CASE No.7| THE SAG : Ghosts of a Vanished World
Down one of the world’s most haunted roads lie the few physical reminders of the lost village of Sag Bridge, where only the ghosts remain to tell its haunting tale.
Transcript of podcast narration:
Just southwest of Chicago, past the bend at Harlem Avenue, a street leaves the city to run through the outlying industrial towns of Bedford Park and Summit to villages further south and, ultimately, to the heavily forested Palos division of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County. It is an old road, originally an Indian trail with its origins on the shore of Lake Michigan, in Chicago’s present-day Chinatown. The road takes its name from one of the most important events in American history and runs, too, through the imaginations of many, both skeptics and believers, for there is a magic along its path which generations have longed to hold—or tried to dispel. It’s a highway populated with ghost lights and vanishing hitchhikers--and a road flooded with the tears of laborers, murder victims and the countless mourners who have carried their dead to the seven cemeteries which flank it. That old road, built up by Irish workers on the Illinois and Michigan Canal in the 1830s and '40s, has established itself as no less than the magnetic center of Chicago's supernatural forces and is known today as one of the most haunted roads on Earth.
That road is Archer Avenue.
Ghostlorist Michael Kleen and I both (great minds!) coined the term “The Archer Avenue Triangle” to describe the area bounded by Archer on the hypotenuse side and with Kean Avenue forming the right angles of this ethereal region. For over a century and a half, strange tales have been told of this part of the Chicago Southland—tales including haunted houses, disembodied voices and music, phantom cars, and no less than Chicago’s most famous ghost: the wayfaring spirit known as “Resurrection Mary.” This haunted land ranks rightfully high on the bucket lists of ghost hunters the world over. The things they come to find never disappoint.
AN OCCURRENCE AT SAG BRIDGE
The anchor of Archer Avenue’s preternatural notoriety is a wildly sloping churchyard in south suburban Lemont. The oldest established cemetery in the county, its acreage seems to mark the southern end of the “haunted" portion of Archer Avenue, just north of the old Sag Quarries, where the Cal-Sag Channel and the Des Plaines River rendezvous.
Like Archer Avenue itself, the parish and its cemetery date to the early 1800s, when Irish canal builders, most of them from the town of Bridgeport (now part of Chicago), put down this road along the route of the Illinois and Michigan Canal under the direction of Colonel William B. Archer. Construction of the canal, financially cursed from the outset, resulted in frequent periods of unemployment for the would-be workers, who often labored under slave-like conditions of thirst and hunger, disease, infighting and death. Nonetheless, they built the road, and they built the canal. Many of them moved southwest of the city, to live and die along their Archer Avenue and ultimately to be buried in the bluffside burial ground that grew up there: a churchyard called St. James of Sag Bridge, or simply “St. James Sag.”
Sag Bridge is a vanished village now. Only its church and graveyard remain. Though many believed the town would grow into a major center of commerce and industry, that distinction would go, instead to Chicago, the bustling settlement at Fort Dearborn, at the mouth of the Chicago river.
Legends abound regarding the sacred nature of this site, which was reportedly a French signal fort in the days of French exploration of the American interior, a site where Marquette and Joliet stopped on their travels and Pere Marquette celebrated Mass. An earlier Catholic church stood here in those days, replaced later by the current limestone structure, the cornerstone of which was laid in 1853 and which took local men six years to complete. Workers hauled limestone from the Sag Quarries south of the site to build the structure. Legend says that, during the building of the I&M Canal, poor canal diggers who died without funds for a proper burial were cremated, with their ashes scattered over these quarries. Tradition has long told that an Indian burial ground preceded the European burial ground here—another possibility often brought to explain the site’s impressive host of hauntings.
