willow Springs. Their magical night of dancing ended in an argument, and Mary left, deciding to walk home, rain soaking her white dress. However ,she was tragically killed in a hit-and-run car accident. She was buried in the Resurrection Cemetery near the ballroom, but legend says that her spirit lived on.  After her death, numerous stories arose of men leaving the ballroom to give a ride home to a woman in a white dress. She would sit in the passenger seat of their cars, and give directions to her home. Every time though, as they drove past the Resurrection cemetery, the woman would vanish into thin air. At one moment she was in the car, and the next she was gone, as if she never existed in the first place. One night, a driver was heading down Archer Avenue, the street that the ballroom was on. His car was the only one on the otherwise empty road. Suddenly, a woman in a white dress appeared in front of the vehicle. There was not enough time to stop, and the driver ran into the woman. There was no impact, not even a sound. The driver got out of the car to look for the woman, but she was gone. She had vanished into thin air. In 2016 the Willowbrook Ballroom burned down, leaving just ashes in place of the beautiful historical building. Despite this fire, Resurrection Mary’s ghost lived on, still roaming the area between the cemetery and ballroom, haunting cars who drove past her. Source: Windy City Ghosts website

The Italian Bride: Six years after a casket is buried, the body inside will be reduced to simply bones, just a skeleton. This should be true for all corpses, but a woman named Julia Buccola Petta defied these odds. In 1921 Julia passed away during childbirth, and her newborn child passed away as well. They were buried in the same coffin in the Mount Carmel Cemetery located at 1400 S. Wolf Rd., Hillside. Although her daughter was laid to rest, Julia’s mother Filomena Buccola was restless. Every night she would have nightmares in which her daughter would go to her, and tell her mother that she wasn’t dead, that she needed help. Filomena trusted her maternal instincts, and simply knew that something wasn’t right with her daughter. She attempted to have Julia’s grave removed from the ground, and after some argument and struggle, received an order for the exhumation. Upon removal it was clear that Filomena’s instincts were correct, something mysterious was occurring to Julia. Her body had not decayed. Julia hadn’t become a skeleton, she looked just the same, and her skin was just as soft as the day that she died. The coffin she was buried in, as well as the body of her child had decayed, but Julia’s body was still in lifelike condition. After this, Julia became known as “The Italian Bride”. The story of her life, or rather her death, is famously inexplicable. Although her body has once again been buried after the exhumation, her spirit may not have been. There have been numerous reports of a ghostly figure in a white dress (similar to the one Julia was buried in), that roams the edges of the cemetery, haunting it. Source

Whether you are a dedicated believer, or a skeptic, there are some ghost stories that are just impossible to deny.