By Mark W. Sorensen

STOP HAUNTING THE DEAD"

Why do they whistle so loud, when they walk past the graveyard late at night?

Why do they look behind them when they reach the gates? Why do tliey have any gates? Why don't they go through the wall? But why, O why do they make that horrible whistling sound?

GO AWAY, LIVE PEOPLE, STOP HAUNTING THE DEAD.

(*Writer Kenneth Fearing (1902-1961) was born and raised in Oak Park. His complete poem, "Thirteen O'clock" can be found at http://members.tripod.com/~gremlin2/thirteen.html.)

Since Americans just spent an estimated $6.9 billion this year on Halloween, I thought wed briefly review this holiday's history and then see what we can learn from dead people. The ancient Celts thought that late October was a good time to get in touch with the spirit world. Their celebration of Samhain involved masks, black cats, and going door to door for food. When the Romans conquered the Celts, apples were added to the ceremonies. Early Christians at first opposed pagan holidays but later assimilated aspects into their church calendar. "All Saints' Day" was created by Pope Boniface in the 7th Century because there were not enough days in the year to accommodate all of the saints. Therefore, All Saints Day was to recognize those saints who were without their own day, and to celebrate saints that the Church had failed to recognize. Originally observed in May, it was moved by Pope Gregory in 835 CE (Common Era) to the first of November. "Hallow" being an Old English word for "saint," Halloween was originally called "All Hallows' Eve," which means the evening before All Saints' Day. "All Souls' Day" was created for Nov.2 to honor faithful Christians who had died but were not saints. For more information on the historic background of Halloween, as well as Abraham Lincoln's haunting of the White House, go to Religious Tolerance http://www.religioustolerance.org/ hallo cu.htm and The History Channel website www.historychannel.com/exhibits/halloween/main.html.

According to "Shadows of Chicago Ghost Research" http://www.shadowsofchicago.com/. child actor Haley Joel Osment (The Sixth Sense) is not the only person to "see dead people." Haunted Illinois author Troy Taylor opines "for sheer number of haunts, none can come close to the ghosts that can be found in the Windy City." His "Chicago's Most Haunted' web site has a explanation of Archer Avenue's most famous apparition, "Resurrection Mary," but also gives equal time to the Midlothian male specters of Bachelor's Grove Cemetery. At "The Biograph Theater" site http://www.shadowsofchicago.com/biograph.html Taylor gives a detailed description of John Dillinger's last hours alive and his first hours as a celebrity corpse. (For you extreme trivia buffs, Anna Sage, "the Lady in Red," actually wore a bright orange dress to help federal agents identify Dillinger.)

Another excellent site is the related "Ghosts of the Prairie: Haunted Chicago" web site at http://www.prairieghosts.com/ midwest3.html. There are dozens of well-written historical articles about the Fort Dearborn Massacre, Eastland Disaster, Leopold and Loeb, Al Capone, and the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Also, I can recommend the veteran "Graveyards of Chicago" http://www.graveyards.com/ as a place for solid historical reporting. This site contains a list of many cemeteries in Cook County http://www.graveyards.com/list.html. over 700 photos of tombs and biographies of many of their deceased denizens.

The Illinois State Genealogical Society has an ongoing project to identify all cemeteries in Illinois http://www.rootsweb.com/~ilsgs/ilcemeteries/ilcemcetery.html. including those that have been abandoned, moved, or are no longer in use. Information includes location by county, township name and number, range, and section with links to specific gravesites.

In 1843 the Illinois General Assembly passed its first legislation providing for the registration of deaths with county clerks. Because the act of registration was a voluntary process, few counties created these records. Legislation approved in 1877 again mandated this duty for county clerks, but the law again provided for no enforcement and therefore resulted in many counties keeping records only irregularly. Not until 1915 did a statute provide for an effective system of registration of births and deaths in Illinois. These records are now kept statewide by Department of Public Health http://www.idph.state.il.us/vital/forms/deathrow.htm and copies can be ordered from the state's Division of Vital Statistics or from the clerk of county in which the death took place.

Death Certificates can be a rich source of information for genealogists and other historians. Although the format has changed several times over the past 87 years, the basic information has stayed the same. Each certificate identifies the decedent by name, sex, race, birth date, birth place, age at death, residence and marital status; gives the name and birth date of spouse; lists the place of death by county, city and sometimes by address or institution; provides the names and birthplaces of the decedent's father and mother; includes decedent's occupation and employer and names the informant providing the above information. Also included are the date of death; the immediate and contributing cause of death; sometimes details about the length of illness, operations, and possible autopsy; the attending physician's name and address; the date and place of burial, and the undertaker's name and address.

This past Spring, the Illinois State Archives put an index of all state death records from 1916 to 1950 online at http://www.sos.state.il.us/departments/archives/idphdeathindex.html. This index has proven to be one of the most popular government web sites in the country and has helped to raise the Archives' web page "hit" count to nearly 12 million in 2002. Apparently few "live people" are taking Fearing's advice to "stop haunting the dead."

Mark Sorensen is Assistant Director at the Illinois State Archives and maintains the Illinois History Resource Page at http://alexia.lis.uiuc.edu/~sorensen/hist.html.

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