Hello steemit!
If you do not know I am currently stationed in Illinois and Illinois has its rich history in haunts.
I want to scare you! I want to tell you ghost stories near a campfire! I am going to haunted places want to join me?
The haunts in illinois are quite fierce there is cemeteries mental asylums haunted bridges woods and old world skyscrapers.. We have a ghost that if you are driving alone it will jump into your car and if you drive away with her in the car she will eventually disappear. She will look kinda weird because her clothing is from a different time. Enough about that we will be talking about 3 main hotspots right next to me that I had the pleasure to be scared at.
Manteno Asylum.
It was opened in 1930. Closed in 1983. Visited a few years back and a lot of the buildings have been renovated and fixed and some are now rubble because it was demolished. When I visited you could sneak into a few buildings.
HISTORY
When Manteno Asylum first opened they brought in people with mental illnesses and tried to get them to do work in a field to get their minds off of their diseases. This was a revolutionary idea at the time and it worked for a few years. Soon maybe 6-10 years after opening there was a typhoid fever outbreak and it lead to 50 people who died in a short amount of time. Right before that they were undercut in the money that they got funded because it is the great depression you know. So as a understaffed and undercut asylum residence they were prone to misery and tragedies. It became one of the biggest asylums at the time growing and growing. But with expansion comes expansions in despotism. The doctors would perform surgeries on patients without letting them no to try to get rid of mental illnesses. Cold baths and electro shock treatment and lobotomies oh my! There was rampant physical abuse sexual abuse and patients attacking staff reported. There was atleast 400 people that died in 1941 due to experimentation on patients. During the 50s and 60s there was a boom bust period where the people at the site peaked. 9000 people including staff which was 400 or something. Most of these people were highschool drop outs you did not need a degree to work here it was not a requirement. Towards the 1970s It got a new name and it dwindled into pushing people into nursing homes and finally shuttered in 1983. Earnest Hemmingway even was a resident when he got dementia and alzheimers and he was treated with electroshock!
Personal Account.
Me and my genius friends thought it was a cool idea to sneak into manteno hospital at 2 am. We come up to the building and it looks like this. Picture this at night
A weird tingly feeling crawls up my back and I feel a cold chill as we pace towards this pitch black building. We had no smart phones so we were freeballing it we had one little flash light and that is all. It is one person in the front and all of us following the light trail. Pitch black around us besides one little spot. You hear thumps groans chains people walking things moving people laughing and crying. My friends decided that there was a stairstep that we wanted to go down. I had bad vibes all around like something was right behind us. SO We all go down the stairs but our one friend wanted to look around while we kept the light at the ground so he could get down the stairs. When my friend walked on the first step he was pushed down the stairs and we heard a get out in our general area. He took the fall and sprained his ankle and we got far away from that area and booked and I will never go back there again.
Monks Castle
Indian burial ground which turned into a french post for the religious in the 1600s and in 1833 it evolved into a church and cemetary put into one. Still is in operation today.
History
I am not going to go into the indian burial grounds because the knowledge about that is kind of scarce and every single person says different things. All I know is that the Burial Ground was extended into a cemetery in the 1800s. Father Jacques Marquette (1637-1675) and a 28 year old cartographer got together and trekked through illinois. They came across some indians and decided that this is the place they wanted to make a church. They built a fort which would have masses and it brought christianity to indians in the area. The indians kind of didnt care that they were there so they just left but they said do not touch the burial grounds of their dead. A few eras pass and go and Catholic Irish canal workers see this spot as a great place for a church. They do not know about the burial grounds but they do come across an abandoned christian building. They get rid of that and build St. James parish which still stands today! The reason why they call it Monks Castle is because a lot of people who would sneak in to the grounds would be met with swift punishment by kneeling on ball bearings and pray till dawn. Some of the punished would reform to christianity and become monks and keep the parish thriving. There is 7000-9000 graves on the site.
Personal Account.
