The RHS Facebook page is a rich archive of history-related posts by Carol Flynn, RHS Facebook admin and writer until mid-2025. Carol prolifically wrote a wide variety of meticulously researched local history articles for RHS. She continues to write for the Beverly Review and other media sources with articles particularly focused on local Ridge history.
Halloween
The Paranormal RidgePart 10 – Other Personal Experiences at the Castle
The ghost stories from the Givins Beverly Castle show up in print often – in newspaper and magazine articles, websites, and books about Chicago ghost lore. Most of the stories that are printed are the usual ones that can be discounted as folklore, but one article led to new information in the quest to learn about the haunted happenings reported at the Castle.
In 1995, the Chicago Tribune ran an article on the Castle by staff writer Jerry Thomas. He repeated one of the usual stories that has the facts wrong on the history of the castle. He wrote that a girls’ boarding school was there in the 1930s and a girl died from influenza and haunts the Castle. This isn’t true – a physician owned the house in the 1930s and he and his family lived there. They did not run a boarding school, but the doctor did see patients at the house.
Although that story was not accurate, Thomas also wrote about two people who reported experiences there, a minister for the Beverly Unitarian Church (BUC) which has owned the Castle since the 1940s, and a psychic. Today’s post will cover the minister’s experiences and the next post will discuss the psychic.
Reverend Leonetta Bugleisi was minister at the BUC from 1993 to 2003. Now living in Michigan, she was interviewed last year by RHS for the “Folklore and Phantoms” program. She recounted four unusual experiences she had during her time at the Castle.
The first occurred in early 1994 at a welcoming event following the ceremony installing her as pastor. Her husband and she were on the second floor, in front of a stained glass window that is original to the house; she was facing her husband, talking to him, and he had his back to the window. Reverend Bugleisi saw a pair of very slender arms encircle her husband’s waist gently from the back. She assumed it was someone saying good-bye, but when she looked behind her husband, there was no one there. She asked him if he felt anything, and he said no. The arms vanished. She described the arms as looking like those of a young girl. Rev. Bugleisi has been consistent in relating this experience for 25 years. Last year, she humorously asked that it be reported that she had not been drinking at the event; she had not even had any sugar that day.
The second experience was an unnerving one. A custodian at the Castle was cleaning the floors in the school when he suddenly collapsed and died. He had had dental surgery and was on medication that apparently provoked this. Although not a paranormal event as such, it was unsettling to the BUC community.
About a month later, the third experience occurred. Reverend Bugleisi went to the library, a room on the second floor of the Castle, to get a book for a student. She noticed there was a copy of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’s book “On Death and Dying” on one of the shelves. She took the other book to the student, then came back for the Kubler-Ross book and it was gone. No one else was found to have been in the library in that short amount of time. She looked all over for it but it was never found again. She felt there might be a connection between the custodian and the vanished book.
The back staircase to the third floor of the Castle was the setting for a fourth experience. After Reverend Bugleisi showed the apartment on the top floor to a woman, they left to descend the back staircase. Reverend Bugleisi saw movement out of the corner of her eye and looked back, and a shadow form was following her down the stairs. It was not the other woman, who was in front. The shadow faded away.
Reverned Bugleisi never heard other noises that people said they heard there, such as the piano playing by itself, voices, and the sounds of glassware tinkling. Other than the arms around her husband’s waist, she also never saw any girl, young woman or other ghosts.
In the early 1970s, a psychic visited the Castle, and that story will be in the next post.
The Paranormal RidgePart 9 – Southtown Economist Interview
In 1972, the Beverly Unitarian Church (BUC), owner of the Castle since the 1940s, briefly embraced the Castle’s reputation as a “haunted house.” As part of the sesquicentennial anniversary celebrations of the area, BUC held an event at the Castle to “celebrate Halloween in Chicago’s Only Haunted Castle.”
The event included a walk through the appropriately decorated basement; ghost stories in one of the turret rooms; astrological, tarot card and crystal ball readings; dancing; a costume contest; and “spooky surprises.”
Leading up to the event, Shirley Haas, a newspaper reporter for the Southtown Economist, interviewed Marlene Schultz, a past caretaker of the Castle, about the strange experiences Marlene had while living there.
Shirley lived in Beverly and was a founding member of the Ridge Historical Society. She is 96 years old now, living on the north side in Lincoln Park. Just a few days ago in a phone conversation, Shirley explained that she reported what she was told, but she did caution that the interview was done in the context of promoting the Halloween event at the Castle.