Supernatural events have been reported at St. James-Sag since at least 1847, when phantom monks were first seen gliding up this bluff along Archer near its intersection with the Sanitary and Ship Canal, the Illinois and Michigan Canal, the Des Plaines River and the Cal-Sag Channel. One hundred and thirty years later, in November 1977, a Cook County sheriff was passing the grounds late one night and reportedly saw eight hooded figures floating from the adjacent woods towards the rectory. As he pursued what he assumed to be pranksters, the figures moved towards the top of the hill and vanished. The sighting of these phantom friars long ago earned the church’s social hall—with its earlier, castellated roof-- the name of “Monk’s Castle” in local lore, though no record exists of brothers ever living here.
The priests who have made their home at this sacred site, however, have had their own stories to tell. An early pastor, Fr. James Bollman, claimed to regularly witness the cemetery ground rising and falling as if the entire landscape were one great body of water—or as if the earth were breathing. Additionally, the unmistakable sound of Gregorian chant has been heard in the vicinity, and a ghost light has been reported, bobbing among the tombstones.
While buried in microfilm at the Chicago Public Library one day in 1996, I came upon the bizarre experience of two young Chicago musicians which was detailed in both the Chicago Tribune and the local Lemont Observer of September 30, 1897.
St. James's pastor had decided to hold a fundraising fair at the church. In order to attract the younger parishioners, Fr. Bollman hired two Chicago musicians, William Looney and John Kelly, to provide harp and flute music. After the affair, exhausted from the long night of playing to a good crowd, the two musicians decided to bed down in the upper floor of the church’s parish hall, Saginaw Hall (which was at the time a frame building located at the west end of the parking lot on the parish grounds), rather than risk the late drive back to the city. Settling in on bedrolls sometime after one o'clock in the morning, the two looked forward to a sound sleep. For Looney, however, sleep wouldn't come.
The chilly night and the bright moonlight kept the musician tossing and turning until he was alerted to a commotion outside: the unmistakable galloping and rumbling of a horse and carriage. Curious about the frantic nature of the sound, Looney ran to the window to observe the scene. But although the sound from the road continued with increasing strength, no horse or carriage could be seen. Perplexed and quite shaken, Looney awakened his friend and told him of the incident. As he told his tale, the sound began again, growing in strength as before. This time, both men stood at the window, searching the landscape for a sign of the carriage. What they finally saw was something quite unexpected. In the middle of the road stood a tall, young woman in white. Her hands were raised and moving above her head of tangled dark hair. The two men would later comment that she seemed filled with despair.
Sensing something amiss, the men were on the verge of calling out to her when, to their shock, she floated through the cemetery fence and began wandering around the tombstones. Soon, the sound of the carriage began again. At last the sound produced a visual counterpart, as the musicians watched the approach of galloping horses which were, in their words
snow white and covered with fine netting. A light of electric brilliance shone from the forehead of each." The animals preceded a "carriage ... a dark vehicle of solemn outline. No driver could be seen." As the transport approached the dance hall, the woman returned to the road. Then, as the carriage whipped past her, a shadow enveloped her and "she began sinking into the center ... until she was swallowed up .... [i]
Silenced by the spectacle, Looney and Kelly froze as the sound of the horses returned yet again, and the woman reappeared. Finally, when the horses and carriage materialized for the second time, the woman called, "Come on," waved her hand once more, and "disappeared into the ground." [ii] Badly shaken, the two men left their window post for their cots, where they waited in fear through the night. In the morning, they took their story to the local police.
In response to their testimonies, Marshall Coen of the Sanitary Police admitted that both of the witnesses
obviously saw something which . . . impressed them greatly. I do not believe there is anything of a practical joke in the affair. That would be dangerous in this locality. Everyone out here carries weapons since the rough characters have been brought in for the building of the canal would be tempting death to try such a thing, for any person so foolish would be likely to receive a bullet. Both men are sober fellows. There was no liquor at the dance. I believe these boys are telling the truth. [iii]
Some legends maintain that the haunting scene witnessed by Looney and Kelly in 1897 was the result of an elopement attempt gone awry. According to lore, a young priest came to St. James in the 1880s to serve as an assistant to the pastor and shortly won the affections of one of the pastor's housekeepers. Unable to fight their feelings for one another, the couple decided to run away and be married. Late one night, the young man hitched up the team of horses and advised his fiancée to await him halfway down the hill. As the young man stepped down to help her board the carriage, however, the animals suddenly bolted. Tragically, the carriage overturned on top of the couple. They were both crushed by the weight and buried together on an unmarked plot at St. James Sag. Those who believe in this tale and the ensuing haunting assume that the couple was forever doomed to re-enact their elopement as punishment for the young priest’s abandonment of his priesthood.
