156. Bachelor's Grove Cemetery

0:06 As you step through the wrought iron gates, the unlubricated hinges squeaking from years of neglect, you feel a chill wind gently kiss your cheeks. Toppled headstones litter to the ground in higher numbers than the standing monuments you bend over to check one out. There's a crispness in the air that seems somewhat familiar but unplaceable. You look up as a blue light streaks past you. You track it, turning your body to follow in its direction, losing sight of it. As you turn, you see a young woman walking with a baby amongst the graves, desperately searching for something. As you stare, you hear a growl from behind. You whirl around and through some bushes. You think you see a large black dog retreating. The only thing you can be sure of seeing are a pair of bright red, infernal eyes.

0:54 You turn tail and see a house in the distance. You Sprint in that direction. Somehow it never seems to get closer. Suddenly you hear a loud spinning in place, nearly falling over. You come face to face with a haggard 1 armed man. He growls, pointing a Lantern in a direction. You stammer out an apology and turn back around. The house is gone. You're in Bachelor's Grove Cemetery and coincidentally here with us. Welcome back. For everyone else.

2:31 Situated about 20 miles southwest of Chicago, known by many names such as Bachelor, Batch Elder, Berzel Petzel, Bachelor and Batchel Bachelors, Grove Cemetery sits on one acre of land among several strands of timber named for the families that settled them. The Batch Elder family so there in 1845 and is commonly referred to as the origin of the name. However, there are some conflicting stories. According to Stephen H Rexford, who settled there between 1933 and 1934, the Grove was named after four bachelors who had also settled there. This is backed up by Ferdinand Shapers. Manuscript from 1917.

3:13 The Grove sits across from the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve and contains a pond, cemetery and walking trails, all open and available to use of the public. Legend has it that mobsters in the 30s dumped bodies here. There is also a bunker that can be explored if you know where to find it. A guide to its location can be found on the YouTube channel Grim Life Collective. The first recorded burial was William B. Nobles in 1838, and the last person buried here was Robert E Shields in 1989. In that time, the graveyard has undergone several phases of popularity as sort of a lover's lane, and in the 60s and 70s talk of satanic rituals taking place here permeated the surrounding area. What was left behind from that period were several records of grave robbing and tomb opening.

4:01 The paranormal stories for the place really took off in the 1950s and were comprehensively compiled by P Crapia, founder of the Bachelors Grove Cemetery and Settlement Research Center. The first of our legends is the blue light. The Midlothian Turnpike, which is now close to vehicle traffic, is a road that moves alongside the cemetery. Along this road and among the headstones, a blue light the size of a basketball can be seen moving about rapidly blinking in and out every 10 to 20 seconds. The first report of this dates back to 1963, when three boys became lost in the property and spent several weeks in the woods.

4:44 On their recovery. All they could talk about was a blue light they had seen in the fall of that year. It chased 5 men as they drove in their car until they crashed into a corn field and stalled. The light hovered over there now deceased vehicle, eventually drifting off. The sightings of the light, however, did not pick up in popularity until the 70s when Jack Hermansky reported seeing it. Several more stories came to light in this period, eventually fading into obscurity until the year 2000, when a woman named Brittany and her friend walking in the cemetery encountered it, followed by a man who saw it as he drove over a bridge heading east on 140 3rd St. What we do know about this light is that it never has direct contact with people, and if you approach it, it will vanish and reappear behind you. Its behavior seems to be intelligent and is one of the most common phenomena seen on the property. Madonna of the Bachelor's Grove, AKA White Lady. A photo in 1979 shows a hooded figure holding a baby standing alongside a fence.

6:08 However, it wouldn't be until 1982 that the legend would be born. According to the legend, a woman in white walks among the headstones while holding a baby, appearing to be desperately searching for something. Another photo would be captured in 1991 by Jude Felts of the woman sitting on a headstone. Locals refer to her as Missus Rogers as there is a gravestone for Luella Rodgers and Daniel Rodgers. Right next to them is a small headstone labeled Infant Daughter. Records indicate though that this is a headstone to replace Emma Fulton's which went missing. However, this headstone was misplaced on the West side when it should have been placed on the east.

7:02 Our third tale is of the phantom dog. A large black dog with glowing red eyes is said to roam the cemetery, scaring people who are there exploring the property. The first known sighting was in the 1980s, when two men began investigating some lights they saw flickering. At one point they turned about and that's when they saw the dog fading into nothing. After that, reports of a large black dog hanging around near the entrance to the road that vanishes when it's approached became to come in. On occasion it's even said that the dog will approach people but will never make physical contact, disappearing before it's even possible to touch it. Another popular tale here is the farmer and the horse. This phenomenon was first reported in 1982 during an NBCJ broadcast.

8:08 As the story goes, in 1870, a farmer was out plowing his field one night when something spooked his horse. It took off at breakneck speed, eventually crashing into the pond, drowning boat. A sighting was reported by two Cook County Forest Preserve Rangers in the 70s, which people say corroborates the existence of the spirit. However, other people say that it's not even possible as the quarry didn't exist until 1900, so there's no possible way for the pond to have even been there. In the 1st place Caretaker, located to the West of the roped off main entrance to the cemetery stood a house.

9:02 Legend states that the caretaker of the cemetery lived inside the house with his family. On one cold night he went crazy and walked through the house, killing every single one of them, then ending with himself. Sort of sounds like Amityville. Stories of encountering this ghostly apparition are common and vary between him carrying a shotgun or an oil Lantern. The earliest tale state that he will merely tell you to leave the property. The most notable story is of two college kids hanging out at Bachelor's Grove as they moved about the property. They eventually bump into an old man who tells them to leave. They tell him they are there to see the blue lights and the legendary disappearing house.

