Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 55

Section 2 13 lemoo Chicago (Tribune Monday, 13, 1974 For a chance of a ghost Some of Chicago favorite haunts si wV -v vr Tribune photos by James Mayo By Peter Gorner NEXT TIME you're driving thru the old South Side Polish neighborhood along Archer Avenue, keep an eye out for Resurrection Mary. Two generations of Chicagoans claim to have seen her thumbing a ride a pretty Polish girl, about 18, with long blonde hair, wearing a white dancing dress. Many young men say they've picked her up and taken her dancing, usually to the Willow Brook Ballroom in Willow Springs. And something odd always happens on the way home. As Mary and date drive past Resurrection Cemetery 7200 S.

Archer Mary suddenly gives a yell, jumps from the car, dashes thru the cemetery gates and vanishes. Until, that is, she wants to go dancing again. "RESURRECTION Mary probably is the most persistent hitchhiking ghost story in Chicago," said Richard Crowe, who collects such data. "Mary supposedly was killed in a car wTeck 40 years ago, and she's been coming back and going dancing ever since." Crowe is seeking recent dancing partners of Mary. He spends much of his time tracking down Chicago's haunted places and things, tho the chunky, amiable, 26-year-old is drawn to anything unexplained, be it psychic phenomena or ancient astronauts, lie's not a kook, just curious.

"I'll go anywhere for first-person accounts," he said, "preferably from as many different sources as possible. Independent corroboration really gets me interested." Last year, his alma mater, De Paul University, asked Crowe to select a representation of Chicago spookdom, and what resulted was the Chicago Ghost Tour, a popular five-hour bus jaunt which periodically departs from a parking lot behind De Paul. WHAT'S haunted in Chicago, according to Crowe? Well, for starters, there's Bachelor's Grove Cemetery. Bachelor's Grove is a desolate, overgrown, abandoned burial ground nestled in the woody marshlands off 143d Street near Midlothian. Crowe considers it the most consistently haunted place in the Chicago area.

It looks the part, even in daytime when few things go bump. This is one weird place. "There's a pale blue ghost light that comes out at night and moves thru the swampy area onto higher ground thru the trees," Crowe said. "I have about a hundred independent reports, many of them on tape. "The site also has a disappearing house.

At night, people see an old one-story frame house it's been spotted on both sides of the dirt road as you enter the cemetery. People who don't know each other all draw sketches of the same house, even down to the lamp burning faintly inside. They're flabbergasted to learn there's no house there." SHOULD YOU wish to sec for jour-self: From Chicago, take the Dan Ryan to 1-57. Exit at 147th Street, go west to Ridgeland Avenue and turn right north to 113d Street. Turn right again, and soon you'll pass over a bridge.

Turn right at tho first dirt road and follow it to tiic end. Should you see a moving blue light about the size of a baseball you're in the right place. Then there's the grave of Mary Alice Quinn, at Holy Sepulchre Cemetery, 6001 W. 111th Worth. "Mary Alice died in 1935 when she was 14," Crowe said.

"She apparently was a very saintly girl and a number of cures have been attributed to her. Her ghost also revealed itself to many people, and some even took handfuls of soil from around the grave because it supposedly had miraculous properties. During one of our tours in December, everyone noticed the strong scent of flowers by the grave. It was overpowering." Crowe puts St. Rita's Church, f.213 S.

Fairfield on his list, but its pastor, Father Francis Fenton, reacts rather violently to the notion. "This place is not haunted! This place is not haunted!" he said. "I'll repeat there are no ghosts around here. It's a bunch of nonsense." COUNTERED Crowe. "Three people have told me of an incident on All-Souls Day in 1960.

The organ began to play by itself, and six hooded figures were seen in the choir loft. People tried to get out but the doors wouldn't open. These cowled figures then were said to glide thru the pews; a voice was heard pleading 'Pray for and the doors flew open by themselves." "I've been here since 1936," said Father Fenton, "and I've seen no ghosts. With the possible exception of myself I can be a little spooky." 1874. One night in 1890, Father Damen said he awoke to find two boys at his door dressed in cassocks holding lighted candles.

They led him to tho house of an old woman who was dying, then they disappeared. Father Damen stayed with the woman until she died. He firmly believed he had been brought to her by the ghosts of her dead sons. "I've buried several people whom I've later encountered," Father McCarthy said, "and I'm not surprised. You see, it's a dogma of faith that dead people can communicate with us and we with them." "The statues of the altar boys seem to watch as you move around," Crowe said.

"In fact, the whole church is full of optical illusions, of weird angles and tilts. There are reports of things happening there all the time." CROWE is a South Sider anil knows more about that part of the city. But he always is seeking new material, and asks that those with stories to tell contact him thru P. O. Box 29054, Chicago, 111.