The late, great Chicago historian Kenan Heise documented the supernaturality of a phantom hearse carriage in his book, Resurrection Mary: A Ghost Story, and wrote about the ongoing sightings of a phantom hearse carriage along Archer near St. James, even in the 1970s. He writes: "The terror of the hearse rips a hole in the frightened soul of anyone who has ever encountered it,”[iv] and recounts that residents of the region still claim to see it, along Archer Avenue between Resurrection and St. James Sag Cemeteries, a stretch where one may leave the road and wander through the trees to the old Archer Woods burial ground on Kean Avenue. According to descriptions given to Heise by locals, the vehicle is built of black oak and glass through which the unsuspecting viewer might glimpse its ghastly cargo: the luminous casket of a child. Driverless, its horses hurl the carriage through the darkness “with the panting of creatures trying to escape hell itself.”[v]
The thrilling stories of St. James Sag have made it a natural attraction for local teenagers, who have flocked to the site for generations under cover of darkness, hoping for a glimpse of the phantom monks and other wraiths said to be seen here. Locals tell that these late-night expeditions became so bothersome at one point that priests serving at the parish took to dressing up in robes to chase the encroachers away. Trespassers were forced to kneel on broom handles, salt or stones for hours in penance for their offense.
AN UNCANNY UNEARTHING
Another Mr. Kelly was at the center of supernatural shenanigans at the Sag in 1897, when the skeletons of Indians were unearthed on the land of the Kelly brothers, just North of St. James Church, on the bluff inside present day Red Gate Woods. A total of four skeletons were found, with only the skulls in a state of decent preservation, along with flint spearheads, mortars and grinding stones for grinding corn and shells which were believed to have been used for money. When the discovery went public the following week, Kelly made an extraordinary announcement to the press. He said that nine years earlier, he had discovered a similar skeleton on his property and took it to his house, wanting to preserve it. In the days that followed, strange things happened on his farm, including sounds of “such a weird, uncanny character as to arouse the …. fears of the family, who …. connected them with the grim skeleton.”[vi] Kelly decided to put the skeleton back where he had found it, and after doing so no more activity was experienced.
After Kelly’s second excavation, however, anthropologists from Chicago’s Field Columbian Museum (today’s Field Museum of Natural History) swept in to take over, and the skeletons ended up in the permanent collections of the museum, presumably raising a ruckus there—which may still be part of the many hauntings of the place today.
STONE COLD HAUNTED
The limestone quarries of the Sag Bridge area and other parts of the Southland are so closely connected to Chicago’s history that it’s hard to tell the city’s tale without telling the story of our buttery yellow stones—and impossible to tell our collective ghost stories without delving into these now water-filled depths.
In the nineteenth century, when Chicago was burgeoning, no stone was more appealing than our local limestone. Hailing from the region just southwest of the city, beginning near Sag Bridge, “Lemont limestone” and “Joliet limestone” from the area a bit further south, became some of the most desirable building material in Illinois, its soft hue and appearance joined with a stability that made the stone irresistible to many builders in Chicago, including architects who designed some of Chicago’s most recognizable—and haunted—19th century structures.
