The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - Real Life Encounters with Resurrection Mary | Chicagos Most Famous Ghost

Episode Date: August 9, 2024

Is Resurrection Mary a true story or just an urban legend? Experience the chilling tale of Resurrection Mary, Chicago's most famous ghost story. Uncover the legend of the mysterious hitchhiker in white who haunts Archer Avenue and Resurrection Cemetery. With eyewitness accounts and historical context, this video delves into one of the most enduring and eerie urban legends. Are these encounters real, or just the product of overactive imaginations? Watch now to uncover the truth behind Chicago's legendary ghost. Support the channel with Patreon - www.patreon.com/thetapelibrary Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at [e-mail] You can check out The Tape Library in video form at www.youtube.com/thetapelibrary Main Sources for this episode - The Resurrection Mary Files + The Ghosts of Chicago by Adam Selzer Unsolved Mysteries - https://youtu.be/zesNBbcmCEE Astonishing Legends - https://youtu.be/My0Y2jI-ZzI The Hauntings of Chicago - https://youtu.be/y3C4Beq3ywE Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. The Tape Library brings you the creepiest stories, to keep you horror junkies up all night. True scary stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and true crime. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Singularity, Midjourney and Pexels. All other footage used under fair use. CHAPTERS 00:00 Unsolved Mysteries 00:21 Jerry Paulus 04:29 Welcome To The Tape Library 05:45 The Woman in White 10:47 The Legend Begins 15:56 A Part of the City 20:38 No Face 22:59 Don't Be Afraid of Mary 25:20 What Really Happened? 28:14 Who is Resurrection Mary? 31:55 Wrapping Up Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Twy-long, most night, you're on a dark, lonely road. The shadow was king to reach for you. The sudden, Roswell leaves that you jump. Your heart is faster, faster. You're still with your imagination. The last year of the Rovey Resurrection Sanitary, just south west of Chicago. The 1930s in Chicago were coming to an end as Jerry Paulus was out with friends at the Liberty Grove Ballroom. But Jerry's attention wasn't with his friends.

It was instead focused on the beautiful young woman, standing on the far side of the dance hall. Her blonde hair resting on her shoulders with curls either side. Her white dress almost seemed to glow in the dim light of the room. Jerry noticed as the band played that she didn't appear to be with anyone, simply standing alone, watching everyone else have fun. So Jerry, a man who was apparently something of a self-professed ladies' man, decided to approach her. The woman agreed to dance but barely said anything as she did. Still, something about her captivated Jerry, who didn't return to his friends at all that night.

Instead, he danced at every song with the woman who he came to know as Mary. She did tell him that she lived on the south side of town. but was strangely very coy about revealing anything else about herself, but there was something that Jerry noticed about her. She was cold. Very cold. Not in the sense that she appeared to be shivering or anything, but as their hands touched her skin, felt icy cold.

Still, the stilted conversation and slightly odd behavior of Mary did nothing to dissuade Jerry. As the band played their last number, Jerry offered to give Mary a lift home, to which she agreed. They walked along the street towards Jerry's car, and Mary asked him to take her down Archer Avenue, a long stretch of road that happens to run past Chicago's Resurrection Cemetery. But Mary had already told him where she lived, which was an address in South Damon. Jerry questioned this, but Mary was insistent that she wanted to go to Archer Avenue, so Jerry began to drive that way.

Again, Mary barely said a word as the pair traveled down the at-the-time quiet area of the city. Jerry's attempts at conversation went nowhere, until Mary suddenly told him to stop the car. Jerry was confused but pulled over anyway, and Mary started telling him that she needed to get out. Jerry was perplexed. What had he done to upset her so badly that she was happy to just jump out? Miles from her home in the middle of the night.

Mary told Jerry to stay where he was, that he shouldn't follow. Jerry, who had jumped out to open Mary's door, stood in front of his car, as the girl slowly began to walk through the entrance to the cemetery, before vanishing, into nothingness, before his very eyes. Jerry went home alone that night. Obviously he didn't get much sleep. He was tossing and turning, trying to make sense of what he had just seen. When the sun came up the following morning, Jerry decided that he needed answers.

