5 Respect the privacy of your contacts. Some people may tell you their ghost stories, but for a variety of reasons, may not want other people to know their identity. You must respect their right to privacy. Unless noted otherwise, all the names of the persons appearing in this book are their real names. I told all my contacts that I was writing a book and asked for permission to use their real names. If permission was not granted—which was rare—or if I was unable to obtain a name for some reason, I told their stories using pseudonyms. These pseudonyms are identified in the text by an (*) after the name.
6 Be a knowledgeable ghosthunter. This last point is perhaps the most important one. No one really knows the rules and laws of the spirit world. Ghosthunters are always exploring terra incognita and finding their way by learning from others, but it is important to learn from those who are serious about their work rather than from people who are merely looking for kicks. Knowledge about ghosts and the spirit world will increase your chances of obtaining your goals, but more importantly, will keep you safe. But you should also be knowledgeable about the real world as well. Know the geography and history of the place you are visiting before you go. Is it a desolate location? How safe is it, both structurally and in terms of its environment? A Spiritualist minister I met along the way told me that she “fears the living more than the dead.” While I do not want to sound like an alarmist, I do believe a little bit of caution and common sense can go a long way toward making your ghosthunting experience safe and fun.
I hope you find Ghosthunting Illinois enjoyable and helpful to you. As always, I am curious about your experiences and would love to hear from you. Feel free to drop me a line through my Web site at www.johnkachuba.com and also watch for my new book, Ghosthunters, to be published in 2006.
Happy ghosthunting!
John B. Kachuba
Athens, Ohio
Metro Chicago
Metro Chicago (COOK COUNTY)
Museum of Science and Industry
Beverly Unitarian Church
CHICAGO
THERE IS AN INTERESTING DEBATE AMONG PEOPLE of faith about whether ghosts exist or not and if a belief in ghosts can be reconciled with a belief in some religious creed. Every religion has stories of supernatural beings, creatures that exist in another realm that is invisible and unknown to mere mortals. We have various names for such beings, depending upon our own cultural beliefs—angels, spirits, demons, guides—but what they all have in common is that they are non-flesh-and-blood beings that have various forms of interaction with humans. The beings themselves were never human and are considered as purely spiritual creatures. Ghosts, on the other hand, are distinct from these entities in that they were, at one time, human beings with the same wants and desires, pains and sorrows, joys and successes that are all indicative of the human experience. It is this difference between once-human and never-human, eternally spiritual and formerly mortal that fuels the debate.
For the members of the Beverly Unitarian Church on Chicago’s South Side, the debate is of little consequence. One of the seven principles of the Unitarian Universalist Association, of which the Beverly church is a member, supports “a free and responsible search for truth and meaning,” a concept that allows for both a belief in ghosts as well as a disbelief. The choice is left up to the individual and is not dictated by some religious hierarchy.
It came as no surprise to me then to find that the Beverly Unitarian Church was haunted.
My wife, Mary, and I were familiar with the Unitarian Universalist church, having attended services in our hometown of Athens, Ohio, so we decided to go to the Sunday service at Beverly while we were in Chicago researching this book. The fact that the church was haunted was an added incentive, of course. It was a warm and sunny day in August when we pulled into the parking lot adjacent to an imposing building that looked like a castle, and was in fact nicknamed “the Irish Castle” by its neighbors.
The castle sat on a little hill at the corner of 103rd Street and Longwood Drive in a quiet residential neighborhood. The three-story limestone block structure was built in 1886 by wealthy real estate magnate Robert C. Givens and modeled after a castle he saw while traveling in Ireland. Givens and his family lived in the house only a few years before selling it. The building then served as a private residence for various people and, at one point, housed the Chicago Female College. In 1942, it became the home of the Unitarian Fellowship.
Mary and I were early. No one else had arrived and the door was locked, so we walked around to the front of the building. Rounded corner towers rose above the trees. The crenellated battlements and the massive Romanesque arch above the solid-wood door called to mind images of King Arthur, or maybe the moody Dane, Hamlet, chatting with the ghost of his father on a cold and moonless night. Ivy crept along the stone steps leading up to the castle and twined around the towers. Unlike a real medieval castle, this one featured many large windows.
After a few minutes, people began to arrive for the services, so we followed them inside. Those large windows admitted plenty of light and the interior was bright and airy, not at all what one would expect inside a castle. We spoke with some of the people as they entered and were invited to tour the building before the service began. The ground level, now used as the main worship space, was one large room at the front of the house and had originally been the parlor. A large piano stood before the windows.
A beautifully carved oak staircase led up to the second floor. This floor, too, was essentially one large room, with a kitchen on one side. I didn’t know for sure, but my guess was that many of the original interior walls on both floors had been removed in order to open up the interior and create larger spaces. On this floor, as on the ground floor, the rounded corner towers created cozy little nooks, some of them furnished with chairs. Another stairway led to the third-floor apartment of the caretaker, who was not at home the day we visited.
It is not uncommon for Unitarian services to be conducted without a minister, led instead by one of the members of the fellowship. We joined the others downstairs and listened as one of the members of the fellowship talked about his struggle with depression. Halfway through his talk, I heard a thump on the ceiling above me. It didn’t quite register with me until it sounded again, and I remembered that we had been the last ones upstairs. There was nobody up there now.
“Did you hear that?” I whispered, leaning toward Mary.
She nodded.
“What do you think it was?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
I listened carefully, but the sound did not return.
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