When I got into my early teen years my buddies and I would drive out the Midlothian Turnpike a couple weekend nights in the fall to a then quite rural and isolated cemetery called Bachelor's Grove.  It was a very old cemetery, with some graves dating to the early 1800s and the earliest Illinois settlers but, by the early 1960s it was pretty much no longer an active burial ground.                        

  Click on the yellow highlighted link above for history
 of   the cemetery and the supernatural phenomenon
  that people have supposedly seen there. 

Click on the blue highlighted link below for some specific
supernatural occurrences that supposedly happened there.

     Bachelor's Grove was as spooky a place as you could imagine in the late 50s and early 60s, even on a bright summer afternoon.  However at night, particularly on Halloween night, with the heavy growth of tall trees, thick underbrush, dark shimmering pond at the edge of it, often covered in a bit of fog, it felt downright sinister!    

     Even then it was well known for being "haunted."  There were all sorts of rumors and urban legends of mysterious lights, unearthly happenings, strange disappearances, apparitions, animal mutilations, etc. in and around the cemetery.  Most were so outlandishly ridiculous that they were laughable.  However, sitting there in the cemetery next to a mid-19th Century tombstone in the black of a chilly October night, you could imagine almost anything lurking, moving, creeping around out there in the dark!

     One of the guys was a couple years older than the rest of us.  He already had his driver's license and had gotten himself an old car.  That made him the dedicated chauffeur and he would drive the rest of us in his "junker" on our forays out there to test our bravery.  Back then, access to the cemetery was not particularly restricted though the Cook County Sheriff's Police came by occasionally to make sure visitors were behaving.

     In the 50's you could still drive a car down the access road right to the cemetery.  However, by the early 1960's, there was usually a heavy chain or cable across the road.  We would park along the Midlothian Turnpike at the blocked-off and somewhat overgrown access road and walk the quarter mile or so to the graveyard; all in order to prove our "courage" (no flashlights or candles were allowed). 

The picture above right, borrowed from another website, shows what the path from the Midlothian Turnpike to Bachelor's Grove cemetery looked like in the late 90s.  When we used to go there in the early-mid 1960s, it was a bit less overgrown but still had a lot of trees and brush right up to the pathway.

     As darkness overtook the cemetery, we would sit among the old headstones and tell scary stories.  Eventually, someone would jump up and run for the car.  Then, in unison, the rest of us would follow him back down the access road to the car, laughing and hollering all the way.  We'd jump in the car (praying it would start) and head for the local Dog 'n Suds drive-in for a hot dog or char-broiled hamburger and the best darn root beer you ever tasted (in my humble opinion).     

At right is the mug from the first Dog 'n Suds Root served by my favorite car hop - I kept it all these years (see subsequent pages for the explanation as to why!)