The presence of limestone at any ostensibly haunted site sends up the antennae of most modern paranormal researchers who seem to be constantly looking for limestone as a culprit in reports of the paranormal, believing that its presence can ‘explain’ everything from apparitions to footsteps and cold spots. Limestone is believed to influence the electromagnetic field, “holding onto” energy from the past. This theory is known as the Stone Tape Theory (from the 1970s-era British film, “The Stone Tape”), and according to believers in it, the Stone Tape phenomenon can include ghost lights and cold spots, visual, audio and even olfactory apparitions, and more. Indeed, visitors to quarries and to buildings made of limestone often report euphoric feelings, physical illness such as disorientation, malaise, gastrointestinal issues, hallucinations and other symptoms which can be the result of high EM levels.
In Chicago, many of our limestone buildings are reputedly haunted, with good ghost stories to go with them—some of which you will read about in this book—including Holy Name Cathedral, the gate of Rosehill Cemetery, and that mysterious church we’ve already seen on the bluff at Sag Bridge. Doubtless, the most iconic of Chicago’s Lemont limestone structures is the Chicago Water Tower, enduring (and haunted) emblem of the city and, indeed, one of the only structures to survive the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. However, Chicago’s limestone has an additional ingredient beyond any natural ability to encourage the ghostly activity. And that story starts, like many of Chicago’s stories, along the building route of the Illinois & Michigan Canal.
The I&M Canal remains one of the most significant engineering projects in American history, as it effectively opened the portage that had existed between the Great Lakes (Lake Michigan) and the Mississippi River (via the Illinois River), thereby clearing a water trade route between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico. Such a project had been envisioned as early as the 17th century, when Pere Marquette and Louis Joliet traveled through the Chicago Portage, with the latter remarking that the French could create a North American empire if the passage could be opened to allow for trading. It was Stephen Long, however, who in 1816 surveyed the portage to propose the actual endeavor. Two others, Nathaniel Pope and Ninian Edwards, supported the initiative, suggesting that the border of Illinois be moved north from the tip of Lake Michigan to allow the canal to be built entirely in one state: the future state of Illinois. Despite having an insufficient number of residents to apply for statehood, their proposal won Illinois just that.
Construction on the canal began in 1836, but the Panic of 1837 soon threw a wrench into the works and forced the canal commission to borrow money from East coast banks and even British investors.
As for the hard labor, it was performed primarily by Irish immigrants, most of whom had earlier worked to build the famed Erie Canal. The work conditions have gone down in Chicago legend. Canal workers, being already Irish and then manual laborers, were considered sub-human by many, adding insult to the physical injury of the deplorable conditions. Hunger, thirst, infighting and disease—much of it from the ill funding of the project—led to countless deaths along the canal building route, which trudged along the ancient Indian trail that later became known as Archer Avenue, after Colonel William B. Archer, the canal project commissioner. It was during the blasting of stubborn rock with dynamite during the canal building that workers found the rich deposits of Niagara Limestone which became such a Chicago hallmark.
According to Southwest Side legend, early immigrants without families to care for the remains of the dead canalers were cremated rather than buried. Those stories tell that their cremains were scattered over the stone quarries of Sag Bridge and Lemont, near the canal route that had taken their lives. I am uncertain about the truth of this, as St. James Sag was well known for giving free burials to anyone who could not afford them, and yet the legend remains. As does another.
A few years ago, I was delighted to come across an old copy of a cookbook for sale on Ebay. The book was called 125 Years in the Kitchen and was one of those parish cookbooks that churches often put together, with family recipes shared by parishoners. Unlike most of these kinds of books, which tend to be spiral bound, this was a hardbound book and also contained several sections throughout the book telling the story of the parish in words and old photographs. (It was here, in fact, that I discovered the origins of the nickname of “Monk’s Castle.” ) This was a great and happy surprise, to be sure, but this wasn’t the only revelation the book would hold. The history also told of the mammoth job of quarrying and transporting the limestone used for the building of the parish church. The stone was hulled from the Sag Quarries south of the church site, which today are filled with water and part of the Forest Preserve District of Cook County.
