Terrifying & True | Resurrection Mary: The True Story of Chicago’s Vanishing Hitchhiker Ghost | Uncovering Urban Legends - Weekly Spooky: Scary Stories for Halloween

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
For decades, drivers on a dark stretch of Chicago's Archer
Avenue have encountered the same eerie vision, a young woman
in white thumbing for a ride, only to vanish near
Resurrection Cemetery. Who is she or who was she? And

(00:24):
why won't her ghost let go?

Speaker 2 (00:28):
What you were about to be is bid to be
based on witness accounts, testimonies, and public record. This is
terrifying and treat.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
It begins with a lone figure on the roadside, pale
sign island and dressed in white. Dozens of witnesses have
seen her over the years, always on Archer Avenue, always
near Resurrection Cemetery. Some say she's a spirit of the past.

(01:19):
Others claim she's still looking for a way home. Tonight
we follow the trail of Resurrection Mary, Chicago's vanishing hitchhiker,
and the legends, the lives and the losses she may
have left behind. Make sure you're subscribed as we dive

(01:41):
deep into this campfire legend. After this, it's a moonless
night on Archer Avenue, a lonely stretch of road southwest

(02:04):
of Chicago. A driver rounds a curve by Resurrection Cemetery,
headlights cutting through the darkness. Suddenly, a young woman steps
out of the shadows. She's beautiful, eerily pale, dressed in
a white party dress. She raises her thumb for a ride.

(02:30):
The startled driver pulls over. The woman wordlessly slips into
the back seat, shivering without a coat in the chill air.
She directs him up Archer Avenue, and the driver obliges,
glancing at his silent passenger in the rear view mirror.

(02:54):
As they near the cemetery gates, the mysterious girl jolts
upright and cries out here, stop here. Confused, the driver
looks around at the roadside tombstones. In that split second,
the girl vanishes from the back seat, no trace left behind.

(03:20):
The car door had never opened. Such is the classic
encounter with Resurrection Mary, the legendary ghostly hitchhiker of Chicago's
South Side. For nearly a century, locals have whispered about
this vanishing hitchhiker in a white gown who prowls Archer

(03:43):
Avenue thumbing rides, only to disappear at Resurrection Cemetery's gates.
She has been called Chicago's most famous ghost story, and
she has become an inescapable part of local folklore. But
where did this legend begin and what truth, if any,

(04:07):
lies behind the ghost stories. We are going to delve
into the creepy origins and evolution of the Resurrection Mary legend,
examine documented sightings and encounters over the decades, and explore
attempts to identify a real person behind the phantom. Will

(04:30):
also take a look at local history surrounding Resurrection Cemetery,
the role of folklore and the media in spreading Mary's tale,
and her lasting impact on popular culture, as well as
Chicago tourism. Along the way, will separate verified facts from

(04:51):
spooky fiction, clearly noting where the story slides into urban legend.
So prepare yourself for a dramatic, yet fackgrounded journey through
one of America's greatest ghost stories, one that continues to
beguile and unnerve to this very day. The legend of

(05:15):
Resurrection Mary has its roots in the jazz age, with
a backstory set in the roaring nineteen twenties or early
nineteen thirties. According to popular lore, a young woman named
Mary spent an evening dancing at a ballroom on Archer Avenue.

(05:36):
Different tellings named the venue as the o Henry Ballroom
in Willow Springs, later renamed the Willowbrook Ballroom. Mary was
out for a night of swing dancing with her boyfriend.
At some point, the couple quarreled in a fit of temper.
Mary stormed out of the ballroom into the cold night,

(05:58):
still clad in her way white dancing dress and shoes.
Angry and likely heartbroken, Mary set off on foot along
Archer Avenue, intending to walk home tragedy Struck on the roadside,
a car came barreling down the dark highway and struck

(06:19):
Mary as she walked. The driver, so the story goes,
fled the scene, leaving the young woman to die from
her injuries. Mary's grief stricken parents later found her body
and laid her to rest in nearby Resurrection Cemetery, buried

(06:42):
in her beloved white gown and dancing shoes. The hit
and run culprit was never identified. It's a heartbreaking tale,
and notably, no historical record has ever confirmed this exaus
series of events. There is no definitive police report or

(07:05):
news item from the era about a young woman named
Mary killed by a hit and run on Archer Avenue
after leaving a dance. Rather, this backstory appears to be
an early piece of folklore, possibly intended to give context
to later ghost sightings. In other words, the ballroom argument

(07:29):
and fatal accident narrative is treated as legend, not verified fact.
It provides a kind of origin myth for resurrection Mary
explaining why her ghost might haunt that road, a young
life cut short on the way home from a dance,
a spirit still searching for a ride back home or

(07:54):
back to her grave. What we do know is that
by the life in eight nineteen thirties, stories of a
vanishing hitchhiker on Archer Avenue were already circulating around Chicago's
South Side. The trope of the ghostly hitchhiker was not
unique to Chicago. Folklorists have documented similar tales worldwide, often

(08:21):
referred to simply as vanishing hitchhiker legends, dating back decades
or even centuries. A seminal nineteen forty two study in
the California Folklore Quarterly found multiple hitchhiker ghost stories across
the United States with common elements. A traveler late at

(08:45):
night gives a ride to a strange woman, often young
and dressed in white, who later vanishes without explanation. In
some variations, the mysterious passenger gives in a that turns
out to be a cemetery or claims to be returning
from a dance or event. Clearly, the Resurrection Mary story

(09:10):
is Chicago's distinctive spin on this broader urban legend motif. However,
what makes Mary's case unusual is the sheer number of
first hand accounts over the years. From the very beginning,

(09:36):
Resurrection Mary's story straddled the line between folklore and actual belief.
In the tightly knit ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago's southwest Side.
Places like Archer Heights, Brighton Park, and Justice, Illinois, residents
swapped stories about encounters with a pale, blonde girl in

(10:00):
a white dress hitchhiking near Resurrection Cemetery. These early tales
were shared person to person, part of the oral lore
of the community. As one paranormal investigator, Dale Kasmarak later noted,
even his parents, who dated in the late nineteen thirties,

(10:22):
had heard the story. Back then, his father would teasingly
drive past Resurrection Cemetery after their dates, hoping to catch
a glimpse of the ghost, to the chagrin of Kasmarak's mother.
That implies the legend was already alive shortly after the

(10:43):
supposed time of Mary's death. It wasn't until decades later
that researchers and journalists began writing down the Resurrection Mary story,
trying to piece together its origin. When when they did,
some dug into local archives for real life incidents that

(11:06):
might match the legend's outline. This quest led to a
few tantalizing historical candidates, but we'll get to those in
just a little bit. But it bears repeating the classic
origin tale of Resurrection Mary. The fight the roadside fatality

(11:27):
remains unverified. It is an archetypal ghost story, one that
makes poetic sense even if it lacks documentation. It sets
the stage for many ghostly encounters to come, providing a
tragic figure we can imagine wandering archer Avenue, caught between

(11:50):
the dance and the grave. The earliest well known Resurrection
Mary encounter dates to nineteen thirty nine, about ten years
after the legend's supposed starting point. A twenty two year
old South Side man named Jerry Pallace claimed he had

(12:10):
a face to face dance with the ghost. His story
often retold by ghost researchers and even featured on television
unfolds like a scene from a kind of paranormal romance.
According to Pallace, it was a cold autumn night in
nineteen thirty nine, and he was out at a local

(12:33):
dance hall called the Liberty Grove and Hall in Chicago's
Brighton Park neighborhood. During the night, Jerry's eyes were drawn
to a quiet young woman he hadn't seen there before.
A lovely blonde girl around five foot seven wearing a
white formal dress that was fashionably a bit old fashioned.

