A huge desk stood in the center of the room, covered with pieces of art, framed photos, and the usual desk clutter. A rare life mask of Abraham Lincoln, along with casts of his hands, rested upon the desk. It looked as though he were trapped inside the desk and struggling to climb out.
Somehow, we all filed out of the library—Mary had survived the crush after all—and followed our guide to the Glessner’s master bedroom. In one little alcove was John Glessner’s dressing room. A black suit coat of 1920s style hung from the back of a chair. A beaver top hat rested upon the seat. Upon a narrow shelf on one wall was arranged some of Glessner’s toiletries, including a bottle of bay rum and three bars of soap. This was the same soap that Kerry had smelled in the kitchen, although I could not detect its scent only a few feet away.
As the group left the master bedroom, I saw Kerry following behind us. I dropped back to talk with him.
We spoke in low tones, both of us fearful of being shushed by our school-marm tour guide.
“I didn’t smell it,” I said.
“No?” said Kerry.
I shook my head. “Of course, I have hay fever right now and can’t smell much of anything, so maybe what I think doesn’t matter.”
“There’s other stuff, too,” Kerry said, casting a glance at the tour guide up front. She was deep into her lecture and paid us no mind.
“I’ve heard my name called,” Kerry said. “There was no one else around and I heard it very distinctly, clear as a bell. ‘Kerry.’ Not once, but twice.”
“You’re sure there was no one else with you?”
“Positive,” Kerry said, “and, I know this sounds strange, but somehow I was sure the voice was that of John Glessner.”
Strange? Not at all.
We had followed the group to the kitchen at the rear of the west wing, the very room in which Kerry had smelled the aroma of Glessner’s soap.
“And I’m not the only one who has felt things here,” Kerry said.
He told me about a maintenance man who was working alone in the shop when he suddenly felt a strong hand grasp his shoulder. The invisible hand squeezed the man’s shoulder but, according to Kerry, the man said the squeeze was not painful or frightening, but was more encouraging.
“The guy said that it was as though Glessner were there supervising his work and giving him a gentle squeeze to show that he was pleased,” Kerry said.
John Glessner lived in the house he loved for fifty years and eventually died there. Maybe he has found it difficult to move on and leave the place he treasured all those years, or perhaps he just wants to hang around to see what happen to his old neighborhood. In any case, he remains, master of the house.
Graceland Cemetery
CHICAGO
GRACELAND CEMETERY ON NORTH CLARK STREET was one of those beautiful parklike cemeteries that were in vogue in the late nineteenth century. Beautiful, sometimes ornate funerary art marked the graves of some of Chicago’s leading citizens where they slept among well-trimmed lawns and old shade trees. Meatpacker Phillip Armour, retail legend Marshall Field, hotel owner Potter Palmer, private detective Allan Pinkerton, and railroad car tycoon George Pullman were all buried there, as was William A. Hulbert, the National League of Professional Baseball Clubs’ second president, from 1877–1882, who rested beneath a huge granite baseball adorned with the league’s team names.
It was a late summer’s afternoon when my wife, Mary, and I visited Graceland. The trees cast long, cool shadows across the emerald lawns. We appeared to be alone. Other than the occasional birdcall, it was quiet and peaceful in the cemetery. I could understand why it was once fashionable for people to picnic there, or to simply enjoy the beauty and tranquility of the place. Having grown up in New England, I was used to ancient cemeteries filled with worn, moss-covered stones, most of them broken or leaning in all directions like bad teeth. You just knew those cemeteries were filled with ghosts. By comparison, no one could have thought that such a lovely place as Graceland was haunted. But it was.
One of the hauntings concerned the tomb of a man named Ludwig Wolff. It may very well have been only a legend, based on the man’s last name, but it was said that his tomb was guarded by a ghostly dog with glowing green eyes that howled mournfully at the moon. As it was a bright, sunny day, I did not see the ghost dog, but as I passed by the tomb, I did wonder why a ghost dog would appear there. Was the dog Wolff’s pet? Was it, in fact, a wolf? And if Wolff himself haunted the cemetery, would that make him a wolfman instead of a ghost? Those were the questions that entered this ghosthunter’s mind.
The whole concept of cemeteries being good places to find ghosts has been under discussion recently. Many psychic researchers believe that ghosts haunt places that have some meaningful relevance to their former lives. Sometimes these places recalled happy times in their lives; the houses in which they were children or perhaps, the houses in which they raised their own families. On a grimmer note, these places could be prisons or hospitals, or other places in which they spent unhappy, traumatic, or eventful times. But why a cemetery, a place where no living person longs to be and a place that, at most, is only a brief stopping point between death and the hereafter? If you were a ghost, would you rather wander around some old cemetery, or would you rather go back to your home or to some other happy place? Still, ghosts are found in cemeteries, possibly because they are somehow trapped there, bound to the spot in a psychic force that we do not understand. Noted psychic researchers Ed and Lorraine Warren would say that cemeteries are spawning grounds for evil spirits and may be portals to a nasty and demonic realm. My own experiences have shown me that far more hauntings occur out of cemeteries than in them.
Statue of Inez Clarke
Graceland, however, did have its ghosts.
The most noted Graceland ghost was that of little Inez Clarke, who died in 1880 at the age of six, apparently killed by lightning while on a family picnic. Her grief-stricken parents commissioned a life-sized statue of their daughter to be placed upon a stone base above her grave. The statue was shielded from the elements by a protective glass box.
I was completely charmed by the details of the little girl’s statue. Inez sat in a rough-hewn chair wearing a pretty frilled dress. The ribbons of her hat were loosely fastened around her neck, although the hat itself was slung over one shoulder. She wore a locket on a chain and held a parasol in her right hand. But what held me most was her face. Her eyes seemed simultaneously fastened on mine and fixed on some greater distance, an eternal point to which I was not privy. Looking into her eyes, I felt as though some communion were possible there. But the most evocative feature of her face was her enigmatic smile, a barely discernible Mona Lisa-like upturn to the lips, that seemed to say Inez had a secret.
The stories associated with the ghost of Inez included strange weeping sounds that were heard near the statue, as well as the vision of a child who would vanish into thin air near her grave. The most interesting stories, however, concerned the statue itself. It is said that sometimes the statue would disappear from within its glass box. This had been noted especially during thunderstorms, which seemed to make sense since the child was killed by lightning. Perhaps poor Inez belatedly ran for cover as she relived the awful day she died. In Haunted Illinois psychic researcher Troy Taylor says that more than one security guard at Graceland had seen the empty box, only to later find the statue had returned to its usual place inside. A guard quit shortly after finding the glass box empty one night.
There was no one around the day I visited, so I was not able to get any firsthand accounts about Inez’s wandering