It is getting close to dusk me and my friends are like lets go to Monks Castle! What is that I asked. Oh its a nice little haunted place. We drive around a little bit and the sun is going down. I realize that we cannot stay there when it turns night so we planned on being there for 45 minutes to an hour. We see this gate and they let us in. No problems just a reminder that they are closing soon and to be out of the area by nightfall. There is trails leading to the forest from the parish which is open and they close it up when its time for them to call it for a day. We go through the first trail and there is a River/Lake right next to us and a fog descends onto the water. It was not foggy all day. The fog is moving slowly at first but after a bit you start to see it moving as if something was going through the fog. I got creepy vibes again and we went back on the trail. It is a beautiful scenic place with a lot of woodlands in the area. As we are walking we hear a horse running towards us we turn around looking for anything there is nothing. No movement but we were freaked out and when we came back to the parish And I see what looks to be a guy in black robes staring at us through the window with a pale dead face. They find us tell us its time to go and we leave feeling satisfied at the spooking we just endured.
Bachelors Grove Cemetery.
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Created in 1843 this cemetery was built as a way to bury the Canal workers that passed away in my above post about MONKS CASTLE . It was a small cemetery with only 82 graves with the earliest known person buried there being in 1844. Last person buried there was in 1989. Has been falling apart and refurbished over and over again since. There is a infant daughters grave and it is bad luck if you do not give a gift as a way to remember the dead. If you mock or screw around in the cemetery there is going to be a rude awakening
History
Since the canal workers would get into accidents and accidently die they would want to bring the dead to a final resting place away from the perish at first. They had no cemetery and no knowledge of the burial site so they found a little area in the woods and established it. The local community took care of the site and enjoyed fishing and swimming for a little while. Soon after that in the 1920s it was rumoured that the late al capone dumped bodies of his victims in the pond near the cemetery. The area was long ignored but in the 1960s a new interest was placed on this sacred land which was known as lovers lane. The 1960ers went in the cemetery and desecrated the site with vandalism knocking over tombstones and spraypainting it. Around this time the rumours started happening that the place is haunted and still continue on today. Through the 1970s 1980s 1990s Satanists would sneak into the site and do sacrifices at the grave yard. Apparitions that appear are ghost cars that will try to run you off the road or if you are walking will try to go into you and vanish. A disappearing house of a old gravekeeper that will vanish and appear. It is a rumour that if you see that building and walk into it you will forever be trapped in the house. There is a ghost of a person in there who got dragged into the water and died after his horse was startled.
Personal Accounts.
This place is the most haunted place I ever been to. I have been to the spot at least 20 times in my life. Sometimes with no hauntings and other times with the freakiest shit that I have ever witnessed. Everytime I have went there the walk to the cemetery feels longer or shorter. One time it felt like it was 3 hours walking on the path and on the clock the time did not change at all. When you come back it takes 10 minutes and the clock changed a couple of hours. Really strange.
When I go into the cemetery at night it sounds like there is what sounds is chanting or moaning of sadness in the area. I got depressed everytime I went there. There was one time where when we entered the cemetery we saw a candle on one of the tombstones. Grant it this is like 2-3 oclock in the morning with no light. The candle dripping onto the tombstone made it look like it was blood trickling down the tombstone. We walk through the forest and come back the candle is gone and there is no sign of the wax on the tombstone. You get an awfully creepy vibe when you go there. You feel like your constantly being watched and you feel like there is people around you. Wolves will howl in the forest. You will hear what sounds like things running at you see rustling in the woods and then it stops. You will look up and you will see what looks like a person hanging from a tree then you look back its gone. Another time I went there I saw what it looked like 2 floating lights. Me and my friends jump into the grounds to hide because we think it is the cops and when the light is about 100 yards in front of us the lights go out. No people. No nothing. Really creepy. You think you see stuff out of the corner of your eyes. People talking but no one is there. Whispers in your ears. People poking prodding at you. You find desecrated animals and satanic carved stuff right next to it. There is so much different things that has happened which could be a book for me. I feel as if I have not gone there in a while when I do I will record my stay and tell you if anything creepy happens.
All Pictures are done by people who have taken the time to photograph these areas
Well peeps I am about to leave this post and bring it to steemland. If you like this follow me @sinned. I hope you got spooked by famous Illinoisian hauntings. Till next time