(12:58):
She introduced herself only as Mary. The two danced together
most of the night to the live band's music. Jerry
noticed something odd though, Mary's hands felt as cold as ice,
but he brushed it off, joking that quote she must

(13:20):
have a warm heart to compensate. Some versions of the
story even say Jerry sneaked to kiss from the mysterious
girl during a slow dance. When the night grew late
and the ballroom prepared to close, Jerry offered Mary a

(13:41):
ride home. She accepted. Mary had told Jerry she lived
on the South Side, specifically on South Damon Avenue in
the back of the yard's neighborhood, but curiously Once in
Jerry's car, she insisted he drive her down Archer Avenue instead.

(14:04):
Jerry was puzzled. Archer Avenue wouldn't lead directly to her
stated home, but Mary was adamant about that route, so
they headed down Archer through the quiet, darkened outskirts. As
they approached the gates of Resurrection Cemetery in the nearby

(14:26):
suburb of Justice, Mary suddenly grew agitated and told Jerry
to stop the car. Let me out here, she said,
even though they were in front of the cemetery with
no house in sight. Jerry offered to walk her to

(14:47):
wherever she was going, concerned for a young woman wandering
alone at night, but Mary replied, in a strange, somber tone,
where I'm going, you can't follow. Then she exited the
car and walked toward the cemetery gates. Before Jerry's astonished eyes,

(15:12):
the girl faded into thin air, disappearing in front of
the locked cemetery entrance. In that moment, Jerry later recounted,
he realized something was very wrong. The beautiful blonde he
had spent the evening with was no ordinary girl. She was,

(15:35):
he believed, a ghost. Shaken but curious Jerry Paulus did
some investigating of his own. The next day, he remembered
Mary's address on Damon Avenue that she had given him
during their chat. That morning, Jerry drove to the house.

(15:59):
A middle aged woman answered the door Mary's mother, as
it turned out. When Jerry asked if Mary was home,
the woman sadly informed him that her daughter Mary had
been dead for several years. Jerry glimpsed a photo over

(16:20):
the woman's shoulder in the parlor, a framed portrait of
the same girl he danced with the night before. The
mother explained that the girl in the photo was indeed
her daughter Mary, who died five years ago. At this revelation,

(16:41):
Jerry felt chills. He later told a folklorist friend that
it finally clicked why Mary's hands had been so icy.
Jerry had once worked briefly in a funeral home. The
cold touch of her skin reminded him of a corpse's

(17:03):
cold flesh. In other words, Jerry became convinced that he
had spent an entire evening dancing with a dead woman's ghost.
This dramatic story has become Resurrection Mary's equivalent of an

(17:28):
origin encounter. The first and perhaps most famous eye witness account.
It has been retold in countless books and television programs,
including a nineteen nineties episode of Unsolved Mysteries where an
older Jerry Pallace recounted the tale on camera. However, it

(17:53):
is important to note that Jerry Pallace's testimony is anecdotal.
There is no newspaper from nineteen thirty nine that documented
a man dancing with a ghost. Pallas only went public
with his experience decades later. He gave a videotaped interview

(18:15):
in nineteen eighty six, shortly before his death, which aired
on Unsolved Mysteries in nineteen ninety four. So while his
story is a corner stone of the legend, and Pallas
himself apparently remained adamant about what had happened, it cannot
be independently verified. It lives on as a piece of

(18:39):
oral history, passed from the witness to the public via
story tellers. Interestingly, local researchers have pointed out that Pallas's
encounter was unusually intimate for a ghost sighting. He spent
hours with Mary, dancing, conversing, even kissing, whereas most resurrection

(19:05):
Mary reports are far more fleeting and less personal In
the spectrum of ghost stories, Jerry Pallace's tale is exceptional.
If true, it suggests Mary's spirit was capable of substantial interaction,
appearing solid enough to dance and speak, not just a

(19:29):
momentary boo apparition. Skeptics, of course, might counter argue that
such an extraordinary claim demands better evidence than one man's memory,
told years after the fact. We must label the Palace
story as legend mixed with eyewitness testimony, a compelling anecdote

(19:53):
with no proof beyond the storyteller's word. Yet, Jerry Pallace
was hardly the last person to claim a brush with
Resurrection Mary. In the decades that followed, more and more
locals would step forward with eerily similar accounts. By the

(20:14):
nineteen seventies, the legend entered a new, highly public phase,
fueled by media attention and a flurry of reported sightings
after World War II. Through the nineteen fifties and sixties,
Resurrection Mary seemed to lurk in the shadows of folklore,

(20:37):
well known around Chicago's South Side, but not much reported
in the press. That changed in the nineteen seventies, when
a series of encounters propelled Mary from local lore into
city wide, even national awareness. It was during this era

(20:59):
that journalists, ghost hunters, and ordinary citizens all converged on
the mystery of the hitchhiking girl in White. Some of
the best known resurrection Marry stories date from the nineteen
seventies and early nineteen eighties, and unlike earlier tales, a

(21:22):
few of these made it into newspapers or were corroborated
by multiple witnesses. We'll examine the most notable cases, pointing
out where documentation exists and where we're dealing purely with story.
One pivotal account came from January nineteen seventy nine, when

(21:47):
a Chicago cab driver known only as Ralph had a
frightening experience on Archer Avenue. Ralph's story was compelling enough
that it was written up by respected journalist Bill Geist,
then a columnist for the Suburban Trib, a Chicago Tribune

(22:08):
suburban edition. Geist's January thirty first, nineteen seventy nine column,
titled Cryptic writer leaves taxi driver with the Willies, introduced
a broad audience to the legend and gave it a
veneer of credibility by appearing in newsprint. According to Geist's piece,

(22:31):
which presented Ralph's account in the cabby's own words. Ralph
was driving his taxi along Archer Avenue late one snowy
night when he spotted a young blonde woman in a
white dress with no coat looking for a ride. He

(22:52):
picked her up and noticed she was quiet and fuzzy,
perhaps dazed or tired, speaking little besides remarking the snow
came early this year. While gazing out the window, she
gave him an address, but then suddenly demanded he stopped

(23:16):
the car right in front of Resurrection Cemetery, even though
there were no houses around. Puzzled, Ralph looked away for
a moment, and when he turned back, his passenger had
vanished from the back seat, just like before. The taxi

(23:38):
door hadn't opened. The girl was simply gone. Ralph was
so unnerved that he actually went into a nearby tavern,
Chet's Melody Lounge, across from the cemetery, to ask if
anyone had seen the girl who skipped out on her fare.

