Читать книгу Chicago Haunted Handbook - Jeff Morris - Страница 22

OAK HILL CEMETERY AND THE DEMON BUTCHER

8928 West 131st Street, Palos Park, Illinois 60464

directions

From the center of Chicago, take I-55 South for a little more than 13.5 miles to Exit 279 A-B towards La Grange Road. Take US-45 by taking the ramp on the left and follow this for a little more than 8.5 miles. Turn left onto West 131st Street and follow it for about 1 mile. The cemetery will be on your right.

history

In 1892 and 1893, as the World’s Fair arrived in Chicago, some people opted to leave the increasingly crowded inner city and move to quieter, outlying areas. Particularly, a man named Hermann Butcher decided to move his butcher shop to the suburb of Palos Park in 1892.

For a few years, he ran his butcher shop successfully, but when The Great Depression hit, his business was affected. Despite his increasing troubles, he was the only butcher shop in town to stay open during the Depression. Butcher employed a young apprentice who everyone in town knew that he treated poorly. He would yell at the young man often and would overwork him constantly. One day, as the apprentice was carrying a load of meat down into the freezer, he fell and broke his neck.

Butcher, knowing that the town knew how he treated his apprentice, decided to hide the body in his freezer. Soon, people missed the apprentice around town. Butcher denied having seen him but knew that he had to get rid of the body. One day, as the meat was running short, he carved the leg of his apprentice and cooked and tasted it. He decided that it could pass for beef and displayed it in his shop. The town not only bought the entirety of the apprentice’s ‘meat,’ but they came back begging for more.

Butcher decided that he had to provide for the town, so he would find hobos and small children in the area to lure back to his house to kill and butcher. Eventually, the townspeople began to suspect that he was to blame for the children who had gone missing in the area. They stormed the butcher shop and found a half-butchered 7-year-old in the basement. They then stormed Hermann Butcher’s house and drug him out to the front lawn where they hacked him to death with his own butcher knives.

They cut off his head and buried it on Indian Hill. The rest of his body was later buried across the street at Oak Hill Cemetery.

ghost story

On Indian Hill there currently stands a preschool. Some people at the preschool report hearing what sounds like the clanging of knives from time to time within and around the school grounds.

The more famous ghost story in this area, though, is actually in some ways verifiable. The story goes that the demon butcher’s body is attempting to reconnect with its head. The stories suggest that the grave of Hermann Butcher is actually moving toward Indian Hill, where his head is buried. This is actually documented and provable. The headstone itself is slowly creeping, year by year, across the cemetery grounds toward Indian Hill, which is across 131st Street from the cemetery. Experts say that the movement of the headstone is based on high water tables, causing the graves to become waterlogged, but they are unable to explain why the grave is moving toward the burial location of Butcher’s head.

visiting

The preschool area is completely off limits. Indian Hill is privately owned and plays host to young children at a preschool. Do not, under any circumstances, step onto this property to search for ghosts. Oak Hill Cemetery, however, is open from sunrise until sunset. You can enter the cemetery grounds to find the grave of Hermann Butcher.