9:46 The man tells them that the blue lights aren't real, but the house is. It was his and they should definitely go see it. As they walk, the man is behind them when suddenly the light goes out. They turn around and he's gone. Last but not least is the Grove's most popular legend. There is a house that people claim to see, but that it also seems to disappear as you approach it. It will appear to shrink into nothing. Other times it will be spotted in one place on an initial visit and be completely gone on the next. At a distance, it's reported to manifest as a two-story 1880s to 1890s vintage Victorian home.

10:32 Slight variances are reported between individuals, such as a light being on on the 2nd floor, having a porch swing, occasionally white pillars near the porch, or a small picket fence. Several homes once existed on the entirety of Bachelor's Grove, but were either bulldozed or control burned. There is a speculation that none of the homes ever actually existed near enough the cemetery to make sense of the sightings. However, a 1951 aerial photo shows that there could be a rectangular foundation in the area most commonly noted for sightings. Also, maps from 19 O One and Nineteen O 4 show four homes within the vicinity of the cemetery.

11:13 This is by far not the only legend of a disappearing house, though that has an accompanying spirit from around the world. One of the most famous of these tales is the common boogeyman story told the children of the Baba Yaga, a witch whose house stands on chicken legs that will take them if they wander too close. Now there are two other tales which don't track as closely as these other ones.

11:56 One is of the Yellow Hat Man. So the stories go that there will be red orbs, sort of like the blue light. And when following these orbs, suddenly you will see a man in a yellow suit and hat appear in front of you and then he'll just vanish. These stories are very few and mostly unsubstantiated. The claims are hazy at best. So I didn't really dedicate an entire section to this because it would have been three sentences long and honestly, not all that interesting. Now I didn't even bring it up during the episode. But there is a legend of the man with a hook hand, which is just like every other campfire tale that we've heard is ghost stories.

12:44 I the first time I heard that story, I was a kid of those like four or five. My aunt told it to us around a campfire trying to scare us. She was successful and gave us all nightmares. But, but the idea is that if you park your car and you're there doing inappropriate things in public with a with another person, that there's this guy with a hook for a hand and he'll come mess your car up and scratch in potentially even cause physical harm to you. This story is so common in so many locations that it doesn't even bear weight. It just sounds like somebody took a story and applied it to a spot. You know people believe that there's enough ghost stories here, so thoughts on all the stories revolving around Bachelor's Grove. For those of us interested in the paranormal, this place is an extremely interesting aspect of study. A number of the stories are believable when it comes to the lore of hauntings, some of it less so. So the woman in white is one that I really like to focus on. So there's this idea that she's holding a baby, and it looks like she's searching for the baby's grave to put it back. There is the fact, though, that the child that she's holding might not be hers at all, as the

14:17 infant daughter's headstone was placed incorrectly after it was stolen. See the The cemetery itself has been vandalized on numerous occasions, especially back during the Satanic Panic and when teenagers were frequently in the place as a lover's lane. So they tried to replace this headstone. And it's my personal opinion that it's not her baby that she's holding. I think what she's looking for is the correct grave. Like she's trying to return the baby to the right spot to it's rightful parents and she's sort of in this indefinite search for that spot. The other one that I like is the black dog story. It really kind of clicks home with a lot of black dog lore, you know, things like the Black Shuck and Hell Hounds and things like that.

15:18 It follows that pretty well. The other thing that doesn't really track with me, honestly, is the most popular legend, the disappearing house. Given how hauntings themselves go, if we were to see a haunting where it's just a repeat on replay of an incident, it wouldn't be like the house disappearing. You would be able to find the house and you would be able to witness the spirits inside going through whatever horrendous scene took place. You wouldn't be able to see it and like try to get to it. It was just really, it's not really how those sort of hauntings work, but it does kind of correspond with legends throughout the world of various disappearing houses.

16:09 And you know, I did see a lot of them for like Eastern Lauren mythology when it comes to haunting and and as well as in places like England. So I don't know, it doesn't really track with me just because of what I know of how hauntings are and how they're supposed to work. But maybe the other one that I do like though is the caretaker that that sort of ghost who has this unfinished business, you could say, where he's protecting the cemetery and watching over and chasing vandals out. Now that sort of does track with how certain hauntings work. There's specifically an intelligent haunting where the specter is able to interact and converse and respond to individuals in a conscious manner. So at the end of the day, the ghost stories I would say I would believe and would expect to see if I were to visit there would be like the blue orb, the black dog, the lady in white and the caretaker.

17:24 I don't know if I would really put too much weight behind the other ones, especially like the one with the farmer who fell into the pond that didn't exist at the time the farmer was there. I don't know how you could possibly fall and drown into a pond that hasn't been dug yet, but you know, if you ever go fishing there, which you are allowed to do, if you ever pull up a horse and bug in some bones of a farmer, you know, definitely reach out to us and let us know. I'd definitely be interested in hearing about that. But as as far as that goes and everything, that's that's really where we're at with Bachelors Grove Cemetery. If you guys like this and you'd like to hear more paranormal sort of things here on the Infinite Rabbit Hole, please reach out to us at infiniterabbithole@gmail.com and let us know.

18:18 It's something that I'm personally very interested in and would love to provide more content on for you. And I know the Infinite Rabbit Hole itself hasn't really done paranormal before, but if I could bring that to the table and give you guys something to listen to, I'd really enjoy doing that for you. Again, this is CJ and I'm really proud and happy to be back and part of this project again. So special thanks to Jeremy for letting me do that. Even though I have quit less times than Jake, I am in a close second place. That's everything. Thanks and have a great night. I would like to thank you once again for tuning into the Infinite Rabbit Hole podcast.

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