(24:00):
By the time he spoke with Bill Geist, Ralph refused
to give his last name, fearing ridicule, but Geist described
him as a thoroughly level headed, no nonsense, working class guy,
a church going little league coach, not someone prone to

(24:20):
fanciful tales. Geist gently informed the shaken cabby that he
had likely given Resurrection Mary a lift. To the cab
driver's great astonishment, the columnist made it clear he found
Ralph to be credible, noting the story was far too

(24:41):
outlandish for a man like him to invent just to
get his name in the paper. This nineteen seventy nine
taxi driver incident is significant for a few reasons. First,
it appeared in a major newspaper, essentially bringing resid direction
Mary into the mainstream. Second, Ralph's experience closely paralleled earlier

(25:07):
stories a young woman in white hitch hiking disappearing at
the cemetery, showing how consistent the legend's pattern was. And Third,
Geist's reporting lent weight to the idea that many witnesses
were remarkably level headed people not prone to hallucinations, as

(25:33):
local folklorest Richard Crowe observed. Indeed, folklorist Richard T. Crowe
himself had begun collecting Resurrection Mary reports by the nineteen seventies,
and would claim he had gathered three dozen substantiated encounters
from the nineteen thirties. Onward, Crow often noted that many

(25:56):
witnesses were ordinary Chicagoans, cabbies, police officers, club goers who
didn't even realize they'd seen a famous ghost until afterward. This,
he argued, made the case more compelling than a typical
urban legend that's always sourced from a friend of a friend.

(26:21):
Mary's witnesses often came forward independently with similar stories, not
knowing of each other's accounts, which paranormal researchers took as
a sign that something was happening on Archer Avenue beyond
simply folklore. Beyond the famous cab driver's story, the nineteen

(26:51):
seventies yielded other sightings that became part of Resurrection Mary's lore.
In nineteen seventy three, at a night club called Harlow's
on Chicago's southwest Side, patrons reported an encounter with an
oddly out of place young woman matching Mary's description. The

(27:14):
night manager, Bob Mayne, later told the Chicago Tribune that
twice that year he saw a peculiar blonde woman in
an old fashioned white dress inside Harlowe's. She would dance alone,
twirling in a corner near the dance floor, and wouldn't

(27:35):
speak to anyone. She had a very pale complexion, big
spoolly curls in her hair, and most disturbingly of all,
Main recalled that she looked as if she was bleeding
from one eye. Other club goers whispered about how bizarre

(27:58):
the girl was, and no one saw her enter or leave.
She was just suddenly there and later gone. Maine's description,
given in a nineteen ninety two Tribune interview, strongly evoked
the image of Mary's ghost. If true, it suggests Mary

(28:23):
was not confined to hitchhiking. She might wander into a
nightclub occasionally, perhaps drawn to the music and dancing she
had enjoyed in life. Of course, this too is anecdotal.
There's no proof the bleeding eyed girl wasn't just an

(28:45):
oddly dressed patron in need of medical attention. But for believers,
Bob Man's story showed Mary's continuing presence in the area's
night life. Arguably the most dramatic physical evidence tied to
Resurrection Mary also dates to the nineteen seventies. On August tenth,

(29:09):
nineteen seventy six, something uncanny was found at Resurrection Cemetery's gate.
A passer by that night called police after seeing what
he thought was a young woman locked inside the cemetery,
grasping the iron bars as if trying to get out.

(29:33):
Authorities arrived and found no woman. The graveyard was empty,
but they did find that two of the tall, wrought
iron bars on the gate were bent apart at roughly
hand height, with what looked like the impressions of slender

(29:55):
hand prints into the green painted metal. The bars had
been wrenched apart, as though some terrific force had pushed
them from inside. Moreover, the metal showed scorch marks and
the texture of skin, as if a ghostly hand had

(30:16):
burned itself into the iron. This spine chilling discovery immediately
fueled speculation that Resurrection Mary had physically interacted with the
gate in an attempt to flag down help, literally leaving
her fingerprints behind. Not everyone accepted that supernatural explanation. Cemetery

(30:44):
officials quickly offered a mundane account, claiming that a truck
had accidentally backed into the gate and bent the bars,
and that the hand prints were from a repair worker
who tried to strain them out. They said perhaps a
welder's hands or gloves left marks when the heat was

(31:07):
applied to fix the iron However, many were unconvinced. Paranormal
investigator Dale Kasmarrek pointed out the scorch marks didn't resemble
typical welding patterns and argued that a worker would have
worn heavy gloves anyway, making defined handprints unlikely. For years,

(31:32):
the burned on hand prints remained visible on the bent bars,
despite the cemetery painting over them repeatedly. The outline of
slender fingers still peeked through the site became a magnet
for legend trippers. Curious locals drove by at night, hoping

(31:57):
to spot the glowing ghost and her in famous handiwork
on the gate. Eventually, annoyed by the attention, the church
caretakers removed the bent sections of the bars entirely, reportedly
around twenty nineteen through twenty twenty two decades later. Today,

(32:19):
there's a gap in the fence where the haunted bars
once stood. The late nineteen seventies and early nineteen eighties
saw a peak in Resurrection Mary encounters. Besides the nineteen

(32:43):
seventy six gate incident, there were numerous reported sightings in
nineteen seventy eight, nineteen seventy nine, nineteen eighty and nineteen
eighty nine, essentially one or two per year making the rounds.
In law local lore, many followed familiar patterns, drivers almost

(33:06):
hitting a running girl who then vanished, or passers by
seeing a lone figure matching Mary's description walking by the
cemetery before disappearing. Two cases are especially well known. In
nineteen eighty, a young couple named Claire and Mark Rudniki

(33:30):
were driving along Archer Avenue past Resurrection Cemetery when Claire
suddenly saw a figure on the roadside. It was a
girl in a white dress, bathed in a strange, pale light,
walking slowly along the shoulder. Claire immediately thought of Resurrection

(33:55):
Mary and felt her stomach lurch with fear. Her husband, Mark,
also caught a glimpse and decided to turn the car
around for another look, despite Claire's protests. As they passed
the spot again, the glowing girl had vanished completely. In

(34:20):
recounting the incident on Unsolved Mysteries, Mark Rudniki added an
extra chilling detail. As they drove past the first time,
he peered at the girl's face and saw a black void,
no discernible facial features at all. It was as if

(34:42):
they had seen a figure that wasn't fully human. Both
Rudnicki's were left deeply rattled, and their story reinforced the
idea that Mary prowled that stretch of road looking for
would be rescuers. In October nineteen eighty nine, Janet Kalawl,

(35:07):
in her late twenties, was out for a drive with
a friend near Resurrection Cemetery when they experienced what many
regard as Mary's last major appearance to date. As Janet
drove down Archer, a young woman in a white gown

(35:27):
sprinted on the road directly in front of the car.
Janet had no time to break she hit the figure
head on or so she thought. There was no impact,
no thud, no damage. Panicked, Janet and her friend jumped out,

(35:51):
expecting the worst, but found nothing at all on the roadway,
no injured woman, no just the silent cemetery looming nearby.
Janet's friend, Pamela later recalled that her own father had
read about Resurrection Mary back in nineteen thirty nine, and

(36:16):
she never imagined she'd become part of the story herself.
Decades later, the Callal incident widely publicized through television, newspapers,
and magazines. Further cemented Mary's legacy. It had the hallmarks
of a classic ghostly woman runs in front of a

(36:37):
car apparition, a scenario reported in other haunting cases worldwide.
Fortunately for Janet, she emerged only shaken, not physically harmed,
a reminder that Mary, whatever she is, does not seem

(36:58):
to wish actual harm on people, only to give them
a fright, perhaps inadvertently. By the end of the nineteen
eighties Resurrection Mary had been featured in newspaper articles, television newscasts,
and even went national when appearing in nineteen ninety four

(37:21):
on Unsolved Mysteries. The ghost had effectively gone mainstream. Some
longtime Chicagoans noted with a wink that Mary was old
hat by then a well worn story, but each new
retelling brought fresh eyes to the legend. Notably, Richard Crowe,

(37:46):
the folklorist who pioneered Chicago ghost tours, often offered a
free steak dinner to anyone who could bring him definitive
proof of Mary's existence. He never had to pay up
for proof, but he did get plenty of people coming
forward with stories. By the nineteen eighties, Mary had evolved

(38:09):
from a local curiosity into a full fledged piece of
Chicago land mythology, with a sizeable file of sightings and
a reputation that extended far beyond the city. It's important
to emphasize that, despite the volume of accounts, none of

(38:29):
these accounts can be verified scientifically. We have names, dates,
and some newspaper documentation for a few cases, like Bill
Geist's nineteen seventy nine column or The Tribune's nineteen ninety
two interview with Bob Maine, etc. But we do not
have physical proof of the supernatural, only testimonies and circumstantial oddities.

