Download or read book Haunted Rockford Illinois written by Kathi Kresol and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017-10-02 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Follow local historian and “Ghost Lady” Kathi Kresol as she researches the spirits, curses, and curiosities from the Forest City’s shadowy past. Just beneath the glossy surface of Rockford’s rich heritage lies a dark history of tragedy, a troubled and turbulent past leaving scars that still resonate today. Geraldine Bourbon’s final struggle echoes throughout the farmhouse where her estranged husband pursued her with a pistol from room to room before gently laying her corpse on the bed. The sobs of society darling Carrie Spafford still keep vigil over the family plot of the cemetery where she sowed the heartbreak of her twilight years. From the vengeance of Chief Big Thunder to the Witch of McGregor Road, author Kathi Kresol shares the legends and lore of Rockford’s haunted history. Includes photos! “There are reasons why Kathi Kresol believes Rockford is so haunted. The tour guide said there are good ‘conductors’ for the supernatural in the city’s downtown area. These factors include being near a body of water, having limestone in the area and the area having a Native American influence.” —Beloit Daily News
Download or read book Haunted Rockford Illinois written by Kathi Kresol and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Just beneath the glossy surface of Rockford's rich heritage lies a dark history of tragedy. The city's troubled and turbulent past left scars that still resonate today. Geraldine Bourbon's final struggle still echoes through the farmhouse where her estranged husband pursued her with a pistol from room to room beofre gently laying her corpse on the bed. The sobs of society darling Carrie Spafford still keep vigil over the family plot of the cemetery where she sowed the heartbreak of her twilight years. From the vengeance of Chief Big Thunder to the Witch of McGregor Road, author Kathi Kresol shaes the legends and lore of Rockford's haunted history.--back cover
Download or read book Murder Mayhem in Rockford Illinois written by Kathi Kresol and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2015 with total page 1 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rockford rightly prizes its prosperous heritage, earned by manufacturing concerns like the Rockford Watch Factory and the Manny Reaper Company. But the town once named Midway also harbors a history of crime and calamity. Gunfire broke out in the streets when networks of Prohibition informants slid sideways. In 1893, John Hart forced his own sisters to drink poison. Three years later, James French shot down his wife in the street. Over the years, a courthouse collapsed, a factory exploded and trains collided. Join local historian Kathi Kresol as she explores the mayhem milling about in Rockford's past.
Download or read book Ghost Whispers Tales from Haunted Midway written by William Gorman and published by Helm Publishing. This book was released on 2005 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The haunted and haunting stories of this book come from a variety of people and places, persons who reside in sleepy, practical neighborhoods scattered all throughout the Rock River Valley and over most of north-central Illinois.
Download or read book Anatomy of a Haunting written by Lee Strong and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2013-03-08 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Imagine that you’ve inherited a house of spirits. Now imagine that the house wants you dead. For Jon and Carlie Summers, the nightmare begins when they move into an inherited home in rural Iowa. Leaving behind their busy lives in Chicago, Jon and Carlie are dragged into a horrifying spiral of violent dreams, illnesses, and possessions. Uncovering a vast evil hidden for decades in crates of buried journals, Jon and Carlie are forced to relive the sinister history of the house and its legacy of abuse, denial, and obsession. Anatomy of a Haunting is a terrifying true story about one house and its inhabitants who have been pushed to the brink of insanity and death. Through interviews and exhaustive research into the 150-year-old McPherson house, author Lee Strong delves into the history of the haunting and paints a nightmarish picture of one couple’s descent into supernatural madness. Praise: "Light a white candle before reading this book—and after you've finished. Anatomy of a Haunting is truly terrifying." —Annie Wilder, author of House of Spirits and Whispers and Trucker Ghost Stories
Download or read book Ghosts of Northern Illinois written by Stephen Osborne and published by Schiffer Publishing. This book was released on 2012 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There are a host of ghostly tales and legends surrounding Chicago, Rockford, Dekalb, Dixon, Byron, and other cities in towns in the Prairie State! In Ghosts of Northern Illinois, meet the spirit of a woman who was brutally murdered in the 1940s. Shiver as you learn about a blue figure that runs down the alley adjacent to the Biograph Theater, then falls to the ground and disappears. Encounter a phantom jogger, the Madonna of Bachelor's Grove Cemetery, and the mysterious scent of perfume at the Coronado Theater. Come and visit Willow Creek Farm, one of the top-ten haunted houses in Illinois, where over 30 spirits have been detected! Think Illinois looks calm and peaceful? Think again!
Download or read book Secret Rockford written by Michael Kleen and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Secret Rockford pulls back the curtain to reveal the hidden side of life in the Forest City. This anthology contains many snapshots of life in Rockford. Join us as we go behind the headlines to explore the people, places, and events that make our city unique. On these pages, you will find the unconventional, gritty, and sometimes shocking truth.
