Ghosts - research, evidence, and discussion.
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Features Archive:

2007 Archive:
Table Tilting with the Witches of Salem, Massachusetts - Ghost Chronicles
December 26, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

A Sance in Salem - Paranormal Journeys
December 10, 2007

Paranormal Journeys - webcast

Psychic Vampire: Michelle Belanger - Ghost Chronicles
December 5, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Nazi Theocracy - by Lee Prosser
December 3, 2007

Column - regular feature

The Orb House - Ghost Chronicles
November 28, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Haunted Lighthouses - Ghost Chronicles
November 21, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Violet Road: The Grave of Michael Bashor - by Marcus Foxglove Griffin
April 6, 2007

Column - regular feature

Phyllis Glade and Fate Magazine - Ghost Chronicles
November 14, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Stone's Public House - Paranormal Journeys
November 12, 2007

Paranormal Journeys - webcast

The Ghosts of Dartmouth College - Ghost Chronicles
November 7, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Halloween 2007 - by Lee Prosser
October 30, 2007

Column - regular feature

Jeff Belanger's Halloween Spell by Jeff Belanger
October 26, 2007


John Kachuba - Ghost Chronicles
October 24, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Haunted Australia - Ghost Chronicles
October 17, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Stepping Into the Dark World of The Vampire of Sacramento: Richard Trenton Chase by Paul Dale Roberts
October 17, 2007


Madison, Georgia - Ghost Chronicles
October 10, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Halloween Special: New London Ledge Lighthouse - Ghost Chronicles
October 3, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

French Ghosts - by Lee Prosser
October 3, 2007

Column - regular feature

The Psychomanteum Chamber - Ghost Chronicles
September 26, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Ghost Hunters Spotlight: C.A.S.P.R. - Ghost Chronicles
September 19, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Jesse James - by Lee Prosser
September 18, 2007

Column - regular feature

Heritage Hall: Madison, Georgia - Ghost Chronicles
September 12, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Ghosts of the Knight House - Ghost Chronicles
September 5, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Ghost Children in Missouri and Elsewhere - by Lee Prosser
September 3, 2007

Column - regular feature

The Death of a Psychic by Tuesday Miles
August 31, 2007


Ghost Hunters Spotlight: The Spirit Light Network - Ghost Chronicles
August 29, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Paranormal State - Ghost Chronicles
August 22, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

A Look at Haunted Baseball by Dan Gordon
August 16, 2007


Gettysburg: Devil's Den and Sachs Bridge - Ghost Chronicles
August 15, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Russ Columbo - by Lee Prosser
August 15, 2007

Column - regular feature

Gettysburg: Investigating the Daniel Lady Farm - Ghost Chronicles
August 8, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

A Frightening Moment in Marysville, California by Paul Dale Roberts
August 7, 2007


Passing Wind - by Lee Prosser
August 2, 2007

Column - regular feature

Gettysburg: The Ghost World Conference Part II - Ghost Chronicles
August 1, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Gettysburg: The Ghost World Conference - Ghost Chronicles
July 25, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Andrea: A True Story of Unleashed Terror - Ghost Chronicles
July 18, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Shadow People with Thomas Durant - Ghost Chronicles
July 11, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Fort Revere with East Bridgewater's Most Haunted - Ghost Chronicles
July 4, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Ghostly Nighttime Visitor by Alexandra Holzer
July 3, 2007


American Western Film Ghosts: Audie Murphy, Randolph Scott, John Wayne - by Lee Prosser
July 1, 2007

Column - regular feature

The Haunted Queen Mary - Ghost Chronicles
June 27, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Moultonborough House - Ghost Chronicles
June 20, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Southern Ghosts - Ghost Chronicles
June 13, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Ghost Hunters Spotlight - John Speer and Leslie Boyce of the Southern Spirit Seeker Society - Ghost Chronicles
June 6, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Ghost in the Pantry - by Lee Prosser
June 4, 2007

Column - regular feature

Dog Town - Ghost Chronicles
May 30, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Classifying Paranormal Photographs by Josh Mantello
May 29, 2007


Five Foot Nothin' of Guardian Angel by Dr. J. Lee Choron
May 25, 2007


Mark Nesbitt: The Ghosts of Gettysburg - Ghost Chronicles
May 23, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Spirit Children of the Fontaine Manse - Ghost Chronicles
May 16, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Borrowing Ghost - by Lee Prosser
May 15, 2007

