As you enter the gravel path on foot, you can still hear the traffic, but the eerie quality of the surroundings makes you feel isolated and vulnerable to whatever might occur. Trees line either side of the path, and I found myself looking for something to jump out at me as we cautiously made our way towards the graveyard. All I am conscious of at this point is the noise of our feet on the gravel and the sound of our breathing. Did I mention that I always wear running shoes when I visit here? You just never know...

The path seems forever long, although it's not. An eerie feeling invades us, as we don't know what to expect, and our adrenalin is in high gear. The rustling of leaves and cracking branches to the left and right make us jumpy as we look towards the sounds in the trees to the left and right of us. I tell myself it's only birds, or maybe squirrels.

This is how the path looks during late autumn after the trees lose their leaves. The entrance to the cemetary is at the end on the right.

We walk beyond the chain link fence and survey the grounds. It's a real small cemetary, smack dab in the middle of a forest preserve. Old tombstones date as far back as the late 1800's, with many being toppled over and some are defaced with satanic symbols. In this cemetary's history, a few graves have been dug up and Cook County Forest Preserve workers and Law Enforcement have found what appeared to be sacrificial remains of animals.

We went from stone to stone and read what was still readable. I saw one that said "Infant Daughter" and another "Baby. At one point, my younger brother J said, "Look, I want to go get a sandwich from this house." Okay, so he's weird!

S and I looked past J's pointing finger and saw a small white house set back in the woods, and because it was growing darker, we also saw a glowing golden light coming from the 2 windows. I said, "I didn't see that house when we came in, maybe it's the caretaker's house?"

S said, "J, we'll get something to eat at the Carnival." We walked around a little more, it was 8:30pm, and dusk was settling in, so we decided to leave through the gates. We looked around and didn't see the house anymore! We looked and looked, squinting our eyes, and just couldn't see it!

The above photo was taken from just inside the cemetary looking out the exit gates. The house was seen further back in the trees where the dark area is in the photo. To exit the cemetary, we would head left out the gates and down the tree-lined path.

We arrived at the entrance, the narrow gravel road. It was still before sunrise. Filled with a sense of adventure and fear, we began our walk down the path. The gravel crunched beneath our feet, our hearts pounded. A funny thing I noticed about walking down this path, is that no one ever talks out loud, we only whisper. We stopped a few times to take pictures of the path as we neared the cemetary gates. We hear crackling branches and stirrings in the thick bushes and trees that flank either side of the path.

Once we arrived at the gated fence to the right, we walked through it. At once, we began the usual ritual of walking from one desecrated gravestone to the next, our eyes constantly spanning our surroundings, not wanting to miss a thing. At several points we took more pictures with the Polaroid, hoping that we could capture some paranormal activity.

The sky began to lighten with soft hues of purple, blue, and orange, as the sun began to rise. Having taken several pictures, and experiencing nothing unusual but our own fear, we decided to leave.

Below photo is another view
from farther inside the cemetary
looking toward the exit gates.