Illinois

Aurora was the first Illinois city to have electric streetlights, but a dark history has resisted illumination as stubborn as the chilly corner of the old roundhouse repels the summer heat.

Learn why Aurora counts ""City of Cemeteries"" among its nicknames as Diane Ladley, ""America's Ghost Storyteller,"" describes the nineteenth-century doctor suspected of trading bodies between his cancer center and a neighboring graveyard. Other eerie legends and strange stories revealed in this book include the marauding brave brought to justice in the Devil's Cave by his own tribe, the sweet legacy of NFL great Walter Payton and the elephants that saved a circus from a tornado.

Slumbering beneath a shroud of deep forest and deliberate secrecy, Bachelors Grove Cemetery still exerts a powerful pull on paranormal pilgrims and curiosity-seekers around the world.

Shielding the orphaned burial ground from ritual and idle vandalism has also buried the rich history of this magical place. Still, its eerie presence has dominated the folklore of the southwest side of Chicago for every generation since 1838. Brave the woods with Ursula Bielski to unearth decades of mysteries and myriad ghost stories, from the Magic House to the Madonna of Bachelor's Grove.

Historic, haunted, chilling tales of the town of Naperville, Illinois as told by America's Ghost Storyteller. A must-read for fans of the paranormal.

Established in 1831, Naperville is one of the oldest settlements in the Greater Chicago area. The city's rich and fascinating heritage has been carefully passed down from one proud generation to the next; however, nowhere has Naperville's ghostly oral tradition and haunted history been preserved until now.

Most of Naperville's unique legends--compiled for the first time ever in these pages--arose from accounts of actual historic events and from the lives of notable personages in the city's long history. As the tragic events and persons faded from living memory, all that might remain of them would be ghost stories whispered by firelight and, later, by flashlight tucked under a teenager's chin at slumber parties.

Some eerie legends in these pages have origins that are lost in time, and still other hair-raising ghost stories included in this work are chilling contemporary, firsthand accounts of paranormal encounters within Naperville's sprawling boundaries . . . perhaps from even just down the street.