60029. "Of course the big thing "on the North Side is the site of the St. Valentine's Day Massacre at 2122 N. Clark he said. "A housing project for tho elderly is there now.

"But there's this small grassy area with five trees. The center tree sits just about exactly where the men would have been lined up and shot. "I am told dogs shy away from that tree," he said. "And many people have said they hear strange sobbings there at night. 5 Old Holy Family Church (lop) is both historic and splendidly haunted, says Richard Crowe, psychic investigator.

But he gives Bachelor's Grove Cemetery top honors for spookiness. lie poses, above, amid toppled gravestones in the abandoned burial ground near Midlothian. The story is different, tho, at Holy Family Church, 1019 S. May St. This grand old survivor of the Chicago Fire is splendidly haunted, according to Crowe, and its pastor, Father David McCarthy, agrees.

"The shadowy figures come and go," he said with a laugh, "but there are many legends about the church which go back a hundred years to the days of Father Arnold Damen, its founder. Father Damen even had two of our ghosts carved in wood and placed in the sanctuary." THE STATUES are of two young altar boys, brothers who drowned in Grand guru of education tells it with deceptive simplicity hi 4 J- 1 I 7 I i By Rulh Moss "AS EXCITING AS a football game," a coed at the University of Illinois Circle campus exclaimed as she watched the crowds gather to see and hear the great Swiss psychologist, Jean Piagct. The overflowing audience gave a standing ovation to the grand old man, the new guru in education circles, as he received his latest honor, a doctorate of humane letters. They heard the 77-year-old University of Geneva professor praised for his special contributions to the Chicago institution, inspiring the scholarly curiosity of two Circle faculty members, Constance Kamii and Rheta De Vrics, who now are implementing his ideas In nursery schools and day care centers. THEN THE 1,500 students, educators, parents, and professionals sat respectfully at the feet of the master who spoke a language few knew.

His lecture in French was layered in English by his talented former student, Eleanor Duckworth, who flew in from Halifax to translate. Such is the intellectual power and personal magnetism of the man whose 50 years of research into how children learn have built a new science with far-reaching implications for educational reform. The appealing stories Piagot tells have a deceptive simplicity. His theories, tho, about tho development of thinking are enormously complex. In addition, he has developed his own definitions of words like "structure" and "operation." THESE ARE BEST understood by those who appreciate Piagct's propositions: Much of knowledge comes from within the child, not from without.

Children not only reason differently from adults but have quite different views of the world. And children who learn autonomously have the best chance to construct their Intelligence, personality, and their own system of lasting moral values. Basic, too, is Piagct's theory that Intelligence develops in stages related to age. The stages appear in the same order for all children. What differs is the age at which they develop.

The child's native endowment and physical and social environment may determine tho pace at which he learns, but no matter how fast the pace, all children must pass thru the same four stages: THE FIRST stage, from birth to approximately 2 years, is the sensory-motor period, when the baby busily fills his brain with stimuli he acquires thru his senses and his own actions. Between 2 and 7, in the preoperational stage, the child, thru repeated play and experiences, develops an understanding of symbols and acquires language. The period from 7 to 11 is the age of concrete operations, or operational thinking, when the child learns to deal with relationships among classes of things. The child learns to think abstractly. In the final stage of formal operations, from 12 to 15 years, children become capable to thinking hypothetically.

Their mental processes now are analogous to adult thinking. MANY IN THE audience brought this background. Many brought along, too, copies of his books he's published 30 in all or of books others have written, another 30 or so, to explain, interpret, or adapt his theories. Piaget spoke on "Development of Notions of Causality in Children." "In their search for explanations which begins very early in life, children begin asking 'why' questions," ho began, "often about phenomena for which we have few answers." WHEN A LITTLE boy In Geneva asked of the Saleve, the double humped mass that dominates the city, "Why are there two mountains?" Piaget turned the question back to the boy who answered, "The little one is for little walks and the big one is for big walks." Tho childish, the reply was very interesting, an explanation related to the child's own actions. Later, his explanations will be based on the child's own operations, and his answers will become richer as he moves thru the total operational structure.

"His first very simple explanation is highly egocentric," Piagct said, "but his answers will become more complicated as he moves thru the different stages of operations. "Tho child's explanation is not simply cute and amusing but an essential beginning if the child is to develop into a person capable of explanations by means of operations at a more sophisticated level." Continued on page 18 TribuneHardy Wielmj Swiss psychologist Jean Tiagct makes a point. I I OlPON'TKNOIJ ANYTHING UHAT KIND OF A Tomorrow in Tempo "Wc believe our women should be mothers says Spencer W. Kimball, new president of the Church of Latter Day Saints. Linda Lee Landis interviewed Kimball and came up with an insightful look at the Mormon Church and its new leader.

Good Morning How come politicians who claim the country is ruined arc trying so hard to get control of it? Th Furrow.