Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery
Bachelor’s Grove (a.k.a. Bachelor Grove or Batchelor Grove) Cemetery is one of the oldest and most storied cemeteries in the Chicago metropolitan area. In 2012, it was featured on a popular paranormal-themed television show, which spread the cemetery’s notoriety to the furthest corners of the United States.
Bachelor’s Grove reputedly hosts several ghosts, including a disappearing house within the woods surrounding the cemetery, the spirit of a plow horse and farmer that drowned in the duckweed-choked slough bordering the north side of the cemetery, two different ghostly women, phantom vehicles on both the old Midlothian Turnpike — now a crumbling asphalt path leading to the cemetery entrance — and a stretch of the current Midlothian Turnpike just north of the slough, a black dog, glowing orbs, a two-headed creature, and more. The slough is also reputed to be a former corpse dumping ground for the mafia, and it’s not difficult to imagine 1920s-era sedans on the Midlothian Turnpike slowing to dump the weighed bodies of mafia victims into the slough before speeding back to Chicago. The remains of house foundations and wells in the woods to the west of the cemetery further lend mystery to the land.