So he headed to the address that Mary had originally given him. There, an older woman answered the door. Jerry asked her if a woman named Mary lived there, but she said she didn't. As the woman was about to close the door, he noticed a photograph in her living room. There in the frame was Mary. The man questioned this and the woman became upset about his insistence. She finally told him that Mary was her daughter, but it can't have been her that he met last night. She had died years before.

Jerry had just met one of Chicago's most famous residents, the vanishing hitchhiker that would go on to be known as Resurrection Mary. Welcome to the tape library. We've got a good old-fashioned spooky one tonight that was requested by a few of you. Tonight we're getting into the story of Resurrection Mary, either one of the most widely reported ghosts spotted in all of America, or simply just a creepy Chicago urban legend. The story of Jerry Paulus was made famous in the 90s by Unsolved Mysteries.

But we're going to be getting into as many of the recorded sightings of Mary as we can, along with discussing the various theories about who this ghostly woman could be. I wouldn't have been able to put this together without the book, The Ghosts of Chicago, by a local historian and tour guide, Adam Selzer, who did a great job collecting these accounts together. Some are simply brief sightings, others are much more detailed accounts of what I'm. happened. But what is so interesting about this tale compared to your average urban legend is just how many of the stories appear to come from first-hand accounts, rather than a friend of a

friend who spotted something unexplained. So let's get into it, shall we? Get yourself a drink, dim the lights and get comfortable. It's time to meet Chicago's most famous ghost. This is the story of resurrection Mary. Before Mary became Mary, There was another reported woman in White who would be spotted along Archer Avenue that sent James of the Sag Cemetery, the largest active cemetery of the time back in 1897. A church fair was taking place in a large dance hall at the base of a hill near the police station in the area known as the Sag Valley. Two musicians from Chicago, a professor William Looney and John Kelly, were hired to perform that day. However, it was a long trip back home for both men so they decided to spend the night and set up cots on the upper floor of the dance hall.

They were awoken around 1 o'clock in the morning by an unexpected sound. Horses galloping and the rattle of a carriage passing by the building. They rushed to the window and could see nothing. The moonlight leaving most of the graveyard around them brightly lit, revealing an empty room. road in front of them. Yet they could still hear the sound of the horse's hoof scalloping along the road, growing closer and closer as it did, but there was nothing there. Until the sound went past the dance hall and disappeared off into the distance. There was a moment of silence as the two men retreated from the window, obviously a little confused by what they had just experienced. But before they could

comfortable in their cots. The sound suddenly returned. Once again the two men rushed to the window and yet again they saw no horses but this time they did see a woman. Standing in the centre of the road dressed in white she appeared to be floating around. Her legs not moving as she glided gracefully down the road. In one major a difference from later reports of a ghostly woman on Archer Avenue. This woman had dark black hair rather than blonde. The Chicago Tribune wrote a story about the incident and described her in incredible fashion as having deep melancholy reflected from sepulchral eyes, which rolled about with that hollow intensity indicative of some soul-eating despair. But eventually, the sound of the horses did appear to have a source. The men claimed to some sort of some sort of suddenly see a group of white horses, running along with light shining from their foreheads, pulling behind them a dark carriage that did not appear to have a driver.

As it passed by the woman, she raised her arms and held out her palms. She had been progressively moving closer and closer to the two men during this whole period, and was now no more than 20 feet away, when she suddenly just vanished into the ground, along with the horse and carriage, leaving the men sitting there in stunned silence. As Selza points out in his book, the unfortunately named Mr. Looney was quoted as saying, I am willing to make affidavit to the truth of this story,

and I will go further and say I am willing to tell the priest it is the truth. Marshal Ed Cohen of the police was quoted as saying, both Kelly and Looney are fine young men. and I have no reason to disbelieve any statement they have made. I do not believe there was any practical joke involved. That would be too dangerous in this area. Everyone out here carries weapons. Anyone foolish enough to try such a prank would likely be shot.