Marlene participated in the 1972 event at the Castle. She is in her 80s now and RHS was not able to reach her to further discuss her experiences.
The entire article is included as an attachment to this post.
In the next post, other newspaper articles and personal accounts will be shared.
The Paranormal RidgePart 8 – Personal experiences reported at the Givins Beverly Castle in the 1950s
This is the first of the in-person accounts of experiences at the Castle.
Rudy Visser was 12 years old when his family – father, mother, and three brothers – moved into the Castle in 1951 to be the caretakers. He attended Sutherland grammar school and Chicago Vocational high school. Now in his 80s and living in the southwest suburbs, in the fall of 2019 he shared his remembrances for a special event held at the Caste on “Folklore and Phantoms.”
As caretakers, the Vissers maintained the grounds and buildings, including everyday cleaning. It was a lot of work and they knew every inch of the Castle. The Vissers lived in rooms on the second and third floors. Back then, the Castle maintained its original floor plan, a lot of small rooms lined with dark wood. [Note: When originally built in 1886-87, the Castle was reported to have 15 rooms, paneled with red oak, including a spacious drawing room and ballroom, a library in the largest tower, and beautiful tapestries, chandeliers and gas lighting fixtures.]
Rudy said it was “very creepy” for a child living in the Castle. It was not comfortable and there was little privacy, being a church building open to the public. There were noises and creaking floors and the wind howling through the building. There were no screens in the windows and bats flew in at night, and they encountered rats when they first moved in.
One experience that Rudy found memorable involved a boarded-up opening in the basement. The family did not like going down to the basement, but it was necessary to tend the furnace and change blown fuses, as this pre-dated circuit breakers. The basement included a large room lined with benches that was used for parties and events.
The boarded up “window” opened underground beneath a stone side porch on the south side of the Castle. The side porch is now gone but it is evident in old pictures. The opening entered a tunnel system that Rudy and his brothers crawled through that was full of mud and cobwebs and very constricted in places. Although they did not have a good perspective of distance underground, Rudy believes they crawled south at least as far as 103rd Street, but he does not know how much farther the tunnel extended past that. He said the tunnel was very old and he had no idea why it was built.
A lot of the renovations made to the Castle occurred while the Vissers lived there. In 1958, the school extension was built onto the building to the north. The school extension was supposed to be part one of a plan to tear down the Castle and build a new church, but that never happened. Before the school was built, that area was a garden.
One strange experience involved a lady in a flowing white dress that Rudy described as being like a nightgown. Rudy’s mother observed this woman several times walking around in the garden. Then one day, the woman was suddenly behind Mrs. Visser in the second-floor apartment. No one saw or heard her come in through the door. Back in the 1950s, the practice was to leave churches open during the daytime but locked at night, and the Castle followed this routine, so the woman would have been able to enter the building.
Mrs. Visser was startled and asked the woman what she wanted. The woman said she thought there was a service that day and she was looking for the minister. This was on a weekday, and Mrs. Visser explained that the services were on the weekends, and that is when the minister would be there. The woman said all right and left. Mrs. Visser immediately followed her to the door but when she looked out, the woman was gone. They never saw the woman again. They asked around and no one had any idea who the woman might have been. And for the record, the woman did not have an Irish brogue.
Another strange experience occurred one summer they lived there. The castle was closed and locked during the summers. There were no classes or services for three months. The family went away for a week, and before leaving, went through the entire building to make sure all the lights were off, the windows were closed, and the building secure. They locked the place up tight before they left.
When they returned, as they were driving down the street, they noticed a light was on in a third-floor turret window. They knew they had turned all the lights off, and there was no reason for anyone to be in the Castle while they were gone, especially up there in their family quarters – the room was the bedroom of one of the children. However, there certainly were other people with keys, including the minister, the piano teacher, and other church people.
The Castle was securely locked when they got to the building. Rudy’s father and the boys went up to the third floor, and as they were approaching the door of the room, it opened by itself with a loud squeaking noise. It scared all of them. There was no one in the room and the light was indeed on. No one ever admitted to going up there and turning on a light.
These were the experiences this family had at the Castle. They moved out in 1962. Rudy is a practical man and does not consider these to be “ghost stories.” He felt their walking on a certain floorboard or something of that nature might have made the door open on the third floor.
