Florida Academy of Psychical Sciences

Copyright 2008, Miami Paranormal Research Society. Neither this article or photographs may be republished without prior written permission

As much as I have come to love the state of Florida, there are days when I do miss Illinois and its haunts! St. James is without a doubt, one of my favorite haunts! I’m not quite sure why there seems to be so much paranormal activity here in the south suburbs of Chicago. I’m glad there are-it makes my job much easier and much more fascinating. St. James is located in Lemont and is a lesser known haunt, as compared to Bachelors Grove, Resurrection and Holy Sepulcher Cemeteries. As a matter of fact, St. James and Resurrection seem to share a reported apparition of a hearse with no driver. I have heard of several sightings of this ghostly funeral car. However, I have recently heard that the hearse appears in front of Resurrection Cemetery and travels along Archer avenue to St. James.

St. James at Sag Bridge is most commonly known as Monk’s Castle to the locals. Burials here began around 1834.

The first person to be buried here was a lady named Honora Ford in 1834. St. James church sits in gothic splendor upon a hill in the middle of the graveyard. When you are here, it is difficult to remember that you are in Illinois and not in a churchyard somewhere in Europe.

There are three structures on this property; the church, the rectory and Saginaw Hall.

A French fort once stood on the same spot where the church is located. Since 1650 Catholic missionaries held mass for traders and for the Saganauskee Tribe, whose village was about a mile away.

Although burials here had taken place since 1834 {and I suspect much earlier than that}, Two gentlemen, James Murphy and John Sullivan granted the right acre graveyard to St. James church in 1858. There was a stipulation in the deed that said anyone who could not otherwise afford burial, could bury their dead in these hallowed grounds for free. Provided that one be willing to dig the graves themselves.

Needless to say, St. James is filled with unmarked pauper’s graves, which makes it impossible to determine just how many graves are located here. Of the first one thousand burials, about seven hundred are unmarked and no church records exist to say who was buried here or where. It is worth a mention that Mr. and Mrs. John Sullivan are buried somewhere in this graveyard in unmarked graves.

What I find most interesting is that this European-looking churchyard had a very liberal burial policy. The NW corner of churchyards, historically have held a dubious distinction. This tradition of reserving the North West corner for suicide victims is one that comes from Europe, before the implementation of our modern park style cemeteries. Even in death, your social rank or class dictated your final resting place.

The preferred location was burial within the church itself and this of course was a privilege of the high society. For the middle class, interment within the gates of the churchyard was their favored location. The middle class considered the East section most auspicious and the goal was to obtain a spot as close to the church as possible. The closer you were buried to the church, the more prestigious you were.

The lower class were buried in the south sections and the North corner was considered evil- the worst place you could be buried. This area was reserved for what were considered the “undesirable” individuals. By this definition I mean those who died by suicide. At this time, most churches didn’t even allow the burial of suicide victims within their grounds. If they did, their caskets had to be passed over the gate, rather than being allowed to pass thru it. This practice was especially true in Europe.

The reason I say that Saint James at Sag Bridge had a very liberal burial policy is because here, your social class didn’t matter; a poor man could spend eternity besides a millionaire. Everyone is equal, in the eyes of God. This was and still is, to my knowledge, the only churchyard of its kind in the world and St. James still acepts burials.

However, it is within the North section of the graveyard that many tales of curious goings on and colorful characters are told. There are countless stories of the poor coming to bury deceased family members, only to engage in drunken orgies and brawls. Marshall Edward Coen told the Chicago Tribune in an article that Tim Carroll {a legendary gravedigger at St. James} was responsible for having to re-bury the dead after such spectacles. He stated that Mr. Carroll had witnessed many men literally throwing punches as they attempted to dig the graves. Quite often, the mourners would not bury their dead at all, but instead would storm off in a drunken rage. In these cases, Mr. Carroll had the task of burying the abandoned remains himself and without extra compensation. This was during the time that Rev. Joseph A. Bollmann served here {1882-1903. Father Bollman died ,March, 23, 1922 and buried in Mt. Carmel Cemetery}.

An interesting side note to this story is that the first grave digger of St. James was a woman! A man was officially appointed, but he didn’t know the first thing about digging graves, so his wife did it.

One of the bodies interred here in this section is that of John McMahon who died in 1880 at the age of thirty-three. We know that he was murdered, but the question is, by whom? This crime has never been solved. Mr. McMahon was alleged to have been fatally shot in a home invasion, as he lay in bed beside his wife Mary {Holligan} McMahon. Mrs. McMahon reported that she did not see or hear anything. In the seventeen years that followed the murder of John McMahon, Mary had buried three husbands. I have not yet been able to find out what the other husbands died of, but I suspect that they died under questionable circumstances as well. In those days, a woman was considered too fragile to even contemplate such a thing.

What a gruesome sight this corner of the churchyard must have been! Most of the pauper’s graves had to be exhumed and re-buried, sometimes in old graves, because people would only dig these graves two feet deep. If you have ever visited here, you already know about the extremely uneven terrain and its potential for soil erosion. With that in mind, I can just imagine some of the surprises that have been discovered.

In 1885, a stranger visited the parish and put a curse on the church, the graveyard and all members of this parish. A mysterious man had come to St. James seeking alms, for which he reportedly was refused. Shortly after, disturbing notes were found tacked to the church door and on the doors of Sag Bridge residents.

A man by the name of Mr. Marks had arrived at the church at about one o’clock to toll the bells and he was the first to discover the ominous note on the door. The matter was immediately reported to the police, who treated it as a joke. Neither Mr. Marks or the other church members found this the least bit amusing. It goes to show how times have changed because today, because the author of these notes would have been charged with stalking, harassment and the threat of bodily harm.

After a half-hearted attempt to investigate this, the police never did positively identify the culprit. All believed that the person responsible was the mysterious man who came calling and legend says that this stranger was not a beggar at all, but Satan himself!