Download or read book Haunted Route 66 written by Richard Southall and published by Llewellyn Worldwide. This book was released on 2013-02-08 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pack your bags, hop in the car, and head out on a haunted adventure across legendary Route 66 Embrace the spirit of adventure and freedom with an exciting journey of spine-tingling paranormal activity and American history along Route 66. This travel companion transports you from Chicago, Illinois, to Santa Monica, California, exploring over one hundred ghostly hot spots filled with fascinating facts and lingering spirits. From ghost hunters to avid fans of the Mother Road, everyone can take their own haunted road trip on Route 66 with this essential, easy-to-read guide. Explore the famous highway through historic locations and gripping ghost stories about the St. Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago, the restless spirit of Charlie Chaplin that still haunts the Venice Beach Boardwalk in Los Angeles, and many more. This one-of-a-kind collection, with chapters organized by state, paves the way for your grand tour into the unknown.
Download or read book Muldoon written by Rocco A. Facchini and published by Lake Claremont Press. This book was released on 2003 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Father Leo then paused with a deep breath before going on. 'There are many problems here, and some very strange things happen late at night that I just can't explain.' "Poverty. Crime. Politics. Scandal. Revenge. . . . And a Ghost.These are the untold stories of the last days of a forgotten Chicago parish by the last person able to tell them: Fresh out of the seminary in 1956, Father Rocco Facchini was appointed to his first assignment, the parish of Saint Charles Borromeo on the city's Near West Side. Adapting to rectory life with an unorthodox, dispirited pastor and attending to the needs of the rough, impoverished neighborhood were challenges in themselves. Little did Rocco know that the rectory was being haunted by a bishop's ghost!Muldoon: A True Chicago Ghost Story dives into Father Rocco's four-year saga at Saint Charles, where his spiritual undertaking becomes a worldly adventure. His supporting cast includes a housekeeper inappropriately involved in her pastor's affairs, and a genius-priest who carries a gun, thwarts neighborhood crime, and teaches Rocco about "loving the poor." And there's the pastor himself. He padlocks the refrigerator, guides young priests only in the weekly ritual of Bingo, and entangles Rocco in the dirty work of a fraudulent shrine.As a backdrop to this chaos, the rectory experiences a host of supernatural manifestations, and Rocco discovers the legend of Bishop Peter J. Muldoon. Are there clues in this story of early stardom and great achievement, clerical competition and revenge, accusations and scandal, a missing ring, excommunication, and possibly murder that explain why the unexplainable is happening all around him?Upon delving into the church history, clerical politics, local folklore, neighborhood sociology, and paranormal activity of Muldoon, you, like Rocco, may be left wondering: Has he been kept alive to tell the story of Muldoon, clear the man's name, and memorialize the bishop's beloved and forgotten parish of St. Charles?
Download or read book American Hauntings written by Troy Taylor and published by Whitechapel Productions. This book was released on 2017-04-13 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the mediums of Spiritualism's golden age to the ghost hunters of the modern era, Taylor shines a light on the phantasms and frauds of the past, the first researchers who dared to investigate the unknown, and the stories and events that galvanized the pubic and created the paranormal field that we know today.
Download or read book Witchcraft in Illinois A Cultural History written by Michael Kleen and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2017 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the first time in print, Michael Kleen presents the full story of the Prairie State's dalliance with the dark arts. Although Illinois saw no dramatic witch trials, witchcraft has been a part of Illinois history and culture from French exploration to the present day. On the Illinois frontier, pioneers pressed silver dimes into musket balls to ward off witches, while farmers dutifully erected fence posts according to phases of the moon. In 1904, the quiet town of Quincy was shocked to learn of Bessie Bement's suicide, after the young woman sought help from a witch doctor to break a hex. In turn-of-the-century Chicago, Lauron William de Laurence's occult publishing house churned out manuals for performing bizarre rituals intended to attract love and exact revenge.
Download or read book The Names of Rivers written by Daniel Buckman and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2003-10 with total page 212 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Set in a rustbelt town south of Chicago, this is the story of Bruno Konick, a troubled veteran of World War II, and his grandson Luke, a boy forever dreaming of heroism in a post-Vietnam America.
