Archer Avenue is the road in the Resurrection Mary story, Chicago’s best-known vanishing hitchhiker. The stretch that matters runs between the old Oh Henry Ballroom, later the Willowbrook Ballroom, in Willow Springs, and Resurrection Cemetery in Justice.
The legend says a young woman in a white dress leaves a dance, asks for a ride northeast on Archer, and vanishes as the car reaches the cemetery gates. Tellers put her death in the late 1920s or early 1930s, either a hit-and-run on the walk home or a crash on the way to the dance. Jerry Palus, a South Side man, said he danced with a woman in 1939 and later came to believe she was Mary. Ghost researcher Richard Crowe told the Chicago Tribune he had collected dozens of reports from the 1930s on. Researchers have proposed real burials, including a Mary Bregovy. None of the identifications has been proven. Cemetery staff have at times removed marks on the gate that visitors called her handprints. The hitchhiker story is a type found all over the country. Archer Avenue is the Chicago version, tied to a real cemetery and a real ballroom.
Archer Avenue and Resurrection Mary
- Resurrection Mary, Wikipedia covers the hitchhiker type, the ballroom, and the cemetery gate.
- Chicago History Museum: Resurrection Mary covers the 1920s–1930s dating and the failed attempts to name her.