My experiences in Bachelor's Grove Cemetery

[Arvo Zylo]

Hi Pete,

I think we had a conversation on facebook some years ago.  

I told you about my experiences.   

Did those ever get documented?  

I remember sending a scan of a drawing I did in the moonlight of the cemetery, of some of the things I was seeing as I was seeing them.  

I'm having trouble finding that scan, and I'm wondering if you kept it, or published it in some place that I don't currently see.   

Thanks,

Arvo

[Arvo Zylo]

I found it! 

I drank a half pint of whiskey, wasn't "drunk", to be honest.  

I also saw many more things than what I tried to portray in this drawing.  

[Arvo Zylo]

OK, I wrote it up.  ***   Submitted to Coast to Coast AM.  

I'd like to share a number of little anecdotes from my dozens of times being at the notoriously haunted (and long abandoned) cemetery, Bachelor's Grove.  I think they rival a lot of the stories to come out in the last 20 years, about experiences in that cemetery.   

For one, among the first times I went to the cemetery, which is situated in the  middle of a forest preserve, it was with friends, and we saw the notorious disappearing house (or at least one of them).   We didn't even know it wasn't supposed to be there.  

Once we had spent our time in the cemetery, we continued walking west, past a stream that ran through the area.   We walked for some time, and I even took a photo inside of  a nearby well where this house apparently was (attached).   This was in approximately 2001.  The house that most people have reported is said to be white, but what we saw was brown.   It did look like it had candles lit in the windows, and it had a sheltered porch area.   The more we walked towards it, the more it stayed the same distance from us.   We were so preoccupied with looking for ghosts, that we did not even realize  that the house wasn't supposed to be there.  And we didn't put it together for some years after, including several other visits without consequence, and one with an especially large amount of consequence, at least for me.   After I heard about the disappearing house in 2004 or so,  I brought multiple friends back to try to find it, and we never did.  One time in 2014, a friend and I walked for 5 hours in the thick of the woods, off the paths, past the cemetery, past the nearby stream, and the more we walked, the more the view of the Midlothian Turnpike IE the end of the forest preserve stayed the same distance from us.  Finally, we gave up and turned around, and we got back to the cemetery entrance within 20 minutes.   That forest preserve is about a three block radius if you look at a map, there is no logical way we walked for that long without coming out the other side.  

On Friday, June 13 of 2003, I was still something of a skeptic.  I went to spend the night at the cemetery by myself, because I thought I'd never see anything.  I snuck into the forest preserve area past a small radio antenna/tower, because I knew there would be police stationed at the main entrance to prevent trespassers (and there were).  By this time, I'd been there so many times, I knew the place by heart.   I quietly snuck onto the main path just past the entrance, once I'd walked through the woods for long enough, dressed in all black, and with a good deal of adrenaline.   I didn't even have a flashlight, but I found that I didn't need one.   The moon was so bright and full (yes, it was a full moon on Friday the 13th) that I didn't need a flashlight.  I walked around a fair amount.  I was thankful that for some reason there was no mud and no mosquitos, and the weather was a bit brisk, but not too cold.   

I'm pretty sure that I arrived at the cemetery around 11pm, and not a thing happened until about 2am, but at that time, everything happened, and it was beautiful.   I sat at a grave that had been dug up in the 60s, so it was a bit of a pothole.  I believe it was the Newman grave.  I tried to settle in, but I was on high alert for the entire time, until I did actually start seeing things.  

A lot of people have horror stories of shadow figures and deep negativity, but what I saw was so blissful and warm, it made me really happy, and I've always associated that warm feeling with the place since then.   It began with me seeing two people slow-dancing in a circle, patiently, gracefully, and almost menacingly.  It was a bride and groom in old-fashioned regalia; the groom with a top hat and coat tails, and the bride with a white wreath on her head.  They were too far away to see too many details, but the intensity with which they gazed into eachother's eyes was not only implicit, but undeniable, so much so that I felt I could hear the music, although I knew I couldn't.  