Fr. George Aschenbrender, pastor of St. James at the time of the cookbook’s publication, shared a tragic parish ghost story tied to the quarries, in particular the Minogue Quarry—the one which provided the stone for St. James Church:
Two close friends, Mrs. Flynn and Mrs. Minogue, were returning home from church late dark and starless night. After crossing the old bridge over the Cal-Sag Channel they wandered into the quarry area and were both drowned. One version of the story says their bodies were not found until some weeks later. Thereafter the quarry became known as the Minogue Quarry.[vii]
Whether the haunting of Chicago’s limestone structures can be connected to the quarries, the canalers or both is anyone’s guess today. There can be little doubt, however, that a foundation stone of Chicago was hulled from the mysterious quarries of the Sag—and the toil of the canalers who literally opened the way for a Chicago only dreamed of by those who traveled an earlier portage.
A TRAGIC TRANSPLANT
Before we leave the Sag, one other tale must be told—another truth I discovered in that old dear cookbook. For as I turned eagerly through the pages of history, I was astonished to discover these words:
Prior to 1970 the grounds, and particularly the entrance way to St. James were quite open. But serverasl years ago we were able to obtain the magnificent main gate of the Hawthorne Plant of Western Electric in Cicero, Illinois.
That plant was the place of work of the hundreds of men and women—and their families—who perished in the horrific Eastland Disaster of 1915 when the Eastland steamer tipped over the Chicago river just prior to its departure on Western Electric’s company picnic cruise. 844 souls—including 22 entire families—perished in the unspeakable tragedy. Today the ghosts of the Eastland Disaster are some of the most well known in Chicago’s supernatural history, but few know that some of that tragedy==and perhaps even some of its spirited residue—reside in this quiet churchyard on Archer Avenue.
ANGELS OF THE SAG?
I myself came face to face with the deeply spiritual nature of St. James Sag some years ago now when I was leading a bus full of ghost hunters on tour through a frigid, early December night. My cohost, the Chicago paranormal investigator Ed Shanahan, had arranged a tour of the church for us before our planned dinner at Chet’s Melody Lounge across from Resurrection Cemetery: a place tied in legend to the road’s vanishing hitchhiker.
But we’d had bus trouble since picking up our passengers in downtown Chicago. The transmission was failing, and we spoke to the driver with concern, as our transport was moving half the speed limit on the highway as we made our way down to the old Sag Bridge region. He told us he’d radioed for a replacement to be driven down to meet us. He’d switch buses with the new vehicle while we toured the church.
But we never made it. The bus stalled and stopped in the middle of the road, within a dark and winding stretch of Archer known as the stretch of death for the many deadly accidents along that part of it. Ed and I looked at one another. We both knew we were vulnerable to just such a fate, sitting there on that notorious roadway in the darkness of the winter night. We knew we needed to get off that bus.
Thankfully, we were just yards from the entrance to St. James churchyard, and so w3e carefully led our passengers across the dark road and began the climb up the hill to the church at the top of the bluff. While making that trek, we heard a huge sound behind us: a crash followed by an explosion. A car-going much too fast—had slammed into the back of our bus. We found out later that the vehicle had rolled over several times in the woods abutting the road, and that the driver had crawled out of the flames on his hands and knees. Our driver had crossed the road to call the bus company and had also, miraculously lived. Both the bus and the car were destroyed by flames.
Later, at dinner, our passengers passed around photographs taken of the accident scene we had somehow all escaped with our lives. One of them showed something truly inexplicable. Above the wreckeage of the bus, the blaze now extinghuished. An enormous ball of light seemed to hover in the air. It was, we all agreed, as if all of our guardian angels had joined together to ensure we were spared from disaster.
[i] “Spooks at Sag Bridge” Chicago Tribune September 20, 1897, p 5
[ii] Ibid
[iv] Kenan Heise quote about the hearse from Resurrection Mary, a ghost story
[v] Ibid.
[vi] Kelly found skeletons on land
[vii]125 Years in the Kitchen: History and Cookbook of Saint James Church at the Sag Lemont, Illinois , p. 153