The Resurrection Mary Files by Adam Selzer

Author:Adam Selzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Chicago, Resurrection Mary, vanishing hitchhiker, paranormal
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2012-09-25T00:00:00+00:00

[contents]

Chapter 4

In Search of the Real Mary

In none of these sightings is there any solid information we can use to determine her name, the date of her death, or her background; her age range has been given from late teens to as high as thirty (in Bob Main’s account). All we can say with any certainty is that she’s a young woman who died before about the mid-1930s (unless the ghost people saw in the 1970s wasn’t the same one from before).

That she’s the ghost of a girl who was buried at Resurrection is an obvious assumption, but, frankly, several of the sightings may actually take place closer to other graveyards. What we’re left with, after breaking the stories down, is that there’s a ghost of blonde woman who hitches rides and vanishes, and perhaps another ghost (or more than one) who appears roaming around the cemetery, Archer Avenue, and the ballrooms of the Southwest Side. This may be the same one who jumps in front of cars, or the same one who hitches rides, and may not be.

Still, anecdotal reports say that she’s been known as “Mary” since the 1930s, and almost every retelling states that she’s the ghost of a girl who died an auto accident. Hence, the search for the true identity of the ghost(s) has revolved almost completely around girls named Mary who died in car wrecks. Discussion of the “real” Mary over the last several years has revolved around a few particular candidates: Mary Bregovy, Anna Marija Norkus, and Mary Miskowski.

Mary Bregovy

Mary Bregovy was out with a couple of guys she met at the Goldblatt Brothers’ Department Store in April 1934. They seem to have been out dancing, and perhaps went ballroom hopping around the South Side, where Mary lived at 4611 South Damen, before going up to the Loop. There were three people in the car with her that night—John Reiker, John Thoel, and Virginia Rozanski, when Reiker crashed the car into an El track support beam at Wacker and Lake. The other three were injured and shaken up, but Mary, who was thrown through the windshield, died en route to a hospital at 24 N. Wacker, just spitting distance from the crash sight (some reports say she died instantly). She was buried a couple of days later at Resurrection Cemetery.

Stories connecting Mary Bregovy to Resurrection Mary may have started early, and were certainly going around in the 1970s, but were given a big push in 1983, when the Southtown Economist carried an extremely detailed story about her. They interviewed John Satala, who by then had been operating the Satala Funeral Home (which was down the block from Mary’s home) for nearly 60 years.

He was in his eighties at the time of the article, and chomped a cigar as he spoke to reporters about Miss Bregovy. “She was a hell of a nice girl,” he said. “Very pretty. She was buried in an orchid dress.” He opened a huge record book and smoked as he flipped to a page of her records.

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