One story attributed to Rudy’s mother that appears in print did not happen. It is often reported that the caretaker in the 1950s reported that one time during a winter storm, there was a knock on the door, and when she answered, a girl with an Irish brogue was standing there in a light dress and no coat. Sometimes the story is that she is barefoot out there in the new snow. Supposedly, Mrs. Visser left the room to get the girl a wrap and when she returned, the girl was gone, and there were no footsteps left in the snow.
Rudy had never heard this story before and said this never happened to his mother.
Rudy said he receives calls, usually at Halloween time, about the ghost stories. He admitted that sometimes he embellishes the truth or makes something up just for his own amusement.
In the next post, stories from the 1960s will be shared.
If you need a break from the news.
The Paranormal Ridge: Part 3 – Signs of a Haunting
By Carol Flynn
As was mentioned in the first post of this series, the reports of ghostly activity go back for thousands of years.
Pliny the Younger, a lawyer, author and magistrate in ancient Rome, described the haunting of a house in Athens by a noisy ghost in the year 50 A.D. The ghost scared everyone away and the house was falling to ruins. Then a man brave man came upon the house, and not afraid, he stayed overnight. He realized the ghost was trying to communicate. He followed the apparition to a spot where it disappeared. Digging up the spot, the man found bones. He gave them a proper burial, and the ghost stopped appearing.
Here in Chicago, there have been haunted houses for over a century. In 1901, the newspapers carried the story of a woman named Mrs. E. A. Stuart who wrote to the Police Chief of Chicago, the famous Francis O’Neill who is buried in Mt. Olivet Cemetery here on the Ridge, to inquire about renting a haunted house she had heard about in the Woodlawn area. She wanted one where the ghosts “must be on hand every night, clank through the corridors in their chains, open and shut doors mysteriously, and shriek murder till sleep is out of the question.” Her intention was to disprove the existence of ghosts.
O’Neill knew the house that interested Mrs. Stuart. It was at 4801 S. Lake Avenue, and had been occupied for many years by John Lane, and it was believed his ghost still lingered there. A well-known lecturer, Mrs. Mary H. Ford, and her family lived in the house after Lane, and complained about nightly visitations from Lane’s spirit.
The Ford family’s first experience with the ghost was when the bathroom door became locked from within. They thought there might be a burglar in there and sent for the police. One of the Ford children suggested it might be Lane, and Mrs. Ford replied that if it were, he might be kind enough to open the door. The door unlocked, and pushing it open, Mrs. Ford saw that there was no one inside the room.
Another time, Mrs. Ford forgot to close the furnace door before going to bed. She did not want to go down to the cellar to do this and she wished that Mr. Lane would close that door. She heard the furnace door close.
The family experienced many other phenomena – loud knocking and pounding that went on all night and orange flames floating through the air. Mrs. Ford’s son, 10 years old, claimed he saw an old man sitting in a corner. His descriptions of the man fit those of Lane. The family became so used to the manifestations they came to think of Lane as one of the family.
Mrs. Stuart decided not to rent the house. O’Neill received letters from other people who were interested in living in the house. That house is no longer standing today.
This was just one example of the many haunted houses that the newspapers carried stories about in the earlier days of Chicago.
The signs of a haunting have remained consistent for thousands of years, from Ancient Greece to early 20th-century Chicago.
These signs are:
1. Feeling of being watched or that someone is near you, when there is no other physical person there.
2. Feeling that someone or something has touched you. Cobwebs, a tug on your sleeve, a tap on the shoulder, feeling like you just bumped into someone, etc.
3. Feeling a cold spot or a temperature drop, or a feeling of dread or discomfort in one certain spot.
4. Lights coming on and off or flickering. Appliances, also.
5. Sounds that when you go to investigate them don’t appear to have a cause. Footsteps, doors knobs being turned or the sound of doors opening or closing, things being dropped, whispers, crashes and bangs.
6. Smells. Cigarette smoke, a certain perfume. The smell of flowers, particularly roses, is associated with a presence, usually a more saintly one.
7. Seeing unexplained shadows, or something moving out of the corner of your eye, or sometimes a mist. Then there are orbs, circles of light that may not be visible to the naked eye but sometimes show up in pictures. Of course, some people say orbs are just reflections off of something in the atmosphere or something wrong with the lens of your camera. There is a picture of orbs around a house in Beverly and the person who took this never had this happen in photos taken at other times.
8. Strange behavior from your pets. Dogs barking at things, cats staring at things, that you don’t see. This is a common one – it seems animals are much more receptive to spirits. A photowas posted on the Internet by someone whose dog was staring and barking at one particular spot on the wall.
