Ridge Paranormal Happenings

Welcome to “Ridge Paranormal Happenings” hosted by Patch. Today officially kicks off Beverly/Morgan Park’s first paranormal blog. The Summer Solstice seems like a good day to do this. This first entry is some background leading up to the topic.

Patch, through Tim Moran, Patch editor and journalist for Beverly/Mt. Greenwood, graciously offered me a blog spot, and I have been thinking about how to use the opportunity. In October 2018, Open Outcry Brewing Company at 10934 S. Western Ave., Chicago, hosted me for a paranormal night that proved to be very successful. We had over 200 people show up to hear local residents share their paranormal experiences. We plan to do this again this year. The local interest in the paranormal gave me the idea to start this blog for the neighborhood.

I have been collecting ghost stories and stories of other paranormal happenings in the Ridge communities – Washington Heights, Beverly Hills, Morgan Park, Mt. Greenwood, and the City of Blue Island – for years. I have a good 40 stories so far. I do not pretend to be an “expert” on the paranormal. There actually is no such thing (more on that in a future post). I collect these stories as local folklore as part of my on-going interest in local history. I have been involved in the Ridge Historical Society (RHS) for the last 15 years, and the newsletter editor there for the last ten years. I research local history and write feature articles for RHS and I also write feature stories for the Beverly Review and the BAPA Villager. This blog is not affiliated with any of those organizations, however. This is strictly my own doing.

I am not a ghost hunter. In fact, I do not condone ghost hunting, running around with gadgets and gizmos to provoke responses from the spirit world. I believe the dead should be respected and left in peace. They are the spirits of our loved ones, and they do not exist to entertain the living like circus freaks. If there are issues with some type of dangerous paranormal activity in a house, that is a different situation. But that is rare, and there are people who can help in a situation like that.

The stories I gather are about the living and the experiences they have had that cannot be explained by “normal” means – hence, they fall in the realm of the “paranormal.” It’s that simple. No one has to believe in the spirit world; no one has to prove an experience really occurred; no one has to try to figure out why or how something happened. It’s enough to have experienced it. I find that people are often relieved or comforted to share their stories and learn they are not alone in experiencing something out of the ordinary.

As a result of the Open Outcry event, I have been contacted by ghost hunters who want my help to get into private residences to “investigate.” I have been asked to write a haunted guide to the area. I have been asked to give ghost tours. No, no and no.

I do give presentations on the topic. The majority of the stories I have been told relate to private residences. I respect the confidentiality and privacy of the people who have shared their stories with me. I would never reveal the location or details of any story without permission. If a location or person has gone public with a story, then I consider it OK to share. And I do talk about paranormal events in general terms because I find stories from different people often have common themes. For example, we seem to have an abundance of young female ghosts in our community (another topic to share more on later).

We had six credible speakers at Open Outcry and I am going to invite them to guest author blog entries with their stories. I am always looking for additional stories so please contact me through this site if you would like to share a story. I promise strict confidentiality.

The Summer Solstice and paranormal activity

The Summer Solstice on June 21 is the longest day of the year in the earth’s northern hemisphere. This occurs because the movement of the earth has placed the North Pole with its maximum tilt toward the sun, causing the sun to reach its highest point in the sky for the year. (Hopefully, we will have a break from this year’s incessant rain so we can see this phenomenon!)

Festivals with agricultural themes celebrating this solar event date back thousands of years. Midsummer is the time of planting and growing, and goddesses associated with reproduction were honored at this time. Some of these entities included the Roman Juno, which gave us the name June for the month, and the Irish/Celtic Aine, the goddess of fertility who ruled over crops and animals.

Ancient peoples believed that at these times of special solar and lunar (moon) phenomena, the boundaries separating the physical and the spirit worlds were most insubstantial. Entities from the spirit world could more easily pass into the physical world. This included immortal creatures entering the mortal world of humans.

At Midsummer, this especially applies to nature creatures like fairies and nymphs. The classic tale for this has to be Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Fairies involve themselves in the love lives of mortals, resulting in a great deal of confusion and humor, until all is sorted out for a happy ending.

We usually think of paranormal activity originating from a “ghost” or spirit of a dead person. In theory, the activity could be coming from a supernatural being, and they are not all benign. This is one of the reasons Ouija boards and other ways to call up the spirit world are discouraged – the user doesn’t know what might be unleashed.

The Exorcist, the book and movie about demonic possession, was based on a true story. When the movie was produced, a priest who originally came from the Chicago area, Fr. John Nicola, was involved as a consultant. Fr. Nicola was born in Evanston in 1929 and taught Latin at Quigley South Preparatory Seminary, which was just north of Beverly at 7740 S. Western Ave. (St. Rita High School is now in those buildings.) Fr. Nicola was on leave from the Archdiocese of Chicago and serving at the Immaculate Conception Shrine in Washington, D.C., when he was asked to serve as a consultant for the movie.

Fr. Nicola was known for his studies on the devil and there are stories from his days as a seminarian at St. Mary of the Lake in Mundelein about strange things that happened to him – for example, while researching and writing a paper on demonology, the curtains in his dorm room mysteriously caught on fire. Fr. Nicola and his stories were a strong influence on one of his Quigley students – the late Richard Crowe, the first person officially recognized in Chicago as a ghost hunter.

A house in Beverly on Longwood Drive was documented as the site of an exorcism decades ago. The story was written up in the National Enquirer although I have not been able to get my hands on a copy of this article. If anyone has a copy, I would appreciate seeing it.

Upcoming topics – signs a house might be haunted, why the Ridge may have so many paranormal stories, some stories from the area.