Haunted Prairie

Welcome to the prairie; an overgrown corner of Graceland meant to enrich the cemetery with elements of the natural grasslands of the Midwest. Step off the pavement and peruse the paths in any direction you please.

Before Chicago was a city, this land was tended to by indigenous tribes including the Council of the Three Fires, which included the Odawa, Ojibwe, and the Potawatomi Nations. The land was very different and difficult to navigate. Sandy dunes dominated the lakeside and much of Chicago was a boggy swamp. But to Chicago’s south and west and encompassing a majority of the state of Illinois, was the tallgrass prairie like what we see here today. Prairie grasslands like these are often intentionally burned to ash each year to maintain their healthy ecosystems.

But I must tell you, though, that there are bodies buried in the earth hidden underneath these weeds and wildflowers and they have not been so thrilled about it. Yes, the prairie installation was grown over hundreds of existing burial plots – and regrettably without the permission of their living descendants.

The people buried in this section of the cemetery were poorer, mostly immigrants of old Chicago. Their status rendered them voiceless in life, and still so after death. Like Karl and Anna Ostberg, buried somewhere within the grasses under a simple, rectangular gravestone- all they could hope to afford on a carpenter’s salary, but thankful to be buried here none the less. Of course, that was until the cemetery planted a prairie over them.  

It is for this reason that it is often rumored, especially when the plants reach their tallest heights, that visitors to this prairie installation sometimes disappear within. The legend has it the bodies buried here rise from the ground, and, when no one’s looking, drag their victims into the weeds by their ankles.

So don’t linger long. Play the next track when you find the safety of hard pavement again.

Photo by Madi Delk, 2021. Published with permission.