Resurrection Cemetery
Drivers along Archer Avenue have reported strange encounters with a young woman in a white dress. She always appears to be real, until she inexplicably vanishes. The reports of this girl began in the middle 1930’s and started when motorists passing by Resurrection Cemetery began claiming that a young woman was attempting to jump onto the running boards of their automobiles.
The strange encounters began to move further away from the graveyard and closer to the O Henry Ballroom, which is now known as the Willowbrook. She was reported on the nearby roadway and sometimes, inside of the ballroom itself. On many occasions, young men would meet a girl at the ballroom, dance with her and then offer her a ride home at the end of the evening. She would always accept and offer vague directions that would lead north on Archer Avenue. When the car would reach the gates of Resurrection Cemetery, the young woman would always vanish.
Motorists would see the girl walking along the road. They would offer her a ride and then witness her vanishing from their car. These drivers could describe the girl in detail and nearly every single description precisely matched the previous accounts. The girl was said to have light blond hair, blue eyes and was wearing a white party dress. Some more attentive drivers would sometimes add that she wore a thin shawl, or dancing shoes, and that she had a small clutch purse. Others claimed to actually run her down in the street. They claimed to see a woman in a white dress bolt in front of their car near the cemetery and would describe the sickening thud as she was struck by the front of the car. When they stopped to go to her aid, she would be gone. Some even said that the automobile passed directly through the girl. At that point, she would turn and disappear through the cemetery gates.
A young girl who was killed while hitchhiking down Archer Avenue in the early 1930’s. Apparently, she had spent the evening dancing with a boyfriend at the O Henry Ballroom. At some point, they got into an argument and Mary stormed out of the place. She left the ballroom and started walking up Archer Avenue. She had not gotten very far when she was struck and killed by a passing automobile. The driver fled the scene and Mary was left there to die. Her grieving parents buried her in Resurrection Cemetery, wearing a white dress and her dancing shoes. Since that time, her spirit has been seen along Archer Avenue, perhaps trying to return to her grave after one last night among the living.
One of the first people to ever meet her face to face was a young man named Jerry Palus. His experience with Mary took place in 1939. Palus appeared on a number of television shows to discuss his night with Resurrection Mary. He met the young girl at the Liberty Grove and Hall, a dance hall that was near 47th Street and Mozart. He had apparently seen her there on several occasions and finally asked her to dance one night. She accepted and they spent several hours together. Palus noticed that her skin was very cold, almost icy to the touch. When he later kissed her, he found her lips were also cold and clammy. The young woman asked Palus for a ride home and she gave him an address and then directed him down Archer Avenue. As they approached the gates to the Resurrection Cemetery, she asked him to pull over. She had to get out here, she told him. The beautiful girl then turned in her seat and faced Palus. "This is where I have to get out," she spoke softly, "but where I’m going, you can’t follow."
The girl got out of the car and ran toward the cemetery gates. She vanished before she reached them, right before Jerry’s eyes. Palus visited the address the girl had given him on the following day. The woman who answered the door told him that he couldn’t have possibly been with her daughter the night before because she had been dead for several years. Palus was able to correctly identify the girl from a family portrait in the other room.
Since that time, dozens of other young men have told of picking up the same girl, or meeting her at the ballroom, only to have her disappear from their car. The majority of the reports seem to come from the cold winter months, like the account passed on by a cab driver. He picked up a girl who was walking along Archer Avenue one night in 1941. She jumped into the cab and told him that she needed to get home very quickly. She directed him along Archer Avenue and a few minutes later, he looked back and she was gone. He realized that he was passing in front of the cemetery when she disappeared.
A driver was passing by the cemetery around 10:30 on August 10, 1976 when he happened to see a girl standing on the other side of the gates. He said that when he saw her, she was wearing a white dress and grasping the iron bars of the gate. The driver was considerate enough to stop down the street at the Justice police station and alert them to the fact that someone had been accidentally locked in the cemetery at closing time. An officer responded to the call but when he arrived there was no one there. The graveyard was dark and deserted and there was no sign of any girl. He found that two of the bars in the gate had been pulled apart and bent at sharp angles. At the points on the green-colored bronze where they had been pried apart were blackened scorch marks. Within these marks was what looked to be skin texture and handprints that had been seared into the metal with incredible heat. The marks of the small hands made big news and curiosity-seekers came from all over the area to see them.