(38:57):
The bent Gate was a physical artifact, yes, but even
that had a plausible non ghost explanation. So while our
narrative has treated these sightings seriously and in detail, they
remain anecdotal evidence of a phenomena. The consistent pattern is

(39:20):
intriguing and hard to ignore. Too many independent witnesses over
too many years. Proponents say for it to all be
pure invention, but skeptics counter that human perception and memory
are fallible and urban legends have a way of feeding themselves.

(39:43):
Resurrection Mary lives at the intersection of belief and doubt,
where multiple eyewitness stories give life to a character that
official history struggles to confirm. As resurrection mayor He's fame grew,
so grew an obvious question. If this ghost is real,

(40:09):
who is she? Ghost stories often spawn origin theories, tying
the phantom to a specific deceased person. In Mary's case,
researchers have poured over cemetery records, newspaper archives, and death

(40:33):
certificates hunting for a young woman who might be the
restless soul in question. This detective work has yielded a
few leading candidates, each with intriguing connections to the legend,
and each with certain discrepancies. Let's examine the main contenders

(40:56):
and the evidence or lack thereof for e we will
clearly distinguish documented facts about these historical figures from the
speculation that links them to Resurrection Mary. For decades, the
prime suspect in Resurrection Mary's identity was a twenty one

(41:19):
year old woman named Mary or Marie Brigov. Mary Burgovi
was a real person, a beautiful, young Polish American who
lived in Chicago's Back of the Yard's neighborhood in the
early nineteen thirties. Her name began to surface in connection

(41:40):
with the ghost story in the nineteen seventies, and by
the nineteen eighties many assumed resurrection Mary must be Mary
Brigovi's ghost. So what do we know about Mary Burgovi's
life and death? Brigovi's tragic ends was recorded in the

(42:01):
Chicago Tribune on March twelfth, nineteen thirty four. The news
item reported that Marie Brogovie, age twenty one, was killed
in an automobile wreck the previous night. The accident did
not occur on Archer Avenue, nor even in the Southwest suburbs.

(42:23):
It happened in the downtown Chicago Loop. Brigovy was a
passenger in a car that cracked up at the intersection
of Lake Street and Whacker Drive after the driver missed
seeing an elevated train trestle. The Tribune noted that corner
was quote known to police as a dangerous spot due

(42:48):
to such collisions. In the car with Mary Bregovi were
two young men and another young woman, all of whom survived.
The driver, John Thowell, later said he hadn't seen the
l structure in time. Mary sadly bore the brunt of

(43:10):
the crash and was killed instantly. The facts of Brigovie's
death show some initial inconsistencies with the ghost story. She
died in the city, nowhere near Resurrection Cemetery, she was
in a car with friends, not walking alone from a dance,

(43:33):
and her death was due to a collision with infrastructure,
not a hit and run driver. So why do researchers
think she could be Resurrection Mary. The answer lies in
the web of personal details that link her to elements

(43:53):
of the legend. Mary Burgovie lived at forty six eleven
South Damon Avenue, according to the Tribune. If you recall
from earlier in Jerry Pallace's story, Mary claimed to live
on Damon Avenue. Jerry later went to an address on

(44:15):
South Damon where the mother supposedly said Mary was dead.
Bergovie's residence on the same street as the ghost's purported
home is a striking coincidence. In fact, a friend of
Burgovi's later confirmed that Bergovi's wake was held at a

(44:37):
funeral home just blocks from that address, the Satala Funeral
Home on Damon Avenue, and that Brigovy was indeed buried
wearing a fancy dress described as an orchid colored gown.

(44:58):
Speaking of dresses, one eerie tale reported by author Troy
Taylor holds that shortly after Brigovi's funeral in nineteen thirty four,
a cemetery caretaker spotted a young woman in an orchid
colored dress wandering Resurrection Cemetery at night. The caretaker mentioned

(45:23):
it to the funeral director, who supposedly remarked that the
description matched Mary Brigov in her burial dress. Other reports
around that same time the spring of nineteen thirty four
claimed a ghostly woman in a light colored dress was
seen jumping onto the running boards of passing cars near

(45:46):
the cemetery. These ghostly sightings so soon after Brigovi's death
certainly aligned with the notion that her spirit might be
Resurrection Mary, at least in the immediate aftermath. Mary Brogovy
loved dancing, according to her friends. One friend, Laverne Rutkowski,

(46:12):
gave an interview in nineteen eighty four shedding light on
Mary's final day. Rutkowski recounted that on March tenth, nineteen
thirty four, she and Mary Brogov spent the day shopping
on forty seventh Street. They met two young men who
drove recklessly around the neighborhood. Rutkowski got a bad feeling

(46:36):
and insisted on leaving the car, but Mary Bragov was
smitten enough to go out with those wild boys that
night despite her parents objections. Family lore filtered through later
story tellers suggested that Brigov and these new friends might

(46:58):
have gone dancing at the o Henry Ballroom in Willow
Springs earlier that evening before ending up downtown where the
crash occurred. There's no direct evidence they truly went to
the Willowbrook O Henry that night. However, the notion that
Mary Bergovy might have been ballroom hopping with two young

(47:22):
men helps reconcile why she died so far from home.
One theory says the group left the early closing suburban
ballroom to seek another dance hall in the city that
stayed open later. If that is true, then Mary Brogovy

(47:43):
did spend her last hours dancing, just like the legends
Phantom Mary. In a poignant twist of fate, The Tribune
obituary shows that Mary Brigov died just a month shy
of her twenty five first birthday. She was on the
cusp of adulthood in the prime of youth when her

(48:07):
life was cut short. This fits the profile of a
restless spirit often attributed to ghosts, a young person who
died unexpectedly, and perhaps Harbor's unfinished business or longing leading
to a haunting. The final piece worth noting is Mary

(48:37):
Brigovi's physical appearance. Photographs, like one family photo that has
managed to circulate, show Mary Brigov with dark hair a brunette,
yet Resurrection Mary is usually described as a blonde or
light haired spirit. This discrepancy has given some researchers pause.

(49:04):
Could a ghost change hair color or did witness recollections
simply get the shade wrong in the dim light. Also,
Brigovie's first name was technically Marie, though she often went
by Mary. It's a minor difference, but to folklorists, such

(49:26):
inconsistencies stand out as hints that Brigov might not perfectly
fit the legend's details. For a long time, Mary Brigovie
was the leading theory, so much so that many articles
and books casually stated that Resurrection Mary was Mary Brigovi's ghost. However,

(49:50):
over the years, doubts have risen. Critics point out that
a loop car crash doesn't match the Archer Avenue roadside
death scenario at all, making it a stretch to connect
Bergov to the hitchhiker tail without considerable embellishment. Some suspect

(50:12):
that Brigovi's story was shoehorned into the legend retroactively after
the fact, because her death roughly coincided with the right era,
and she was indeed buried in Resurrection Cemetery, though even
that has a caveat. Bregovi's family may have initially and

(50:35):
teared her in a temporary grave at Resurrection that was
later moved. In summary, Mary Bergovi's life and death share
enough touch points with the myth the love of dancing
the South Side address the sudden tragic end. It's easy

(50:57):
to imagine her spirit Roman Archer Avenue, yet significant differences
location of death, hair color prevent us from calling it
a perfect match. The jury remains out. Mary Brigovi is
a strong candidate, but not a confirmed identity for the ghost.