This wasn't the first reported incident of a spirit being accompanied by a horse down Archer Avenue though. Again, as Selta notes, in early December of the same year, workers at the drainage canal unnerved the bodies of nine Native Americans. Scientists who examined them determined the bones were several hundred years old and noted that one skeleton belonged to a man who stood seven feet tall. The New York Times reported that this wasn't the first occurrence of skeletons being found in the area. Nine years earlier, other skeletons had been discovered in the same area and reburied after residents around Sag Bridge,

complained that the ghosts of not. Native Americans were riding around on horseback, demanding that their bones be reinterred. Years later in the early 1930s, there started to become reports of a strange woman dressed in a white ball gown with blonde hair, who would appear as people drove down Archer Avenue late at night, jumping on the running boards that ran alongside the old-fashioned cars and effectively hitching a ride for a few moments, terrifying the drivers as she appeared and disappeared, seemingly out of nowhere. The stories began to spread, and at some time in the early 1930s, we got the first part of a recurring theme in the merry folklore, as reported in a later issue of California folklore quarterly.

A woman claimed she had already heard the strange stories about the woman coming from that area when she was driving along and saw someone trying to hitchhike who matched a similar description. The woman did pull over to offer her assistance to the lone girl. The girl climbed into the car and asked to be taken to a specific address. But before they got too far, the driver and other passengers turned to discover that the hitchhiker they had just picked up was gone. Much like Jerry Paulus years later, the confused girl. group decided to visit the address she had given. Sure enough, when they got there, they discovered

a woman matching that description had lived there. But that she was dead. No specific mention of this woman's appearance appears to have been made in the report, though. The appearance of this woman in Wyatt started to be reported closer and closer to the Old Henry Ballroom, which would later be renamed the Willowbrook Ballroom. It started with people seeing her close by, but then others began telling stories of seeing a strange lone woman in white inside the ballroom, including one doorman who would claim to never see her arrive or leave. She would just show up inside somehow. In 1935, a 24-year-old man named William was questioned by police after overturning his car right by the O'Henry Ballroom. The reason he gave for the accident was unusual to say the least.

He claimed that he was driving past when he saw a woman standing at the side of the road, attempting to hitchhike. It was only when he got closer that William realised something was wrong. In his words, he said, she leered from sightless eyes and jerked a bony thumb. Her appearance scared him so badly that he swerved the car, crashing into a post and flipping his vehicle over. No one else on the street that day. saw any woman. In the late 1940s, one caretaker at Resurrection Cemetery started claiming he had seen a ghost

while doing his nightly rounds. He described her as a beautiful girl roaming around the cemetery. Then in the 1950s, an incident very similar to Jerry's happened, when a young man met a girl at the Willowbrook Ballroom and offered to take her home. Once again, she asked her, to be taken up Archer Avenue. Apparently as they passed the gates of the cemetery, the woman began screaming, loudly. The young man panicked, unsure what was wrong. But when he turned to speak to her, she was gone. Over the decades, this has become something of a recurring theme for witnesses of Mary. They would pick up a girl out hitchhiking alone at night, as they travel down Archer Avenue with her. She would either jump out of the car and run off into the cemetery, or just totally

vanished from the passenger seat. Another witness seemingly witnessed Mary out on a night on the town, when Bob Main was sat in a nightclub not too far from Resurrection Cemetery in 1973, when a young woman walked in, blonde curly hair down to her shoulders, white pale skin, and a yellowing gown that Bob described as like a wedding dress that had been left in the sun for too long. Several of the regulars made note of her. She showed up on more than one occasion. Each time she did, she refused to talk to anyone.

Instead, spending the entire evening, either just watching the other dancers, or pirouetting around the dance floor alone. The people that did try and engage with her said it was as if she looked right through them, almost as though she didn't recognise they were even there. Chet's Melody Lounge is a bar right by a Resurrection Cemetery and has opened its doors to sightseers with an interest in a paranormal.

