Bachelor's Grove Cemetery is a small, abandoned cemetery in Bremen Township, Cook County, Illinois in Chicago's southwest suburbs. It is well known for its haunted reputation and supposed ghost sightings. The cemetery has also been known as Bachelor Grove, Batchelor Grove, Batchelder's Grove, and Everden (or Everdon).LocationBachelors Grove Cemetery is just northwest of Midlothian and Oak Forest, near the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve on the Midlothian Turnpike (near its intersection with Central Avenue), in the southwest Chicago suburbs.BackgroundThe land surrounding Bachelors Grove Cemetery was originally settled by English homesteaders who relocated to the area from New England, including Stephen Rexford, arguably the most well known of the first wave of Anglo settlers, around 1833. Ursula Bielski, author of "Chicago Haunts," asserts the actual cemetery was originally named the Everdon Cemetery after the original holder of the property title, Samuel Everdon. The site saw its first official burials around 1840 and contains 82 plots, many of which were never sold or used. Burials, however, possibly go back as far as 1834, when German immigrant workers killed while working on the Illinois and Michigan Canal were reportedly laid to rest at the site. The site is often reported to have been a dumping ground for victims of Chicago's organized crime families of the 1920s and 1930s, but no evidence of this has been proven.Reported phenomenaThe most common of the reported phenomena at the site typically involves floating orbs of light over tombstones and near collisions with a phantom vehicle.