9. Children are much more open to spirits and often have experiences that adults do not have. Imaginary playmates might be an example of interacting with spirits.
10. Objects moving on their own. Cabinet doors, windows, doors opening and closing. Things falling, breaking. Something found in a place where you know you did not leave it.
11. Seeing an actual apparition of a person, or even an event played out.
In the next post, reasons the Ridge has paranormal occurrences will be explored, then Castle ghosts are coming up after that.
For those who need a little break from current news.
The Paranormal Ridge: Part 2 – The Victorian Era and Ghosts
By Carol Flynn
The Victorians were enthralled with ghosts. Consider fictional ghost stories during the Victorian Era.
Halloween was brought over to the U.S. in the 1800s by descendants of the Celts, the Irish and the Scots. It has since become the time of the year when people really take interest in ghost stories and events.
However, the earlier settlement of the U. S. was largely by people from England, and they followed the customs of that country. In England and for the English settlers in the U.S., the traditional time of the year to tell ghost stories was Christmas time.
Ghost stories were very popular in the Victorian era, from the 1830s well into the early 1900s. Some famous ghost and “psychological horror” fiction story writers from this period include Sheridan Le Fanu, M. R. (Montague Rhodes) James, and Algernon Blackwood, whose very names seem perfect for writing ghost stories. There were women writers, also, including Charlotte Riddell and Edith Wharton. They influenced generations of authors who followed them, from H. P. Lovecraft to Anne Rice to Stephen King.
The most famous fiction ghost story of all time is “A Christmas Carol” by Charles Dickens, published in 1843. Its full name is actually “A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas.”
The plot of this story is well known. Spiteful, miserly Ebenezer Scrooge is nasty to his employees, his relatives, and, well, everyone. He especially hates Christmas. But then one Christmas Eve, he is visited by the ghost of his deceased partner Jacob Marley, and by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. Thanks to the intervention of these spirits, he changes his ways to become a good, generous, caring man.
This story has been adapted over and over for other books and stories, movies and TV shows.
We can easily envision Scrooge’s experience from Dickens’ descriptions. Dickens included many of the signs of a haunting that have been consistent throughout history and that people report to this day.
It all starts when Scrooge sees Marley’s image in common objects he has looked at thousands of times – the door knocker, the fireplace tiles. He feels unsettled, like he is being watched. He checks every corner; he looks under the bed. “Humbug,” he keeps telling himself – this must be his imagination; there are no such things as ghosts.
An old disused servants’ bell on the ceiling begins to ring on its own, followed by a clanking noise from the wine cellar below. The cellar door flies open with a bang. There is a “chilling influence” in the air. At last the phantom of Marley appears in the room. Scrooge can see right through to the back buttons of the ghost’s waistcoat.
Scrooge has a verbal exchange with Marley’s ghost who delivers a message – people who do not create happiness while alive are doomed to wander forever as spirits.
As the ghost begins his exit, the window flies open by itself, and there are confused noises in the air, incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret, sorrow and self-accusation. The ghost floats out through the window and Scrooge feels compelled to look, where he sees the air filled “with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went.” Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives and now “the misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.”
Victorian-era fictional ghost stories were often written not only to entertain and thrill, but to educate and deliver a moral message. “A Christmas Carol” certainly continues to deliver on all counts.
The Victorians were enthralled with ghosts at the same time they were embracing new technology and scientific advancements. The two became intertwined – technology and the spirit world.
In addition to written ghost stories, seances and “spirit photography” became popular in Victorian times.
People reasoned that if new inventions, like the telephone and telegraph and photography, made it possible to communicate with people thousands of miles away, and record images of anything, then it was also possible to communicate with and record the spirit world.
Seances, in which a human “medium” acted as an intermediary between the living and the dead, were conducted in studios and parlors throughout England and the U.S. The spirits usually communicated by rapping on the tables or walls; moving objects; causing the lights to blink; “spirit writing” in which the medium wrote out the spirit’s message; and even by possessing the body of the medium and speaking through that person. It was reported that Queen Victoria herself participated in seances to communicate with her late husband Prince Albert.
“Spirit photography” captured the images of ghostly presences, often of deceased loved ones interacting with the living. One famous U.S. ghost photographer was William Mumler, who produced a photo of Mary Todd Lincoln with the image of her late husband, President Abraham Lincoln, hovering over her with his hands on her shoulder.
