Within Joliet is Oakwood Cemetery, founded in 1855 to receive the remains of the city’s founding fathers. Over 18,000 interments have been performed there – and in the rear of the cemetery, there is a Woodland Indian burial mound estimated to be over a thousand years old, containing the remains of over 300 people. This burial seemed hasty, possibly indicating an epidemic or disaster long before the first Europeans settled the area.

It is just south of Hickory Creek, which runs through Pilcher Park to the east – a locale historic in its own right for its role in helping escaped slaves flee via the Underground Railroad during before and during the Civil War, and noted today by ghost-hunters and paranormal investigators alike for its spooky activity during both daylight and nighttime hours.

Further west, also along historic Route 6, is Aux Sable Cemetery. This location is also famous among those seeking chills and evidence of the afterlife. Ghost stories abound, as well as urban legends, but to date no credible evidence has been recorded.

Both sites are beautiful, well-kept memorial grounds. As with any cemetery, they are open to visitation only during the daytime, and trespassers at night risk arrest and prosecution – and perhaps a haunting that will last a lifetime.

I pass a cemetery that’s as old as the area’s known habitation (pre-European), and there’s a particular monument to a young girl:

How’s this for ironic: Emma was at a funeral with her family, and died by electrocution during the service. Her father had the statue commissioned from a portrait that had been done of her shortly before her unfortunate death.

As you can see in the first photo, some one visits her grave and leaves trinkets, and recently a plastic rosary … Well, yesterday I noticed that her stuffed animal had been knocked down. Having a touch of OCD, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I went there after work to take care of it.

Her second necklace had also been broken, so I collected up all the beads I could find and stashed them in the crook of her elbow.

After that I had some time to kill before the next bus, so I headed to the back of the cemetery where the burial mound is.

The first time I was there, I didn’t even know what it was. It’s about four feet high, girded by three large trees (two oaks and a something-or-other), and although there is a post for a sign the sign itself is missing.

What I found online indicates it is estimated to be over 1,000 years old, the work of an “unknown Woodland Indian Tribe,” with over 300 individuals noted (during an archeological excavation by the University of Chicago in 1928). There’s indication that the burial was hurried, perhaps indicating en epidemic of disease.

Flowers on the mound:

(Toba was a volcano in Sumatra that erupted about 73,000 BCE, with an explosion far greater than anything seen since. It produced a volcanic winter – ash and gas blocking the sun – that lasted six years. This caused a general cooling that plunged the planet into an ice age)