Throughout the decades they have been very open about not just talking about their own experiences of C.A. Mary, but of the confused people who wander in through their doors, unsure of what they just witnessed, and needing a stiff drink. In fact, they would often leave a bloody Mary at the end of the bar for her, a tradition that started back in the 70s when a confused taxi driver came running in one night, saying that a blonde woman in a white dress

had just jumped out of his cab and running to the bar. The owner was there alone that night. He simply sat the taxi driver down and told him that he had just met Resurrection Mary. Stories throughout the 70s seem to grow stranger still, with many reporting seeing a blonde woman in a gown dancing down the street alone, or jumping into passerby's cars when they would stop at traffic lights, before rambling gibberish at them and running away. 1976 would see the most well-known incident take place outside of Jerry's encounter back in the 30s, and that would be of the melted bars. Patrolman Pat Homer was working the area back in August of that year

when he received a phone call telling him he needed a head to Resurrection Cemetery. They had been getting reports that the cemetery had been locked up for the night with a blonde woman and a white dress still trapped inside. When he arrived he could find no trace of the woman. But when he went to the fence where she had been reported as being seen, the metal bars on the fence had been bent apart with black scorch marks on either side.

Some report that you could clearly see handprints burned into the metal that appeared to either belong to a child or a small woman. The bent fence railings stayed like that for years and became something of a photo opportunity for the growing number of Mary infusers. Later in the 70s, reports started to come in about hit and runs. People were claiming to see a woman in a white dress who looked like she had been hit by a car.

car, only for her to be gone when the police arrived, while another claimed that a woman had run at their car, before bursting into flames and then vanishing. A more detailed account was given by a taxi driver named Ralph, as part of a story for the Chicago Tribune back in 1979, which was later re-enacted in the Unsolved Mysteries episode. Ralph was driving a few blocks away from the Willowbrook ballroom on a cold January night, and he was a little lost. When he noticed something that caught his attention, at the side of the road there was a woman, blonde and in her early 20s, and not wearing any sort of coat in the bitter Chicago winter. She didn't hail the cab down or anything, but Ralph was obviously a little concerned,

and decided to pull over anyway. He asked her where she was going. to which she replied in an almost dazed manner that she was going home. When Ralph asked where home was, she wouldn't answer. Ralph said that if she could direct him out of here, then he would take her to where she needed to go. The woman silently got into the car. She still hadn't told him where she needed to go, so Ralph just continued to drive up Archer.

He kept asking her, should he just keep heading straight, to which she would just nod. She barely said another word to him through their brief time together. Although Ralph does recall that at one point she just said unprompted that the snows came early this year, despite there being no snow on the road.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, she just started shouting. Here, here. Ralph asked where? He couldn't see any houses nearby. She gestured to him to pull over. He glanced around again looking for a possible home, but when he looked back at the girl, she was gone.

Ralph never heard the door open. He couldn't see her out on the road. She had just vanished. The ballroom he had picked her up by earlier that night would be closed for two weeks following that, on account of a blizzard that covered the area in thick snow. Taxi drivers would spot strange women in white dresses dancing alone

in the locked cemetery late at night. Drivers would spot her walking along the side of the road on occasion telling them if they spoke with her that she just needed to get further up archer. One man named Tony who had given her a ride even joked with her that she looked like Resurrection Mary. He never got to see her reaction to this because when he turned to look at her, the passenger seat was of course empty.

Just days after that encounter, we get another that was featured in the Unsolved Mysteries episode. The story in the episode is kept rather short, but years later, one of the witnesses from that night would give a more detailed interview to the podcast, Astonishing Legends. Mark Rudnicki, his girlfriend, his sister Claire, and her husband were heading home late one evening. It was a September night in 1979 as they drove down our Archer Avenue. It was around midnight and they were driving close to Resurrection Cemetery. The road was dark with few streetlights around. Suddenly Mark, who was driving, felt his girlfriend grab his arm.

She didn't say a word but then suddenly Claire began shouting from the back seat. Resurrection Mary. Resurrection Mary. Over and over again. Mark looked to his right and there he saw her. At first it just looked like a glowing light to him. But as they drew closer it became clear that this was a short young blonde girl, wearing a cream-coloured dress. But somehow, it was like her body was glowing.