People in the throes of grief were easy victims for charlatan mediums and spirit photographers. Such victims were comforted to think their loved ones were still nearby. Eventually, the skeptics started to outnumber the believers, and some spiritual practitioners were charged with larceny and fraud. Mumler was arrested and put on trial, but the prosecution could not prove how Mumler had created a hoax so he was exonerated. It was after this trial, around 1870, that he created the photo of the Lincolns.
The next post in this series will explore the signs of a haunting, leading up to the ghost stories connected to Givins Beverly Castle.
The Paranormal Ridge: Part 1 – The History of Ghost Stories
By Carol Flynn
Ghost and paranormal stories have been around forever. Every culture and every nationality and every religion have their versions of ghost folklore. Every one, from the Vikings to Tibetan Buddhists.
The intent of this series, as was stated in the previous post, is to share information on the ghost stories connected to Givins Beverly Castle at 103rd and Longwood, which were covered last year in a presentation at the Castle. Some general information on the history of paranormal stories will help put those surrounding the Givins Beverly Castle into perspective.
In Egypt, archaeologists discovered 4,000-year-old pottery fragments with a ghost story recorded on them. In this story, a high priest encountered a restless spirit whose tomb had collapsed.
A tomb was considered not just the final resting place for a person’s physical remains, but the home of his spirit as well, and therefore tombs needed to be maintained like any house would be. While interactions with ghosts were not considered horrifying supernatural occurrences, the living still wanted the dead to stay content so they would not become a nuisance.
In the story, the priest promised to build a new tomb, but the ghost was skeptical because others had promised but failed to do so. Some pieces of the story are missing, but then the priest sent out three men to find a good location for a new tomb. They found one and reported back to the priest. The last shard states the priest declared his intent to build the tomb. No further parts of the story have been discovered but it is assumed the priest kept his promise.
Religious people like saints often reported paranormal experiences – apparitions, dreams, messages from the supernatural.
A personal favorite story is a little piece about St. Paul of the Cross who was born in 1694 in Italy. A series of visions led him to establish the religious order called the Passionists.
Paul claimed that demons in the form of cats often walked across his bed while he was trying to sleep, keeping him awake. Anyone who has cats knows this is the kind of thing cats indeed do.
One cat owner asked a member of the clergy, “My cats walk across the bed all the time when I’m trying to sleep. How did Paul know these weren’t just regular cats?”
The clergyman replied, “How do you know your cats aren’t demons?”
This might off a new perspective for some cat owners.
This is the time of the year, Halloween, when imagination turns to ghosts. Halloween is an old Celtic tradition, and it came over to America with the Irish and Scots in the 1800s. Its origins are likely in the Gaelic pagan harvest festival Samhain, Old Irish for “summer’s end.” It was believed this was one of the times of the year, in between the harvest and the coming of winter, when the barrier between the physical and spiritual worlds was thinnest, and it was easier for the spirits of the dead as well as non-human entities like demons and fairies to cross over into the living human world. With time, many of the pagan holidays were adapted to Christianity, and Samhain apparently evolved into All Souls’ Day and All Saints’ Day.
The Celts welcomed the spirits of their deceased loved ones into their homes; they even set places at the dinner table for them.
But the non-human spirits, the demons and the fairies, were another matter. The Celts did things to keep these beings at bay and these became some of our American Halloween traditions.
First, the Celts dressed up like frightful demons so the real spirits would be confused and leave them alone. This is where costumes came from. Starting in the 16th century, “mumming” became popular – dressing in costumes and going door to door reciting verses or singing, in exchange for food or offerings on behalf of the spirits. Costumes in the U.S. around 1900 were homemade and “creepy” by today’s standards. They had to be creepy to represent or drive off the spirits. It would be decades before princess and superhero costumes became the norm.
The Celts carved gruesome faces in rutabagas (yellow turnips) and lit them from inside with candles and put them on their stoops or in their windows to scare away spirits. When they got to America, they switched over to pumpkins, a native vegetable that was very plentiful. These are jack o’ lanterns, of course. One Irishman recently new to the U.S. said that he was happy to find that pumpkins are much easier to carve than rutabagas.
The Irish also left out treats of food and beverages so the fairies would not play tricks on them but would instead help them and their farm animals survive through winter. This, plus mumming, led to trick or treating.