(51:22):
Another compelling contender emerged in the nineteen nineties, thanks largely
to the research of Chicago ghost historian Ursula Bielsky. Bielsky
documented the story of Anna Maria Norkus, a girl whose
fate in nineteen twenty seven uncannily parallels parts of the

(51:45):
Resurrection Mary legend. Anna Norcas, often called Maria in Lithuanian
Polish style, was even younger than Mary Bregovi, just twelve
years old, but the circumstances of her death make her
a fascinating possibility. On July twentieth, nineteen twenty seven, Anna

(52:11):
Norcus's father, August Norkus, took her out for a special night.
Anna was approaching her thirteenth birthday, and by some accounts,
she loved to dance. Despite her being under age, August
agreed to take Anna to the O Henry ball Room

(52:31):
in Willow Springs for an evening of music, possibly as
a birthday treat. They were accompanied by a friend, William,
and also had a couple of other youngsters in the car.
In the early hours of July twenty first, as the
group was driving home, tragedy struck on a road not

(52:54):
far from the ball room. Their car swerved off Harlem
APay near sixty sixth Street, just a few miles from
Resurrection Cemetery, and plunged into a deep ditch or railroad cut.
The vehicle flipped over and young Anna Norcus was crushed

(53:17):
beneath it, dying almost instantly. One older man in the
car also died of injuries, while Several others, including Anna's
father and sister, survived with injuries. This accident was reported
in the newspapers at the time, a real event that

(53:40):
left a real family grieving. Now, consider how Anna Norkis's
story lines up with resurrection Mary. Anna was coming home
from the o Henry Ballroom, the very dance hall immortalized
in Mary's origin legend. Unlike Brigovi's case, here we have

(54:04):
documented proof of a young girl actually returning from that
ballroom on the night she died. This directly ties a
ballroom outing to a fatal accident near Archer Avenue. Anna
Noorkis was blonde. Photographs and descriptions confirm she had light hair.

(54:27):
This matches the classic description of the ghostly Mary as
a fair haired girl in a white dress. Brigovie, by contrast,
was brunette, which some saw as a strike against her
being the ghost. Anna's physical appearance, young, blonde, fond of dancing,

(54:49):
is more consistent with the ghost story details. The Norkis
accident occurred in nineteen twenty seven, a bit earlier than
Mary's supposed day in the early nineteen thirties, as legend suggests. However,
it falls within a plausible range, especially if one considers

(55:11):
that an Urban Legends timeline can be fuzzy. By the
time Jerry Pallace met Mary in nineteen thirty nine, Anna
would have been dead for twelve years, which is roughly
the five years dead figure Paulis heard, perhaps misremembered or
stylized in retellings. If Jerry misheard, or if storytellers embellished

(55:37):
the timeline, it's conceivable that Anna Norkis could have been
dead for years by the late nineteen thirties, and thus
a candidate for the ghost Jerry encountered. Though there is
one sticking point. Anna Norcis was only twelve years old.

(55:59):
Every the resurrection Mary witness consistently describes a young woman
or late teen girl, not a child. Mary appears as
someone in her late teens or early twenties, an age
appropriate for dancing and attending nightclubs. Anna at twelve years

(56:19):
old seems too young to fit that image. Bielski and
others have speculated that perhaps the ghost appears older than
Anna's actual age, or that maybe Anna had a slightly
older look. Another possibility floated is that Anna's spirit aged

(56:41):
in some way to the young woman. She would have become,
which enters very speculative territory, though when it comes to ghosts,
speculation is king. In any case, the age mismatch is
a notable issue with the Anna theory. However, there's also

(57:03):
the questions raised by her burial. Anna Norkis was slated
to be buried at Saint Casimir Cemetery, a Lithuanian Catholic
cemetery in Chicago's Mount Greenwood area, not Resurrection Cemetery. However,

(57:29):
Bielsky uncovered a tantalizing anecdote. Due to a gravedigger's strike
at the time of Anna's death, the family allegedly couldn't
bury her immediately at Saint Casimir. There is a claim,
though not confirmed by official records, that Anna's body was

(57:50):
temporarily interred at Resurrection Cemetery until the strike ended. Then
her remains were moved to Saint Casimir, but possibly some
mix up occurred. The theory is that if Anna's coffin
spent time at Resurrection, or if any part of her

(58:13):
remained there, her spirit might linger at Resurrection's grounds. This
is admittedly a stretch, but local ghost lore often seizes
on such quirks to explain hauntings. In nineteen ninety nine,
Ursula Bielsky published her research proposing Anna Norkis as a

(58:37):
strong candidate for Resurrection Mary. Her work convinced many in
the paranormal community. Even the owners of the Willowbrook Ballroom
came to believe in Anna's connection. The late owner, by Root,
kept a copy of Anna Norkis's death certificate on the
ballroom's office wall as a nod to Mary's likely identity.

(59:03):
This was reported in a Daily Southtown feature in twenty sixteen.
The same year, the historic Willowbrook Ballroom tragically burned down,
ending an era. In the aftermath of the fire, there
was an emotional outpouring from locals. Notably, someone hung a

(59:26):
pair of white dancing shoes on the charred ruins with
a sign, please rebuild the ballroom, signed Resurrection Mary. The
very people who ran and loved that ballroom tacitly acknowledged
Anna and Mary as part of its legacy. Despite the

(59:50):
compelling alignment of Anna Norkis's story, skeptics point out the
age issue and the lack of clear documentation of her
suppose burial at Resurrection. No official record confirms that her
body was ever there. It's more an oral history claim,
and believer's counter skeptics by saying perhaps resurrection Mary is

(01:00:14):
not tied to a single person at all. Beyond Burgovi
and Norkis, various other names have been floated over the years,
forming a sort of who's who of potential Mary's. Each
theory attempts to fill gaps in the others, but many

(01:00:35):
of these fall apart under scrutiny. Here are a few
notable ones. A story circulated that a young woman named
Mary Miskowski, who lived near forty seventh Street and Damon
again that back of the Yard's area, was killed by
a hit and run driver around Halloween nineteen thirty while

(01:00:59):
on her way to a costume ball. In this version,
Mary Miskowski was supposedly wearing her mother's old wedding dress
as a costume. Hence, a young woman in a white
dress killed by a car very much resurrection Mary's profile.

(01:01:21):
The tantalizing details included blonde hair, a love for dancing,
a death on Halloween, and living on the same street
as Mary Bregovi. It sounds almost too perfect, and indeed,
researcher Adam Selzer dug into public records and found no

(01:01:45):
evidence of any Mary Miskowski dying in nineteen thirty in Chicago.
He did, however, find a Mary Miskowski at the address
in question, but she lived a full life, married, had children,
and died in nineteen fifty six. In short, the Marry

(01:02:07):
Miskowski tale appears to be just an oral legend or
a misremembered identity, not a real person who died as described.
Another south Side woman named Mary Kovak has been proposed.
Mary Kovak, like Burgovi and Miskowski, lived on Damon Avenue.