Column - regular feature

Oak View: Time Port? By Richard Senate
May 14, 2007


Papal Knight and Author Charles A. Coulombe - Ghost Chronicles
May 9, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Signs - Messages from Beyond - Ghost Chronicles
May 2, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Beware of False Teachers - by Lee Prosser
May 1, 2007

Column - regular feature

Dungeon Rock - Ghost Chronicles
April 26, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Remote Viewing - Ghost Chronicles
April 18, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Investigating Tenney Gatehouse and Grey Court Castle - Ghost Chronicles
April 12, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Ghost Hunters Spotlight: The Ghost Stalker, Richard Senate - Ghost Chronicles
April 4, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Mark of Cain - by Lee Prosser
April 1, 2007

Column - regular feature

Bloody Mary: The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans - Ghost Chronicles
March 28, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Marija: The half-life of Resurrection Mary by Ursula Bielski
March 23, 2007


The Haunted Farnsworth House - Ghost Chronicles
March 21, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Aleister Crowley - by Lee Prosser
March 16, 2007

Column - regular feature

The Ghost Investigator: Linda Zimmermann - Ghost Chronicles
March 14, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Exploring the Tarot Cards - Ghost Chronicles
March 8, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Vodou - by Lee Prosser
March 2, 2007

Column - regular feature

The Ghost Bride: Lydia Carver - Ghost Chronicles
February 28, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Skeptical Learning by Rick Hayes
February 23, 2007


The Myrtles Plantation - Ghost Chronicles
February 21, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Ghosts of the Reyes Adobe by Richard Senate
February 16, 2007


How To Contact Your Guardian Angel - by Lee Prosser
February 15, 2007

Column - regular feature

The Eyes of the Mothman - Ghost Chronicles
February 14, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

The Mystery of the Ouija Board - Ghost Chronicles
February 7, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Ghost Hunter Spotlight: Brad Duplechien of Louisiana Spirits Paranormal Investigations - Ghost Chronicles
January 31, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Ghost Hunting and Dead Presidents by Vince Wilson
January 29, 2007


The Bell Witch and Witch Bonney - Ghost Chronicles
January 24, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Paranormal Investigator Profile: Derek Bartlett, Founder of Cape and Islands Paranormal Research Society
January 19, 2007


EVP, Featuring Tom and Lisa Butler of the A.A.E.V.P. - Ghost Chronicles
January 17, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Paul Bowles, Witchcraft, and the Supernatural - by Lee Prosser
January 15, 2007

Column - regular feature

Brian Leffler of The Northern Minnesota Paranormal Investigators - Ghost Chronicles
January 10, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

Homan House, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania by John Sabol
January 8, 2007


How To Photograph The Paranormal - Ghost Chronicles
January 3, 2007

Ghostvillage Radio - podcast

DVD Widescreen Format Contains Subliminal Occult Messages - by Lee Prosser
January 1, 2007

Column - regular feature



March 23, 2007

Marija: The half-life of Resurrection Mary

By Ursula Bielski photo courtesy of Lake Claremont Press

When I was a child, like many of my peers, I hated school. Luckily for me, my mother went back to work as a Chicago Public School teacher when I began kindergarten, and my father took early retirement from the Chicago Police Department to care for me before and after the half-day school program. My father had hated school, too. Moreover, he loved my company and preferred to have me spend my days with him than with my teachers and classmates at St. Benedict Elementary School, not far from Wrigley Field. And so I rarely went. When the inevitable inquiries came from teachers, the school secretary and, later, the principal, Adalbert Stanislaus Bielski -- gruff, loud, and more than a bit intimidating -- would scare them off for days or weeks at a time, with my mom none the wiser.

I still have the report cards from those days: 14, 27, 45 days and more absent. And I smile when I remember the distinctive education that my dad provided on those days. For they were spent decidedly afoot; indeed, I credit my dad with introducing me to the Chicago I grew to adore, as well as to the city's most famous phantom, Resurrection Mary. Most researchers, most ghost hunters, most documenters of her life and afterlife have met the elusive Mary in magazine articles, newspaper clippings, or - classically -- around a campfire in hushed tones. I met her on a barstool at the tender age of five, drinking a Shirley Temple at Chet's Melody Lounge at 11 AM on a Wednesday morning, when I was supposed to have been in school.