A few years ago, a ghost explorer from Chicago was invited to a farm in another state that reportedly is a portal where fairies cross over from their world. As an experiment, they left out a variety of food items to see what the fairies preferred. The favorites were chocolate brownies and Starbucks Frappuccinos. Fairies apparently like sweets.
Fairies are much more common in Ireland and England but sometimes they pop up over here. There is evidence we have visits from the fairy folk here on the Ridge.
Sightings of “fairy rings” on lawns in the Ridge area are not uncommon. These are mushrooms that grow in an arc or a circle. Sometimes the fungus is underground and displays as a circle of thick or tall grass. There are a lot of superstitions about fairy rings. Folklore says these are made by fairies dancing. Fairies use these rings to trap humans. If a human steps in a fairy ring, he or she may be stuck in the fairy world forever dancing. It is considered bad luck to destroy a fairy ring.
Part 2 will look at the Victorian love for ghost stories.
Happy Halloween! Some vintage postcards.
Halloween – Part 4. Halloween on the Ridge 100 years ago. A few years ago, the RHS newsletter editor was looking through the old Morgan Park Post newspapers for something interesting to write about for Halloween for the Beverly Area Planning Association Villager, the free community newspaper.
Then she came across this little tidbit of information in the November 6, 1915 Post: “MR. and MRS. THOS. CUMMINGS entertained at a Hallowe’en party last Saturday evening at their home on Homewood Ave.“
These were her great-grandparents. Her great-grandparents had a Halloween party in Morgan Park 100 years ago. What might that have been like?
Halloween lost most of its superstitious and religious overtones in the U.S. by the beginning of the 20th century. By 1915, parties were the most common way to celebrate, and usually included decorations, costumes, games, and refreshments.
Prior to 1900, decorations had relied on natural items like corn stalks, symbolic of the harvest. Jack-o-lanterns, now made from native pumpkins, were customary. Then several companies, notably Dennison Manufacturing Company, began making paper products such as heavy cardboard die cuts; paper plates, cups, and napkins; crepe paper streamers, and the like. Decorations became much more sophisticated and commercial. Dennison published “Halloween Bogie” books from 1909 through 1934 that were basically catalogs but also included ideas, illustrations and instructions for decorations and parties.
Food suggestions included a sit-down supper with items like cream of celery soup, brown bread sandwiches and Waldorf salad, to a buffet including a variety of finger sandwiches (cucumber, salmon, jelly), stuffed celery, and orange sherbet. Gingerbread was popular in any form – cookies, cake with marshmallow frosting.
In addition to some of the old-fashioned games that were stand-bys, like bobbing for apples, fortune telling and other divination games were popular. Variations of a “mirror test” were mentioned often in articles of the day. One version called for a girl to sit before a mirror at midnight on Halloween, combing her hair and eating an apple, in order to see the face of her true love reflected in the glass.
Halloween history, part 3 – trick or treating.
Trick or treating also came to the U. S. with the Irish settlers. There are several old customs behind the practice. One is that people dressed up in costumes as deceased spirits (mumming or guising) around the time of the pagan harvest holiday Samhain, when the barrier between the spiritual and physical world was thinnest, and went door to door collecting gifts to appease and honor the dead.
Another old year-round custom is to leave out treats for the fairies so that this group of other worldly beings will not pull tricks on humans.
Fairy folklore is interesting. They are usually associated with England, Scotland and Ireland, but they occasionally make their way over to the U.S. One sign is fairy rings, mushrooms growing in an arc or circle. Sometimes they show up as a circle of unusually tall or thick grass, because the fungus is growing underground. Here are pictures of two fairy rings getting started in Beverly.
It is considered bad luck to destroy a fairy ring, believed to form by fairies dancing. Folklore says that if a human steps into a fairy ring, he/she could be caught forever, dancing.
History of Halloween customs, part 2. In part 1, we mentioned that Halloween is derived from old Celtic pagan customs and came to the U.S. with the Irish. We covered costumes.
Another tradition is the Jack o' Lantern. According to Celtic folklore, Stingy Jack tried to cheat both the devil and God, and when he died, neither would take him. He was doomed to roam the earth forever at night, with a glowing coal in a carved out turnip to light his way. He became known as Jack of the Lantern.
The Celts carved hideous faces into turnips, beets, potatoes and gourds to frighten away Jack and other evil spirits. An example of an original carved turnip from Ireland is attached.
When the Irish came to the States, they discovered that pumpkins were plentiful and much easier to carve. Hence, today's American tradition of jack o' lanterns.