Resurrection Mary - Fact or Fiction? A tale nearly everyone has heard. The story of a beautiful woman walking along Archer Avenue, near Resurrection Cemetery, all alone. She is picked up by passers-by, who notice she is wearing clothes not of this time period. Upon pulling up to her home, she gets out of the car, leaving her scarf behind. When the driver looks up, she’s gone. Returning to the home to return the scarf, the driver becomes terrified when he finds out that Mary has been dead for many years.
Another version of the story is that a beautiful young woman entrances a man in a local dance hall. They dance all night long, with few words exchanged. Her
body, cold as ice as the man holds her close while they dance. At closing time, he offers her a ride home. As they pass by Resurrection Cemetery, she screams for him to stop the car. The driver, shaken, stops the car suddenly. “Mary” gets out, walking towards the cemetery, and “disappears”.
Many different forms of the legend have circulated for years, but just who was Resurrection Mary? One of the many legends say she was as young Polish
girl, perhaps named Mary Bregovy. Mary died in an automobile accident in 1934. She was killed on Wacker Drive in downtown Chicago, which is not in the same
neighborhood as Archer Avenue. It has also been said that it was VERY unlikely that she was on her way home from the local ballroom.
Another “Mary” legend is that she was a twelve year old Polish girl, named Anna Norkus, who went by Marija, for her devotion to Mary, the mother of Jesus. For her
birthday, she begged her father to take her to the Willowbrook Ballroom. Tragically, they were both killed on their way home from the ballroom. This story is slightly more plausable, however, “Resurrection Mary” is described as an adult woman, not a pre-teen young woman.
Other researchers have discovered stories of women named Mary who died on or around Archer Avenue, but none of them before the first “sightings” in 1930. Is,
“Resurrection Mary”, Mary Bregovy, Marjia, or another “Mary” longing for her story to be told or is she simply a great “ghost story” that has been passed down from generation to generation? We may never know. Visit Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois - if you dare!
The vanishing hitchhiker legend has been told for centuries throughout the world, even as far away as Hawaii, where the volcano goddess Pele wonders the highways in search of ride. The first ghostly hitchhiker in print seems to appear in a manuscript held in the Linkoping Library in Sweden. It is dated 1602 and called On the Signs and Wonders Preceding the Liturgy Broil, by Joan Petri Klint. The chapter in question was collected by one of Klint's acquaintances, which were traveling back from the Candlemas fair at Vastergotland to Vadstena by sleigh when he and three other men spotted a fair young lady walking the lonely roadside; they picked her up and stopped off at an inn. Each time the girl was given a pitcher of beer, it would miraculously transmute: first, it turned into malt, then into acorns, and finally blood. She suddenly prophesized and disappeared from the inn.
A similar story appears in the English ballad called A Suffolk Wonder, from 1723. In the ballad, a young lady was picked up by her lover on horseback. When he complained of a headache, she tied her handkerchief around his head. Later that night, when she spoke to her parents they confessed that the boy had died days earlier and had already been buried when she accepted the ride. At some point, the reader learns that the handkerchief was still around her beloved’s head in his grave.
Pele
In Hawaiian mythology, Pele is the goddess of fire, lightning, dance, violence and especially volcanoes. A mortal, her father banished her from their home in Tahiti because of her bad temper when her and her water-goddess sister Namaka got into a confrontation after Pele had seduced her brother-in-law. Her shark-god brother would move her to different islands, but every time she set up a volcanic home, her sister would flood it. Finally, her sister tore her apart in a battle at Hana, Maui. Pele became a goddess and found a home at Mauna Kea in Hawaii. She is associated with Pere, the goddess of fire from the Cook Islands, and Oya, the Yoruba goddess representing the Niger River. To this day, she shares common attributes with a ghostly hitchhiker. She enjoys going to social events, but is fiercely competitive when she doesn’t get her man. She is often believed to appear alongside a road as either a beautiful maiden or an old woman, sometimes accompanied by a white dog. Those who give her a ride are often blessed, but those who deny her are cursed.