She was walking off the road several feet away in a rough, grassy patch of ground. But Mark notes that she was moving so smoothly. almost as if she were gliding along on roller skates. As they drove past, Mark looked back and made an even more disturbing observation. This woman didn't have her face. Or at least where her face should be was just shrouded in darkness. A black, featureless hole. At the first opportunity, Mark spun the car around to head back to get another look,

despite his girlfriend pleading with him not to. As he did, another car that had been driving behind them did the same. Mark locked eyes with the driver, and without words they both knew that they were not alone in seeing what they had just seen. The two cars went back to the spot. Only moments had passed, but the woman was nowhere to be seen. Mark's girlfriend was so shaken by the events that she slept in her mother's bed for weeks after the fact. Sightings of Mary continue to be reported throughout the 80s. Either close to Resurrection Cemetery or by the Ballroom.

In 1989 we get the accounts of Pam Turlow, another witness to was interviewed by Unolved Mysteries. This encounter is a little different for a few reasons. One of which is that it involves two women in the car. The folklore at this point surrounding Mary was that she seemed to mostly only appear if a man were driving. Pam and her friends saw a woman with flowing hair in a white dress walking through Resurrection Cemetery as they drove past

when suddenly out of nowhere she appeared in front of them running out into the road Pam slammed on the brakes but she still hit the woman but weirdly there was no sound no impact and when they got out of the car to check if she was okay

there was no woman. Sightings of Mary continue into the present day, even though her beloved ballroom has since burned down. However, particularly in recent years, this has been muddled by people dressing up and running around pretending to be the fabled resurrection Mary, casting some doubt on what stories have any truth to them, but after nearly a century of appearances,

or even more depending on what sighting you officially count as her first appearance. Resurrection Mary has become an infamous character within Chicago's folklore. The story of Mary seems to differ depending on who you talk to. One of the most common recountings of her involves her asking to borrow people's coats. But this doesn't appear to be present in any of the prominent reported sightings of her, nor is she seen very often in the ballroom. If at all, although I did read one account of her borrowing,

someone's coat, and once she disappeared that man found it, placed carefully on top of a gravestone. More often than not, she is just spotted somewhere along Archer Avenue, looking for a ride, which is really interesting. There are actual documented cases of people seeing Mary, but these seem to differ from how the urban legend of her is widely spoken of. So what really happened? There are a few stated issues with the commonly reported Resurrection Mary story of Jerry Paulus. In the Unsolved Mysteries episode, it shows a very brief clip of him talking, before going into the show's own recounting of his story. This footage is seemingly unavailable, which is really frustrating. There are numerous theories that the Unsolved Mystery version is somewhat embellished.

The story of him going to the address and meeting the mother feels a little too much like an urban legend. and even echoes an earlier encounter with a vanishing hitchhiker in the area. There is also the fact that the description of Mary being a blonde woman in a white gown seems to be cemented here. Yes, there were reports of a strange blonde woman jumping on the side of cars in the early 30s, but that behaviour seems too different to the Mary that we all have come to know and love. There is also the fact that Jerry apparently not only forgot the address he visited that day, but also the name he was given by the girl, leading some to suggest that the story has been

embellished to fit in closer with the backstory of one of the supposed Mary's that many at the time believed could have been the once-living girl. The infamous bent bars incident has apparently been explained away as being a cemetery worker who backed his truck into the bars, damaging them, before another worker attempted to heat the bars back up, to bend them back into place, leaving behind the handmarks and scorches. Apparently the workers at the cemetery think it's hilarious. So many people thought this was the work of Mary for so long. Although the Mary diehards believe they made this story up after the fact,

because too many people were coming to look for Mary in the cemetery, and it was becoming a problem. There's also many weird little variations in all the encounters, like they don't always quite match up with one another. Although more often than not, the recurring elements for hitchhiking girl, who disappears seem to be present. I'm inclined to maybe discredit the Woman on Fire story personally, but that's just me. As with any case like this, there is always going to be a melding of real life and made-up stories. I do wonder how many of these apparent sightings were just a bit of. case of drunk women walking home alone or strange people acting strange but if mary is real then surely

there must be a real mary buried somewhere in resurrection cemetery right so who is the real mary again the commonly repeated story is that she was a young girl who died in some sort of car accident on her way home from the o henry ballroom and that this must have happened at some point in the nineteen twenty or 30s, based on her clothing. As a result of this, people have spent decades trying to tire Mary into a specific real-life person. One of the most commonly suggested is Mary Muskowski, who supposedly died in a car wreck on Halloween in 1930. Her age and description do seem to match up, but according to the research done by Adam Selzer, this is just a fabrication, and the real Mary Muscalsky died in 1956 in her mid-40s.