I think this is why, twenty-five years later, I became enchanted by one particular incarnation of our most precious Rez Mary: a 12-year-old South side girl named Anna Norkus. Like me, Anna was also a second-generation Eastern European American Chicagoan. Like me, she loved life and music and dancing. And, from a very young age, Anna was (like me) her father's best friend.

Resurrection Mary The connection of Anna Norkus to Resurrection Mary was solidified through the rigorous research of Frank Andrejasich of Summit, Illinois. Frank wrote me a lovely letter after publication of my first book, Chicago Haunts, in the Fall of 1997, and told me the story of his obsession, one that would soon become my own and lasting. I met with Frank and his wife one Winter morning, in their bungalow in the town of Summit, at the edge of the great sprawling Southwest side of Chicago, one of the most haunted regions on earth, and he told me the story of how he came to know the true identity of Chicago's most beloved ghost.

In August of 1994, Andrejasich's brother had sent Frank a newspaper clipping telling the tale of Resurrection Mary, and, asking around at coffee after Mass one Sunday, Frank found that there were many local versions of the famous tale -- and many "candidates" for the role -- especially at his own St. Joseph parish, in the heart of Resurrection Mary country. Andrejasich was startled by the prevalence of the story in local memory -- and by the opinionated responses to his often-asked question: who was she?

As it turned out, one of Frank's church buddies was a man named Jake Palus, who turned out to be the younger brother of the now-infamous Jerry Palus. Jerry is believed by many hard-core Mary researchers to have been the phantom's first encounter; till the day he died, Jerry claimed to have danced with her "all night" in 1936 at the old Liberty Grove and Hall ballroom on 47th street, in the storied Brighton Park neighborhood.

Claire and Mark Rudnicki -- friends, neighbors, and former St. Joseph parishioners -- told Andrejasich that Resurrection Mary could be traced to the 1940s, when a young Polish girl crashed near Resurrection Cemetery at around 1:20 a.m. after she took the family car to visit her boyfriend in Willow Springs. According to this version of the story, the girl was buried in a term grave at Resurrection. Appropriately, Andrejasich wonders why a couple that owned a car in the 1940s would need to bury their daughter in a term grave.

Adding to the explanations was another parishioner, Ray VanOrt, who tells how he and his bride-to-be were the first witnesses at the scene of an accident on Archer in 1936, when a black Model A sedan collided with a wide-bed farm truck at 1:30 in the morning, while both witnesses and victims were traveling home from the old Oh Henry Ballroom, now the Willowbrook. According to VanOrt, of the two couples in the car, only one person survived, a girl who was badly hurt. Both men and another girl perished. Today, VanOrt is convinced that this was the accident that killed our would-be Resurrection Mary.

Still another parishioner told Frank that the wayward wraith was, in life, Mary Miskowski of the South side Chicago neighborhood of Bridgeport. In this narrative, Miskowski was killed crossing the street in late October in the 1930s, on her way to a Halloween party.

After pondering the variety of accounts, combing early editions of the local papers, and checking with funeral directors and cemetery managers, Andrejasich came to believe that the ghost known as Resurrection Mary is the spiritual counterpart of the youngest of all the candidates: a 12-year-old girl named, surprisingly, Anna Norkus.

Born in Cicero, Illinois in 1914, Norkus was given the name of Ona, Lithuanian for Anna. In that era, it was not the custom to christen infants with two names. But after 1918, children were baptized with a Christian name and an historic name to further pride on their main country. As a young girl, Anna's devotion to the Blessed Mother led her to begin using the name Marija, Mary, as her middle name. By the time she neared her teenage years, Anna had grown into a vivacious girl. Blonde and slim, she loved to dance, and it was her relentless begging that convinced her father, August, Sr., to take her to a dancehall for her 13th birthday. On the evening of July 20, 1927, father and daughter set out from their Chicago home at 5421 S. Neva for the famous O Henry Ballroom, accompanied by August's friend, William Weisner, and Weisner's date. On their drive home, at approximately 1:30 a.m., the travelers passed Resurrection Cemetery via Archer Avenue, turning east on 71st Street and then north on Harlem to 67th Street. There, the car careened and dropped into an unseen, 25-foot-deep railroad cut. Anna was killed instantly.