(01:02:32):
She was known to be a fashionable dresser, a regular
at local dance halls, and she had blonde hair, checking
many boxes of our ghost. However, Mary Kovak died in
nineteen thirty two of tuberculosis, not an accident. The idea here,

(01:02:54):
raised in a podcast called The Epitaph, is that perhaps
her ghost loved dancing so much that it hitched a
ride back to the ballroom even after death. Of course,
that's highly speculative and deviates from the corps hit by

(01:03:18):
car legend, but it shows how virtually any young blonde
Mary from the area who died in the nineteen twenties
or thirties becomes a candidate. It's possible that all of
the above holds some truth. Ghost tour guides like Richard
Crowe and authors like Troy Taylor have mused that maybe

(01:03:42):
the reason the sightings don't all perfectly match one person
is because more than one spirit is active on Archer Avenue,
and over times their stories merged. For example, perhaps Mary
Bergovi's ghost did appear early on with her orchid dress

(01:04:05):
around Resurrection Cemetery, and later Annanorchis's spirit also roamed Archer
after her accident, and the two narratives blended into one
Resurrection Mary legend. Or maybe none of the specific names
are exactly right, and Mary is a composite of many

(01:04:28):
restless souls. The cemetery, after all, holds over one hundred
and fifty thousand graves. Countless young women are buried there,
some of whom surely died tragically. A folklorist might say
Resurrection Mary is an archetype, the collective manifestation of several

(01:04:51):
stories about lives cut short, distilled into one iconic ghost.
Despite decades of amateur sleuthing, no consensus has been reached
on Mary's true identity. The cemetery itself, according to a
comment recounted on the Unsolved Mystery's website. Once narrowed it

(01:05:15):
down to five possible young ladies who fit the legend's
time frame and profile. That might be folklore in itself,
but it underscores the lingering curiosity. Officially, there is no
grave marker labeled Resurrection Mary. She remains an enigma. Each candidate,

(01:05:41):
Bregovinorkis or others carries both alluring connections as well as
problematic details. The exercise of matching Mary to a real
life person is part fact finding and part folklore. Un
to itself. We have verified facts about certain deaths, like

(01:06:05):
Burgovi's in nineteen thirty four or Norkises in nineteen twenty seven.
Those are real. The notion that any one of those
is the ghost is speculative. It's a human need to
put a name and face to the unknown. In Mary's case,

(01:06:25):
that need has kept historians and ghost hunters busy for ages,
but the mystery endures. Perhaps that is a key to
her legend's longevity. She could be anyone, and thus she
belongs to everyone. Whether or not you believe in ghosts,

(01:06:49):
it's undeniable that Resurrection Mary has been kept alive. By storytelling.
This is a legend shaped by oral tradition, embellished by media,
and reinforced by each new generations retelling. So now let's

(01:07:10):
explore how folklore and media intersect in Mary's tale, and
how Chicago's own cultural landscape provided fertile ground for a
ghost story to thrive. Scholars of folklore would classify Resurrection
Mary under the wide umbrella of the vanishing hitchhiker urban legend,

(01:07:35):
as noted earlier. Researchers Beardsley and Hanky famously cataloged dozens
of such hitchhiker tales in the nineteen forties, finding striking
commonalities from California to New York. The core elements a
mysterious writer, a request to be let out by a cemetery,

(01:07:57):
a subsequent disappearance repair across many localities, Mary's story hits
every beat of the classic motif, except many argue it
has more specificity and corroboration than most. Typically vanishing hitchhiker

(01:08:18):
stories are true urban legends in the folkloric sense. They
happen to a friend of a friend and lack identifying details.
They're often dismissed as just spooky fiction. But Resurrection Mary
stands out because so many accounts are first person or

(01:08:40):
close to it, complete with names, dates, and locations. Instead
of my cousin's friend once picked up a ghost, we
have named individuals Paulus, collll Ralph, the Cabby, et cetera,
telling their very own stories. This gives Mary's legend a

(01:09:02):
patina of authenticity that pure folklore generally lacks. Folklorist and
tour guide Richard T. Crowe often championed Mary's credibility on
this basis. He said, of all the ghost stories worth
believing in resurrection, Mary is the one with the best documentation.

(01:09:26):
Crowe collected affidavits and interviews, amassing what he claimed were
dozens of reliable witness reports over the years. He emphasized
that these witnesses were usually normal, sober people with no
prior paranormal claims, in other words, not attention seekers or kouchs.

(01:09:50):
Crowe's efforts in the nineteen seventies, including organizing Chicago's first
ghost tours, did a great deal to spread resurrection mayor fame.
He would regale bus loads of tour takers with the tale,
even driving them down Archer Avenue in the dead of night.

(01:10:11):
This helped transition Mary from a niche local spook story
into a must hear Chicago attraction. One could say Crow
turned Mary into a pillar of Chicago's ghost lore, inspiring
subsequent authors and researchers to dig deeper. The media also

(01:10:32):
played a pivotal role. We've mentioned Bill Geist's nineteen seventy
nine column and The Tribune's nineteen eighties coverage. Additionally, around
Halloween nineteen seventy five and nineteen eighty five, Chicago newspapers
ran features on local hauntings that included Mary. For example,

(01:10:55):
the story Hunting a Ghost Named Mary in the Tribune
on October thirty first, nineteen eighty five. TV news got
in on the act two. On Halloween nineteen eighty four,
CBS Chicago ran a segment where reporter Bob Wallace went
ghost hunting at Resurrection Cemetery with Dale Kasmarak. They filmed

(01:11:20):
the bent Gate Bars and recounted Mary's legend for the
Evening News, bringing her story into countless living rooms. Then
came national television in nineteen ninety four, and BC's Unsolved
Mysteries devoted a segment to Resurrection Mary. The show re

(01:11:41):
enacted Jerry Paullis's nineteen thirty nine encounter, even using actual
interview footage of Paulus himself from nineteen eighty six. They
spoke with Richard Crowe and others. This episode left a
searing impression on viewers across the country, myself included, who

(01:12:01):
first learned of Mary from the legendarily eerie voice of
Robert Stack narrating her tale. The segment presented Mary's story
in a sympathetic but spooky way, complete with foggy cemetery dramatizations.
It undeniably sparked renewed interest and probably a few copycat

(01:12:25):
reports as well. Several witnesses interviewed in the eighties and
nineties admitted they'd grown up hearing the story on television
or from a family member, yet never thought they'd see
Mary themselves until they did. This illustrates an interesting feedback loop.