If you know anything about resurrection Mary, then you've likely heard people claim. She is the ghost of Mary Brogovy, who actually did die in a car accident in the 30s, and was buried in Resurrection Cemetery. The undertaker who prepared her body strongly believed that she was the ghost that everyone kept seeing. But there were two big issues with this. Early accounts of a phantom hitchhiker were already circulating by the time of her death, and seemingly an even bigger issue was that this Mary was a brunette. There is also the tragic story of Mary Bojacks to consider,

who was on her way to a funeral at Resurrection Cemetery. The mourners were travelling in two cars, but only one made it to the funeral. The second car that contained Mary Bojack was hit by a train, killing 11 of the 12 passengers inside. But despite the tragic story that found, feels ripe for a haunting, this Mary was also apparently a brunette. There are dozens of potential female bodies lying in Resurrection Cemetery

that people believe could fit the resurrection Mary story, including more than a few who were killed in the Eastland disaster. For those who aren't familiar, in 1915, a passenger ship that was docked in the Chicago River rolled onto its side. The ship had ironically been forced to refit all its lifeboats. In the wake of the Titanic disaster just a few years earlier. There had been concerns that this would cause the SS Eastland to become too top-heavy, but this concern was seemingly ignored. On the morning of July 24th, the ship was filled to capacity with over 2,000 people on board when it suddenly began to move to one side. Attempts were quickly made to steady the ship, but it was to no avail. The ship toppled over,

killing over 800 people who either drowned or were crushed by falling furniture. The ship was only 20 feet from the wharf when it happened. Mary being a popular name at the time meant there were around 50 women with that name in the disaster and five of them fit the right age and were in fact buried in Resurrection Cemetery. The cemetery gates are locked at night and the placement of Mary Brogovy's grave is kept a secret to stop more would-be ghost hunters from flooding to the cemetery late at night but that doesn't stop many often after a late night of dancing going out to try and meet Mary for themselves the search for the true identity of the ghostly Mary will likely never

be completed but if you even believe that there is a ghost wandering up and down Archer Avenue I guess the question we have to ask is Why are we always so sure that a ghost is a dead person? We have no evidence that this is the case. It's just a commonly accepted trope to explain this phenomenon. What if resurrection Mary isn't a dead person at all? What if she's something else? That's all for this entry into the tape library.

This actually feels a bit of a throwback to what I initially thought the tape library would be like when I first made the short episodes back in 2019. I really planned for it to be a chance for me to explore urban legends and bits of creepy folklore linked to town, cities and villages. The Resurrection Mary ticks all the boxes of a good old-fashioned tape library entry. Did you enjoy this one? Would you like me to cover more urban legends in amongst some of the longer deep dives? Let me know in the comments below or drop me an email. Feel free to suggest any local ghost stories or urban legends you think would make a good episode too. My main sources for this one were the two books that Adam Selsa wrote on the topic,

as well as the episodes of astonishing legends and unsolved mysteries. So be sure to check those out if you want to get more information on Mary. I'll include that information in the description. I want to try and get better at listing my major sources for those who want to delve in further. If you haven't already, then please do click like if you enjoyed this episode and subscribe. It really helps me out and means the channel reaches more people. If you want to support the channel monetarily, you can do this at www.patryon.com forward slash the tape library.

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go out for a drive tonight and you see someone out looking for a ride, maybe think twice before you pick them up. You never know if you might just be the next companion of Resurrection Mary. Until next time my friends, pleasant dreams.