By DAN MORANMORAN@SCN1.COM
County's haunted sites home to phantoms?
WADSWORTH -- Do you believe in Mary Worth?
Schoolchildren of varying generations might have heard that one around the autumnal playground or, more appropriately, in the dimly lit rooms of a slumber party. It was a purportedly fact-based tale of an evil spirit who would claw your face or worse if you professed belief in her before a mirror.
History records that the legend of Mary Worth -- also known as Bloody Mary and Hell Mary -- might date back to Queen Mary I of England in the 1500s. But Lake County can stake its own claim to the famed ghost story, according to Mundelein native Scott Markus, author of the 2003 book "Tales From the Chicago Grave."
"It's becoming more and more known as more people find out about it," said Markus, adding that he learned about Mary Worth's Wadsworth connection when working on a College of Lake County presentation about ghost lore.
"It's basically a legend about a slave-catcher named Mary Worth, who used to take runaway slaves and torture them in her barn and practice witchcraft," Markus said. "So she was burned at the stake, which is unusual in this part of the world, (and) the story kind of splits from there."
According to Markus, some believe Mary's spirit pervades St. Patrick's Cemetery south of Route 173, while others say she haunts the site of her former farm somewhere in the now-developed lands between Gurnee and Wadsworth. As with all ghost stories, a little ambiguity goes a long way.
Markus said one hole in the cemetery tale is that "if the witchcraft (allegation) is true, why would she be buried in a Catholic cemetery?" He noted that there are also tales of a farmer tilling the soil on what is said to have been her farm in the 1970s and digging up "an unusual stone" that he subsequently used in a walkway near his house.
"From then on, things were not right," he said. "Doors would open and close, shelves would open themselves, he would hear sounds ... The farmer realized he didn't move a stone -- he moved a headstone."
Mary Worth's headstone, it would seem.
Markus said he owes a debt of thanks to Chicago writer Ursula Bielski's "Chicago Haunts."
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