The cemetery emphatically denied the supernatural version of what happened to the bars. They claimed that a truck backed into the gates while doing sewer work at the cemetery and that grounds workers tried to fix the bars by heating them with a blowtorch and bending them. The imprint in the metal, they said, was from a workman trying to push them together again. While this explanation was quite convenient, it did not explain why the marks of small fingers were clearly visible in the metal. The bars were removed to discourage onlookers, but taking them out had the opposite effect and soon, people began asking what the cemetery had to hide. Once they were returned to the gate, they were straightened and painted over with green paint so that the blackened area would match the other bars. The scorched areas continued to defy all attempts to cover them and the twisted spots where the handprints had been impressed remained obvious until just recently, when the bars were removed for good.
During the 1970’s and 1980’s, Mary sightings reached their peak. People from many different walks of life, from cab drivers to ministers said they had picked her up and had given her rides. Mary was struck by passing cars. Drivers started reporting a young girl in white who ran out in front of their automobile. Occasionally, the girl would vanish when she collided with the car and at other times, would crumple and fall to the road as if seriously injured. When the motorist stopped and went to help the girl, she would disappear.
In May 1978, a young couple was driving down Archer when a girl suddenly darted out in the road in front of their car. As they braced for impact, the car passed right through the girl. She then turned and ran into Resurrection Cemetery, melting right past the bars in the gate. Another man was on his way to work in the early morning hours and spotted the body of a young girl lying directly in front of the cemetery gates. He stopped his truck and got out, quickly discovering that the woman was apparently badly injured, but still alive. He jumped into his truck and sped to the nearby police station, where he summoned an ambulance and then hurried back to the cemetery. When he came back, he found that the body was gone. However the outline of her body was still visible on the dew-covered pavement.
On the last weekend in August 1980, Mary was seen by dozens of people, including the Deacon of the Greek Church on Archer Avenue. Many of witnesses contacted the Justice police department about their sightings. Squad cars were dispatched but she was not present when they arrived. Many of the roadside encounters happened near a place called Chet’s Melody Lounge, which is located across the road and a little south of the cemetery gates. A number of shaken drivers have stumbled into the bar after their strange encounters, as did a cab driver in 1973. He claimed that his fare, a young woman, jumped out of the back seat of his cab without paying. She ran off and he came into Chet’s because it was the closest place that she could have gone to. He told the bartender that she was an attractive blond and that she had skipped out on her fare, but staff members told him that no young woman had come in.
Another bizarre encounter took place in the summer of 1996 when the owner of the lounge, the late Chet Prusinski, was leaving the bar at around four in the morning. A man came running inside and told Chet that he needed to use the telephone. He excitedly explained that he had just run over a girl on Archer and now he couldn’t find her body. Chet was skeptical about the man’s story until a truck driver came in and confirmed the whole thing. He had also seen the girl but stated that she had vanished, "like a ghost". The police came to investigate but they found no trace of her.
Take I-294 to 95th Street. Follow 95th Street west to Roberts Road. Take Roberts Road north to Archer Avenue. Resurrection Cemetery, 7600 South Archer Avenue, Justice, IL 60458. Phone: 312-767-4644.
She was seen once in Chet's Melody Lounge across Archer from the cemetery. Mary has been picked up for hitch hiking by the justice police. The police tried to arrest a girl for hitching and put her in the back of the squad car. When the officer got to the station he looked in the back and she was gone.

A witness who saw Ressurrection Mary
Gaill Evans-Drish
Wed, 30 Dec 1998 07:07:45 -0600
It was the end of October and my friend was driving. I saw a movement to my right. I looked and saw Mary floating along with the car. This only lasted a few seconds.