Download or read book Christmas in Illinois written by James Ballowe and published by . This book was released on 2015-07-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Christmas seems to have been always with us. It is that time of year when we expect good cheer and goodwill, a moment's respite from the year's vicissitudes, solace during difficult times," writes James Ballowe in his introduction to Christmas in Illinois. This book is about the holiday as remembered by Illinoisans. Some are widely familiar--John W. Allen, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sandra Cisneros, Mike Royko, Carl Sandburg, Joseph Smith--but most are known only in their close-knit communities that together represent the very best of the Prairie State. We learn here about the customs of Christmas from Chicago to Cairo, Belleville to Danville, before statehood to the present day, through hard times and good. Tales, poems, news reports, memoirs, recipes, and images are arranged in sections on Christmas in Illinois history, living traditions, songs and symbols, Christmas outdoors, eating merrily, and memories. We see how bright an occasion Christmas has been, and sometimes amusing, raucous, or even dark. The collection's highlights include Chicago's Christmas tree ship, Peoria's Santa Parade, Rockford's Julotta service, a Victorian holiday in Bloomington, and Audubon's 1810 Christmas on the Cache River. Nature writers detail holiday bird-watching expeditions along the North Shore and in deepest southern Illinois. A letter from a member of the 130th Illinois Infantry captures Christmas Day 1863, and Jack McReynolds recalls West Frankfort's 1951 Orient Number Two mine disaster that thereafter haunted the holiday for him and many others. The holiday table is not neglected, with traditional recipes for wild game, pickled herring, and all manner of Christmas cookies. A wide array of illustrations includes images of Chicago's grand State Street parade, the Santa Lucia celebration at Bishop Hill, Belleville's Santa Claus House, Millikin University's Vespers tradition, the University of Illinois madrigal singers, Studs Terkel singing songs of good cheer, and the holiday art of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Heat up some cider, put a log on the fire, and curl up with Christmas in Illinois to share the holiday with friends both old and new.
Download or read book The Amityville Horror written by Jay Anson and published by Gallery Books. This book was released on 2019-12-03 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A fascinating and frightening book” (Los Angeles Times)—the bestselling true story about a house possessed by evil spirits, haunted by psychic phenomena almost too terrible to describe. In December 1975, the Lutz family moved into their new home on suburban Long Island. George and Kathleen Lutz knew that, one year earlier, Ronald DeFeo had murdered his parents, brothers, and sisters in the house, but the property—complete with boathouse and swimming pool—and the price had been too good to pass up. Twenty-eight days later, the entire Lutz family fled in terror. This is the spellbinding, shocking true story that gripped the nation about an American dream that turned into a nightmare beyond imagining—“this book will scare the hell out of you” (Kansas City Star).
Download or read book From the bottom up written by Chad Pregracke and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2007 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Murder Mayhem in Rockford Illinois written by Kathi Kresol and published by Arcadia Publishing. This book was released on 2015-11-09 with total page 132 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The shocking true crimes of Rockford, Illinois, come to light in this fascinating account of a midwestern city’s sordid history of murder and corruption. Rockford, Illinois, rightly prizes its prosperous heritage, built on manufacturing concerns like the Rockford Watch Factory and the Manny Reaper Company. But the town formerly known as Midway also harbors a history of crime and calamity . . . Gunfire broke out in the streets when networks of Prohibition informants decided to go rogue. In 1893, John Hart forced his own sisters to drink poison. Three years later, James French shot down his wife in the street. Over the years, a courthouse collapsed, a factory exploded and trains collided . . . Join local historian Kathi Kresol as she explores Rockford, Illinois’s scandalous past in this gripping book of small-town true crime stories.
Download or read book Ghost Whispers written by William Gorman and published by Virtualbookworm.com Publishing. This book was released on 2009-05 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever felt uneasy chills upon entering an old house or cemetery? Sensed someone watching you from the dark at the top of the stairs, when you knew you were alone? If so, then dim the lights and stoke up the fire. These stories will thrill and bewitch you, and unveil the hauntedness in us all. Read them and be scared... With his first book, "Ghost Whispers: Tales from Haunted Midway," local author William Gorman journeys deep into what modern master and Illinois native son Ray Bradbury called the 'October country'; that dark, unseen region where the natural and the supernatural worlds touch and sometimes bleed into each other. Only this time, it's right here in our own back yard: Rockford, Illinois, and her nearby environs. Within these pages you'll meet the ghost of a murdered girl who still wanders her former Haight Village neighborhood on rare, dread occasions; a southern-born taxidermist who lived as strangely as he died, and whose moody soul now will not rest until he finds his lost burial casket; the spirit of an old woman from Belvidere named Nellie, who donned her faded wedding dress one night and walked into the river like vapor; the vengeful phantom of an infamous Freeport assassin, who once killed a U.S. president and was hanged for his crimes; and lingering ghosts of a Rockford gone by, as three young boys take a coming-of-age midnight stroll through their fair city as it was in 1905, a burgeoning place filled with fleeting shadows and with a present already sadly becoming past. Plus many, many more. At times unsettling, at other times lyrical and life affirming, and at times just plain frightening, there's something here for everyone in this macabre collection of spooky tales. True or not, folklore or fact, strangers who visit this upper Midwest region-after reading these chilling accounts-will arrive from now on with a new appreciation of its spirited history and its somewhat haunted landscape. And local residents will never pass by and look at their own Gothic architecture or tree-shrouded graveyards in quite the same way again.
