Ghosttraveller: Mendota, IL ghosts

Birthplace of Wild Bill Hickock... and home of The World's Largest Ham Sandwich

"If you go like your going to snyders grove, instead of turning to snyders grove take the gravel road opposite of the road you go to snyders grove ... there's a barn on this gravel road after you drive for awhile. well, if you turn on the road to go to this barn, as you look at this barn you can see lights on in the barn even though no one lives there. we took 2 cars. we only took 1 up the path. my husband and his 3 friends got out of the car to explore, they looked in the barn and swear they seen a man hanging. legend is this black man was hung by a white man who lived there. well when they were in the barn, I was getting chills and looked in the rear view mirror and I swear to you I seen that white man... I thought it was my friends but nope it wasn't I screamed at the top of my lungs. they came back to our car. and we haven't been out there since.

another ghost story is about a house on 1st ave off of 9th st. my ex used to live there. it used to be a funeral home, but now its just a home. well there are a few stories about the place. the first one is, this guy, wife, and 3 kids where all living there, before it was a funeral home. well the guy had planted trees all around the house when he first bought it. well the story goes he went psycho and killed his wife, killed the baby and then his 2 boys. he buried there bodies in different spots on the property. The baby under the porch (and my ex and his family always used to hear a baby cry when they'd sit on the porch) and the rest of his family in the back. Where he buried the rest of the family, there are bare patches where grass wont grow. He was supposedly put in a mental hospital for a long time. Then when my exs mom was sitting in the living room, she heard noises outside, she went outside, and there were tons of ppl outside having a party. She started screaming at them, none paying attention ... then she didn't see it, but heard the sound of tires and then everything disappeared and she heard gunshots. After asking around there was a drive by there. Weird huh. After awhile they made the house into a funeral home. IF you go in the basement you can see the rooms for the bodies, and you can see the cremation thing. One of my exs friends didn't believe in ghosts and went in the basement and started cussing out whatever was there, when he came upstairs he supposedly was cut up pretty bad. Dishes have supposedly been broke. Lamps busting and lots of door slamming. Whispering in your ear sort of stuff. I was in the house 2 times. Then the house burnt up. Only the upstairs. The upstairs was the weirdest - if you hung crosses up they would fall. After the fire, my exs mom went to do laundry in the house, and the dryer fogged up and said get out. They have never been back. People come and go all the time in that house. I can get the exact addy for you if you want it."

"...on rt.251 as your coming into Mendota, there's a white house, I could show it to you, but i don't know the exact addy. anyway, one of my best friends used to live there ... she's moved to Colorado now... anyway, this house that she used to live in, it was extremely haunted. in her room a little boy was killed there. i don't remember how, but anyway, she would fold her laundry and put it in her dresser and leave the house. when shed come home all her laundry would be all over. freaky stuff happened there. since its a Mendota story you might want to email her for all the facts.

"the other story is about Snyder's grove. I don't know how true it is. supposedly a few guys and a girl went out there one homecoming or prom day or whatever. anyways, if you walk on the paths of Snyder's grove you'll come to this spot where its like a pond type thing where you can go swimming. I was out there with my ex and a few of our friends. i wanted to swim, and they were all like no way lets go. I was like why. they wouldn't tell me til we got out of there. supposedly when they were all swimming the girl drowned. cuz there's a drop off or something. well they say if you go swimming there now, shell pull you in. i dunno, but snyders grove is a freaky place anyways. i don't go out there too much. "

You should really be interested in Addie Worsley's... It's not far from Snyder's" ... thanks again, Mandy!

Mendota - "Addie Worsley's"

Mandy continued..."He was a guy... always said he lived in the woods. and killed people and animals and put the corpses in his moat around the house. Sounds crazy... but the stuff that we heard was so scary that we didn't ever get the nerve to go out there. But we visited his cemetery. You know the road Snyder's is on...go towards Triumph. (The other way dead ends by Snyder's) Take the first left. it was always a spooky road. you will come to an old cemetery, on the right side of the road, they say you can only see it at night... so I never went in the day ( but duh, really where is it going to go!) I will find out the whole Addie Worsley story.. I thought they said (purposely omitted) has his house. It is the next right turn you can take going towards Mendota you should be on E 5th Road? then turn right. instead of turning righ to Snyders go straight towards Mendota I can drive right to it... but writing it down gets a lil' tricky! (I moved to Peru 10 years ago...so I don't go back if I don't have to!)" ~this is obviously private property, and if you live in Mendota, I don't need to tell you about farmers and their shotguns!!! ~ed. Thanks again to Mandy, mutual friend of Mayor Mar, for this story.

Amanda wrote: "our science teacher was letting us listen to the radio one day and we came upon a station that was about the paranormal and stuff. they were interviewing a professional guy that studied this kind of stuff and he said something about one of the most haunted places in the world. he said that it was a cemetery east of LaSalle and he wouldn't say where exactly this place is. me and the guy I was sitting by (also my neighbor) figured it had
to be the old cemetery bout five miles away. When I was four or five I went to this really creepy cemetery on Troy Grove Black Top called Oakwood cemetery. It was really freaky. I managed to get a few pics cause i was interested in that stuff. When I got the pictures developed I noticed hundreds of little circles all over one picture of the north side of the cemetery. I was thinking about this incident and I told my neighbor Dustin and he's like yeh I've been there too and got the same effect with all my pictures. All my friends know about this place cause we all live between two and five miles from it. I also heard somewhere that ten people were hung in that cemetery. I also have another thing about this bridge in northern Illinois. I forget exactly where. but about ten years ago this bus was taking thirty some kids home when they came to a bridge which is now known as Cry Baby Bridge. They got to the top and found that
there was a dog in the road and the bus swerved and the bridge was kinda icy and the bus went into the river below or something like that. Now if you go up to the bridge and put your car in neutral and put baby powder on your bumper you'll be pushed slowly across the bridge. Then if you look at your back bumper you'll find hand prints of little kids. "

Well i went to Cry Babies bridge tonight. There wasnt much of anything to really be scared of other than the bridge itself. Its the first initial appearance of the bridge that scares you. But as far a ghostly haunting, nothing really happened. We rolled over the bridge 4 times with car and lights off but nothing happened. We even had Flour on the hood and trunk to look for handprints but nothing emerged. We are going there again on Saturday night since we live about 30 mins from the bridge.
thanks, Marcella!

Mandy wrote : "This isn't in Troy Grove. I know, I was born and raised there. It is just off the Troy Grove Blacktop, before you get to Route 6 it has a sign "Historic Oakwood Cemetery". Just this summer some kids vandalized the graves... really bad and people were/are pissed off. So the cops are all over this place. Even going to this place during the day, you feel like someone is waiting and watching you. Creeps me out really bad. I get a real bad vibe. Like you want to run to the car."

I unfortunately made it to Oakwood Cemetery in September '05 after the death of a loved one. It is much closer to LaSalle than it is to Troy Grove. Very pretty cemetery, and it says it has Civil War era tombstones. ~ed.

Here's a photo of the Wild Bill grave in Deadwood, SD (note the ever clingy Calamity Jane nestled right up next to him...)

If anyone has a photo handy of the Giant Wild Bill Head in Troy Grove, I'd love to post it. For some Wild Bill ghost stories, visit my South Dakota page...

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