(01:12:55):
Media exposure perpetuates the legend, which in turn generates new
reports which keep the media interested. Folklore often works this way,
especially in the modern era. Every ghost special or article
breathes fresh life, so to speak, into Mary, ensuring new

(01:13:19):
generations learn the legend. Chicago's own cultural context also helped
to sustain resurrection. Mary. The areas linked to her Willow Springs, Justice,
Archer Avenue, the old dance halls are rich with immigrant
history and spiritual traditions. Many residents historically were Catholic, Polish, Lithuanian, Irish,

(01:13:46):
et cetera, for whom the idea of spirits and prayers
for the dead are taken seriously. In such communities, a
ghost story might be met with more open minds or
at least curiosity. The fact that Mary is tied to
a Catholic cemetery is no accident. Tales of ghosts and

(01:14:10):
graveyards resonate with cultural views on restless souls and the afterlife. Additionally,
Archer Avenue has long had a reputation among locals as
a haunted highway. Besides Mary, there are other ghost stories
along that route, including a famous tale of phantom monks

(01:14:32):
near Saint James Church and the haunted Chet's Melody Lounge
claiming its own resident spirits. This concentration of lore gives
the whole area a mystique. People driving there at night
already have goosebumps primed to possibly see something. One cannot

(01:14:54):
ignore the role of business and tourism in keeping Mary's
story in circulation. Ghost tourism took off in Chicago by
the nineteen eighties, with companies offering ghost tours by bus
or foot. Mary was invariably the star attraction on these tours,

(01:15:14):
especially the ones that ventured to the South Side. Tour
guides like Crow and later companies such as Chicago Hauntings
Tours and American Ghost Walks proudly feature Resurrection Mary on
their itineraries. They know it's the crowd pleaser, the legend
everyone wants to hear on a dark October night. Even

(01:15:40):
Chet's Melody Lounge, the tavern across the street from Resurrection Cemetery,
has leaned into the legend. As local lore has it,
every Sunday, the staff at Chet's mixes a Bloody Mary
cocktail and leaves it at the end of the bar
with an empty stool reserved just in case Mary stops in.

(01:16:06):
It's a tongue in cheek tribute that doubles as great publicity.
Customers and ghost hunters pop in, especially around Halloween, hoping
to catch a glimpse or at least share a drink
with the idea of Mary. This is folklore as a

(01:16:27):
living economic phenomenon, the ghost story actually brings patrons and
tourism dollars. Crucially, most who participate in these traditions know
Mary's existence is unproven. The owners of chets or the
tour guides don't claim to have hard evidence their trading

(01:16:51):
in atmosphere and narrative, which, by the way, is the
stock in trade of terrifying and true. Folklorist and author
Adam Selzer, who has researched Chicago's ghosts, emphasizes that one
must separate the fun of the legend from the fact.

(01:17:12):
In Mary's case, he found that some supposed facts, like
Mary Muskowski's death, turned out to be pure fiction. Selzer
and others caution that many details get mythologized over time.
For example, one recent author recounted a cabby in the

(01:17:34):
early two thousands hearing a girl say the snow came
early this year, clearly the same line from Bill Geist's
nineteen seventy nine story, just transplanted decades later. This suggests
that later storytellers might simply be rehashing older anecdotes, unknowingly

(01:17:58):
or not. Folklore is fluid. Stories migrate and transform. Resurrection.
Mary is as much a cultural phenomenon as a paranormal one.
The legend has been nurtured by community storytelling, amplified by
the media, and even commemorated in popular culture. In this way,

(01:18:23):
Mary will likely never die so long as people enjoy
a good spooky story. She has transcended being a mere
ghost sighting to become a piece of Chicago's cultural heritage,
a shared narrative that connects generations. We'd be remiss if

(01:18:48):
we didn't talk a little bit about how Resurrection Mary
has put a dark and spooky grip on the broader
popular culture and created a lasting life legacy of mystery
and fear. As one of America's most famous ghost legends,

(01:19:15):
Resurrection Mary has unsurprisingly inspired books, films, music, and other media.
Here are a few ways Mary's spectral presence has permeated
popular culture, along with how the legend continues to impact
the living. In literature, Mary's story anchors numerous ghost story

(01:19:40):
anthologies and books, particularly about Chicago lore. Notable examples include
Chicago Haunts by Ursula Bielski nineteen ninety seven, which devotes
a chapter to Mary, and Resurrection Mary, a ghost Story
by Keenan Heisten, which examines the legend. In depth paranormal

(01:20:04):
authors like Troy Taylor have written extensively on Mary in
books and online articles, exploring both sightings and identity theories.
Each retelling in print helps cement Mary's place among legendary
American ghosts. Even kids books of urban Legends mention her

(01:20:26):
as the vanishing Hitchhiker of Illinois, ensuring the tale reaches
new audiences as far as television documentaries and dramatizations go.
Aside from unsolved mysteries, Mary appeared in a nineteen eighty
five episode of Arthur C. Clarke's World of Strange Powers,

(01:20:49):
a British TV series on the paranormal. That episode featured
interviews with witnesses and investigators in a serious documentary see
In two thousand seven, a public TV programme called The
Hauntings of Chicago devoted time to Mary's tale, including interviews

(01:21:11):
with Ursula Bielski and on site footage at Resurrection Cemetery.
Countless cable TV countdowns of top hauntings on Travel Channel
and the like include Resurrection Mary among their highlights. Each Halloween,
local Chicago news reliably recalls the story for viewers, sometimes

(01:21:35):
rerunning classic segments or updating with any new sightings. In
the world of feature film, Mary's legend inspired at least
two independent horror films in the early two thousands. One
film titled Simply Resurrection Mary from two thousand five, directed

(01:21:57):
by Shawn Michael Bayer, presented a fiction horror plot about
a group of friends encountering Mary's ghost on a road trip.
The filmmakers took creative liberties, for example portraying Mary as
a vengeful spirit harming the living, which is not part
of the traditional legend. Another independent project in two thousand

(01:22:21):
and five with the same title by Michael Lansu, also
attempted to adapt the story, even filming scenes at Chet's
Melody Lounge for authenticity. While these films didn't make a
large splash, they show the narrative's appeal. Even if they

(01:22:41):
weren't critical successes. They contribute to the cult following of
the Mary mythos among horror officionados. Additionally, Mary's story has
been referenced in TV fiction. For instance, an episode of
the series Supernatural in two thousand five featured a vanishing

(01:23:01):
hitchhiker ghost. Though not called Mary, it was clearly riffing
on the archetype so in a sense, Mary's DNA is
present in many vanishing hitchhiker tropes on screen. Even folk
songs and poems sometimes arise around local legends. There have

(01:23:23):
been a few lesser known songs titled Resurrection Mary and
references to her in Chicago inspired music one tongue in cheek. Example,
musician Ian Hunter wrote a rock song called Resurrection Mary
in nineteen ninety five, spinning the tale of the ghost
Girl into lyrics, a testament to how widely the story

(01:23:49):
had spread. The phrase itself, Resurrection Mary has a kind
of poetic ring that has been used in everything from
bar names to a brand of beer on the South Side.
The legend's imagery a lonely road, a flowing white dress,

(01:24:09):
a graveyard at night is richly evocative, and thus has
permeated creative and imaginative works. In recent years, Resurrection Mary
has found new life online. TikTok videos claiming to capture
shadowy figures on Archer Avenue or recounting late night drives

(01:24:33):
near Resurrection Cemetery have racked up millions of views on Reddit,
particularly an r slash Paranormal and r slash Unresolved Mysteries.
Users continue to share personal experiences or second hand tales
about the ghostly hitchhiker. While some are clear retellings of

(01:24:56):
older accounts, others appear to be genuine in modern sightings
or at least modern interpretations of classic ones. YouTube channels
focused on urban legends have produced video essays exploring Mary's
possible identities, while ghost hunting ticktokers stage late night stakouts

(01:25:18):
at the cemetery gates. This shift shows that Mary's legend,
like all good folklore, adapts to each generation's storytelling tools.
In the age of digital campfires, she remains a compelling
and shareable specter. Perhaps Mary's greatest impact is how strongly

(01:25:42):
She's been identified with Chicago folklore. She is to Chicago
what the Headless Horseman is to Sleepy Hollow, or what
Bigfoot is to the Pacific Northwest. A flagship legend. The
village of Justice, Illinois, where Resurrection Cemetery is located, often