After the accident, her father, August Norkus was subject to devastating verbal abuse, even being told that Anna's death had been God's punishment for allowing the girl to go dancing at such a young age. In reality, the blame rested with the Chicago Streets Department, who had failed to post warning signs at the site of the cut. In fact, another death, that of Adam Levinsky, occurred at the same site the night after Anna's demise.

Between July 28th and September 29th, an inquest was held at Sobiesk's mortuary in adjacent Argo. Heading up the five sessions was Deputy Coroner Dedrich, the case reviewed by six jurors. The DesPlaines Valley News carried the story of the inquest.

Mary Nagode described to cousin Frank Andrejasich the sad procession that left the Norkus home on a certain Friday morning: First in line was Anna's older sister Sophie, followed by her older brother August, Jr. The pastor, altar boys, and a four-piece brass band preceded the casket, borne on a flatbed wagon with pallbearers on each side. Relatives and friends followed the grim parade for three blocks to the doors of St. Joseph's in Summit, where Anna had made her first communion only a year before. Between the band and the priest walked Frank Andrejasich's cousin, a terrified Mary Nagode. Mary was a friend of Anna's who had been pressed into service as a wreath-bearer. On summer vacation, Nagode was weeding on an asparagus farm in Willow Springs when Anna's father paid a visit to Mrs. Nagode, requesting that Mary march in his daughter's funeral procession. At home that evening, her mother informed Mary that she had accepted the request on her behalf. The girl was deeply dismayed at the proposition. Mrs. Nagode reminded her daughter that refusal of such a request would be a sin against Roman Catholic moral living, which dictates that one must attend to the burial of the dead.

Anna was scheduled for burial in one of three newly-purchased family lots at St. Casimir Cemetery, and it is here where Andrejasich found the "if" that may have led to an infamous afterlife for Anna : as the world-famous Resurrection Mary, or as Anna called herself, Marija.

Andrejasich discovered that, at the time of Anna's death, a man named Al Churas Jr., brother-in-law to Mary Nagode, lived across the road from the gates of Resurrection Cemetery, in a large brick bungalow that was recently torn down as part of a subdivision development. Al's father was in charge of the gravediggers and was given the house to live in as part of his pay. In the mid-1920s, gravedigging was hard, manual labor, rewarded with low pay. Strikes were common. As Resurrection was one of the main Chicago cemeteries, the elder Churas was often sent to the cemeteries of striking gravediggers to secure the bodies of the unburied. Returning to Resurrection with a corpse in a wooden box, Churas' duty was to bury it temporarily until the strike ended and the body could be permanently interred in the proper lot. Because of poor coffin construction and the lack of refrigeration, a body could not be kept long, except in the ground. If the strike dragged on, identification at the time of relocation could be gruesomely difficult. Thus, reasons Andrejasich, if the workers at St. Casimir were striking on that July morning in 1927, it is quite possible that young Anna Norkus was silently whisked to a temporary interment at Resurrection, and that a rapid decomposition rendered her unidentifiable at the time of exhumation. The result? A mislaid corpse and a most restless eternity, if only one is willing to believe.


Ursula Bielski is a Chicago historian and ghostlorist. She is the author of: Chicago Haunts, More Chicago Haunts, Graveyards of Chicago, Creepy Chicago, and the forthcoming book, Beloved: The Lives and Afterlives of Resurrection Mary. With her husband, David Cowan, she owns and operates Chicago Hauntings Ghost Tours. You can visit her Web site at: www.chicagohauntings.com.



2014 Haunted New England Wall Calendar by Jeff Belanger photography by Frank Grace
Check out the 2014 Haunted New England wall calendar by Jeff Belanger and photography by Frank Grace!


Paranormal Conferences and Lectures
Don't miss the following events and lectures:

Jeff Belanger and “The Bridgewater Triangle” at Dedham Community Theatre - April 6, 2014 9:00PM

The Spirits of the Mark Twain House - Hartford, Connecticut - April 12, 2014

Paracon Australia - East Maitland, New South Wales, Australia - May 10-12, 2014