It is natural for a skeptic to assume that this was merely a mirage, the eyes playing tricks in the moonlight, but it's hard to explain how bright everything was.  The moon was not only luminescent, but everything had a slight glowing hue to it, which allowed me to make for certain that this couple in the distance, dancing their mesmerizing dance near the entrance to the cemetery were not my eyes making something out of nothing.  The more clarity I felt, the more happiness I felt.  I felt as if I was connected to all of the families who had come to have picnics and visit their loved ones, since this was, after all, referred to as "the cemetery in the park" at one point.   

White orbs began to float around in the area, and they didn't seem to be representative of bodies, but they were smaller.  They looked like what Disney movies portray lightning bugs to be, basically clusters of white superballs floating in the air.  There was not only a glow, but a sort of fog in the trees, and most of the orbs that I saw were up in the trees with what looked like light mists of glowing white smoke.   

To my left, a large glowing red light crept up over the lagoon, and the nearby Midlothian turnpike.   It looked like red spotlights were coming up out of the lagoon, lots of them.  The side of the road next to the lagoon was immersed in red light going straight up to the sky.   I kept waiting to hear an ambulance, but I heard nothing.  I didn't even hear crickets for a while.   Combined with the moonlight, these new red lights gave me even more light to see, and on the ground, I saw a broken carriage and a dead horse.   I want to be clear that it was bright enough to make these things out clearly.  The carriage was pretty smashed up, but it was still recognizable as a carriage.  I did not know of any sort of history where a horse and carriage ran into the lagoon and both died for no apparent reason.   I heard that years later.  

Another thing I will say, there are stories of a "yellow man", which is to say, apparently some Dick Tracy type of character walks around in a yellow overcoat.   I did not see that exactly, and I never heard of it until recently, but what I did see, was a glowing yellow humanoid figure that would walk for a few steps and then explode into pieces, then reform as a bunch of orbs that rapidly coagulated, walk a bit more, then explode.  All of this happened in a manner as if it were indifferent to me.  This stuff continued to go on, uninterrupted, for at least 2 hours.  I sat in the moonlight and sketched what I was seeing at one point, and that was just as things were beginning to develop.   What I did sketch also were potential mirages, to be clear, but that was before the red light really kicked in.   

It was not all peachy keen throughout the night, though.  I had heard of the shadow figures and hooded figures, and naturally I was worried about ritual abuse and devil worshippers that are rumored to be about the area.  What I did see was hovering hooded figures moving back and forth about the fence area, paying particular attention to the entrance.    They zoomed back and forth over and over, and that made me pretty nervous, but they seemed more like guardians than antagonists.   What made me more nervous was that I began hearing animals screaming.  I specifically heard a dog screaming in pain, and it felt like it was very close to me, but I could not see it.  The dog didn't seem to want to hurt me, but I did not move from my spot at that gravestone until the sun began to come up.   Just before that happened, it was as if a dimmer switch had turned everything down, and it all faded from view as the crack of dawn only slightly began to creep through the moonlight,  at which point I walked to a nearby diner, had breakfast, and came back to the cemetery to take pictures with a disposable camera.   Naturally, not one photo came out.  They were all completely black.   

I would like to add that this experience was so profound to me that it slowly became the impetus for me to become a psychic as well as a certified hypnotherapist, essentially because the trance state that was involved on this night was so extraordinary and undeniable.  

For reference, I am attaching a photo by Edgar Amaya of me at the cemetery in 2009, as well as the drawing I did in the cemetery on that night in 2003, and the photo of me in the well in 2001 (by Chuck Barcik).   

Thanks for your consideration!

-Arvo Zylo

[Pete Crapia]

Arvo,

Your material was added to the archives under "Personal Stories."

Thank you for the input. Here is a link to the document:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/14VV1tw7VhaOQ5fxwjFh4vnJ3bopAVlx_N-esWuz_EIU/edit?usp=sharing