(01:26:03):
finds itself included in top Haunted Places lists Because of Mary.
Ghost tour buses still crawl Archer Avenue on weekends in October,
their guides telling Mary's story to wide eyed passengers as
they travel past the cemetery. The now destroyed willow Brook

(01:26:31):
Ballroom site has also become a stop on tours, especially
after twenty sixteen, both to mourn the loss of the
venue and to honor its ghostly patroness. The anecdote of
the dancing shoes left after the fire shows how deeply
ingrained Mary is in local memory. The community's sadness at

(01:26:56):
the ballroom's loss was intertwined with Mary's airsnarrative, as if
not only had a historic dance hall burned down, but
the spiritual home of resurrection Mary had. Two groups like
the Ghost Research Society led by Dale Kasmarak, still keep
Mary on their radar. Kasmarak himself has collected thousands of

(01:27:22):
accounts of Mary, by his estimate, and he encourages anyone
who believes they've seen her to report it. While sightings
have indeed dropped off since the nineteen eighties, some credit
the installation of brighter street lights on Archer Avenue in
nineteen eighty five, which made ghostly apparitions much less common,

(01:27:47):
the legend persists. Every so often, a story pops up
on an online forum or in a local paper about
a new resurrection Mary sighting. For example, a two thousand
and five report in a Lithuanian language newspaper claimed Mary's

(01:28:08):
ghost showed up back at the Willowbrook Ballroom, dancing with
a wedding guest, then vanishing on the ride home. The
ballroom staff treated it with a mix of seriousness and humor,
even joking that Mary might haunt the ball room itself
given the occasional unexplained slam of doors or flicker of lights.

(01:28:34):
So Mary has by no means been retired from ghostly duty.
She still apparently makes her rounds now and then, or
at least people still attribute strange occurrences to her. What
is perhaps most enduring about Resurrection Mary is how she

(01:28:58):
balances spookiness and sadness. Her story is undeniably eerie, a
lone figure appearing in the dead of night, yet it's
also tragic and sympathetic. She isn't portrayed as a malevolent spirit. Rather,

(01:29:18):
she's seen as a lost soul, perpetually trying to get
home or back to where she belongs. As Cosmarrek noted,
she seems to realize at the cemetery gate that that
is where she belongs, and then she disappears. This image

(01:29:40):
of Mary has a kind of melancholy romance to it,
one that keeps people fascinated. There's even a touch of
chivalry in the story, drivers trying to help a young
woman in need, only to discover she was beyond help.
It plays into themes of compassion, regret, and the thin

(01:30:05):
veil between life and death. In the end, Resurrection Mary
endures because her legend is adaptable and deeply human. It
taps into the fear of the unknown on dark roads,
the grief for young lives cut short, and the wonder

(01:30:25):
about what lies beyond. It's a ghost story that has
transcended generations, maintained by those who love to be scared
and those who simply love a good mystery. Chicago, renowned
for its diverse cultural heritage, gave birth to Resurrection Mary,

(01:30:49):
a figure now celebrated as one of the world's most
captivating and haunting tales. On a chilly night, if you've
find yourself driving northeast along Archer Avenue past Resurrection Cemetery,
you might feel a prickling on the back of your neck.

(01:31:12):
Perhaps you'll glance at the empty passenger seat in your
car and imagine, just for a moment, a quiet young
woman sitting there. The rational mind knows it's just a legend.
But the power of Resurrection Mary is that she makes

(01:31:33):
you wonder what if? Tonight We've peeled back the layers
of this famous ghost story. We saw how an oral
legend from the nineteen thirties evolved into a city wide
phenomenon by the nineteen seventies, buoyed by real people's testimonies

(01:31:54):
and a healthy dose of media intrigue. We track the
historical candidates Mary, Brogovi and Anorchis and others, each contributing
their own threads to the intricate mystery of Mary's identity. However,
none of these threads emerged as the sought after golden thread.

(01:32:18):
We put the sightings under a microscope, finding plenty of consistency,
but no concrete proof, reminding us that anecdote is not
the same as evidence. We also acknowledge the vibrant folklore machine,
the storytellers, the newspapers, the tours, the podcasts that keeps

(01:32:41):
Mary's story fresh and captivating. We've tried to be clear
about where established facts end an urban legend begins. Resurrection
Mary is likely an amalgam of truth and tale. There
was a Bregovi who died tragically in nineteen thirty four,

(01:33:05):
and an Anna Norkis, who perished returning from a dance
in nineteen twenty seven. Their stories undeniably fed the legend's creation.
There were dozens of sober, respectable folks who swore on
their honor they encountered something uncanny on Archer Avenue. We

(01:33:28):
have their words, even if we can't verify their experiences
from a scientific perspective. With all that being said, without doubt,
Resurrection Mary has made a cultural impact, evident in everything
from haunted barstools to film scripts to faded green paint

(01:33:50):
on a pair of bent cemetery gates. All of these
are real in their own way. Yet the goat ghost
herself that remains a matter of personal belief. Skeptics will
say Mary is just a classic urban legend, a story

(01:34:11):
that grew in the telling, reinforced by coincidence and imagination.
Believers will counter that there are simply too many matching
reports over too long a time to dismiss that perhaps
some restless spirit truly walks Archer Avenue. Even if we

(01:34:33):
can't name her with certainty, we can verify the historical
context and relay the eyewitness accounts, but we cannot solve
the supernatural riddle. Resurrection Mary dwells in that liminal space
where history and folklore intertwine. One thing is certain, however,

(01:34:57):
the legend of Resurrection Mary has become a part of
Chicago's identity, its story told around camp fires, in tour
buses and on front porches each Halloween. It's a wink
in the local bar and a shiver on the lonely
road at night. In that sense, Mary is very much alive,

(01:35:25):
kept alive by community memory and the enduring thrill of
a spooky tale well told. So the next time you're
driving past an old cemetery late at night and you
spot a lone figure by the roadside, think of Resurrection Mary.

(01:35:48):
You might be witnessing a piece of living folklore, or
you might just be seeing things. Either way, you've become
part of the story. Another driver on Archer Avenue with
goosebumps check in the rear view mirror for a vanishing

(01:36:14):
girl in a white dress. And as long as those
goosebumps prickle and that story is shared, Resurrection Mary will
never truly die. Terrifying and true is narrated by Enrique Kuto.

(01:36:34):
It's executive produced by Rob Fields and bobble Toopia dot
com and produced by Dan Wilder with original theme music
by Ray Mattis. If you have a story you think
we should cover on Terrifying and True, send us an
email at Weekly Spooky at gmail dot com, and if
you want to support us for as little as one
dollar a month, go to Weeklyspooky dot com slash join.

(01:36:56):
Your support for as little as one dollar a month
keeps the show going and speak think of. I want
to say an extra special thank you to our Patreon
podcast boosters, folks who pay a little bit more to
hear their name at the end of the show, and
they are Johnny Nix, Kate and Lulu, Jessica Fuller, Mike Escuey,
Jenny Green, Amber Hansburg, Karen we Met, Jack Ker, and
Craig Cohen. Thank you all so much, and thank you

(01:37:18):
for listening. We'll see you all right here next time
on Terrifying and True

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Terrifying & True | Resurrection Mary: The True Story of Chicago’s Vanishing Hitchhiker Ghost | Uncovering Urban Legends

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Terrifying & True | Resurrection Mary: The True Story of Chicago’s Vanishing Hitchhiker Ghost | Uncovering Urban Legends