Follow local historian and “Ghost Lady” Kathi Kresol as she researches the spirits, curses, and curiosities from the Forest City’s shadowy past. Just beneath the glossy surface of Rockford’s rich heritage lies a dark history of tragedy, a troubled and turbulent past leaving scars that still resonate today. Geraldine Bourbon’s final struggle echoes throughout the farmhouse where her estranged husband pursued her with a pistol from room to room before gently laying her corpse on the bed. The sobs of society darling Carrie Spafford still keep vigil over the family plot of the cemetery where she sowed the heartbreak of her twilight years. From the vengeance of Chief Big Thunder to the Witch of McGregor Road, author Kathi Kresol shares the legends and lore of Rockford’s haunted history. Includes photos! “There are reasons why Kathi Kresol believes Rockford is so haunted. The tour guide said there are good ‘conductors’ for the supernatural in the city’s downtown area. These factors include being near a body of water, having limestone in the area and the area having a Native American influence.” —Beloit Daily News

Just beneath the glossy surface of Rockford's rich heritage lies a dark history of tragedy. The city's troubled and turbulent past left scars that still resonate today. Geraldine Bourbon's final struggle still echoes through the farmhouse where her estranged husband pursued her with a pistol from room to room beofre gently laying her corpse on the bed. The sobs of society darling Carrie Spafford still keep vigil over the family plot of the cemetery where she sowed the heartbreak of her twilight years. From the vengeance of Chief Big Thunder to the Witch of McGregor Road, author Kathi Kresol shaes the legends and lore of Rockford's haunted history.--back cover

Rockford rightly prizes its prosperous heritage, earned by manufacturing concerns like the Rockford Watch Factory and the Manny Reaper Company. But the town once named Midway also harbors a history of crime and calamity. Gunfire broke out in the streets when networks of Prohibition informants slid sideways. In 1893, John Hart forced his own sisters to drink poison. Three years later, James French shot down his wife in the street. Over the years, a courthouse collapsed, a factory exploded and trains collided. Join local historian Kathi Kresol as she explores the mayhem milling about in Rockford's past.

Secret Rockford pulls back the curtain to reveal the hidden side of life in the Forest City. This anthology contains many snapshots of life in Rockford. Join us as we go behind the headlines to explore the people, places, and events that make our city unique. On these pages, you will find the unconventional, gritty, and sometimes shocking truth.

"Father Leo then paused with a deep breath before going on. 'There are many problems here, and some very strange things happen late at night that I just can't explain.' "Poverty. Crime. Politics. Scandal. Revenge. . . . And a Ghost.These are the untold stories of the last days of a forgotten Chicago parish by the last person able to tell them: Fresh out of the seminary in 1956, Father Rocco Facchini was appointed to his first assignment, the parish of Saint Charles Borromeo on the city's Near West Side. Adapting to rectory life with an unorthodox, dispirited pastor and attending to the needs of the rough, impoverished neighborhood were challenges in themselves. Little did Rocco know that the rectory was being haunted by a bishop's ghost!Muldoon: A True Chicago Ghost Story dives into Father Rocco's four-year saga at Saint Charles, where his spiritual undertaking becomes a worldly adventure. His supporting cast includes a housekeeper inappropriately involved in her pastor's affairs, and a genius-priest who carries a gun, thwarts neighborhood crime, and teaches Rocco about "loving the poor." And there's the pastor himself. He padlocks the refrigerator, guides young priests only in the weekly ritual of Bingo, and entangles Rocco in the dirty work of a fraudulent shrine.As a backdrop to this chaos, the rectory experiences a host of supernatural manifestations, and Rocco discovers the legend of Bishop Peter J. Muldoon. Are there clues in this story of early stardom and great achievement, clerical competition and revenge, accusations and scandal, a missing ring, excommunication, and possibly murder that explain why the unexplainable is happening all around him?Upon delving into the church history, clerical politics, local folklore, neighborhood sociology, and paranormal activity of Muldoon, you, like Rocco, may be left wondering: Has he been kept alive to tell the story of Muldoon, clear the man's name, and memorialize the bishop's beloved and forgotten parish of St. Charles?

Although Illinois saw no dramatic witch trials, witchcraft has been a part of Illinois history and culture from French exploration to the present day. On the Illinois frontier, pioneers pressed silver dimes into musket balls to ward off witches, while farmers dutifully erected fence posts according to phases of the moon. In 1904, the quiet town of Quincy was shocked to learn of Bessie Bement's suicide, after the young woman sought help from a witch doctor to break a hex. In turn-of-the-century Chicago, Lauron William de Laurence's occult publishing house churned out manuals for performing bizarre rituals intended to attract love and exact revenge. For the first time in print, Michael Kleen presents the full story of the Prairie State's dalliance with the dark arts.

Haint Blue: The Rockford Haunting, Part Two explores the incredible true story of the Voodoo Preacher, Willie Maxwell, a minister accused of murdering his family for insurance money in the 1970s, and chronicles the chaos that envelopes the authors' lives after they uncover a link between the Maxwell case and the Rockford house the Scott family lived in during a terrifying haunting in 2012.

"Jon and Carlie Summers soon discover that the cruel and abusive past that haunts their new home is drawing them deep into its dark and demented history, and ultimately, the violent nature of the house, and the evil that possesses it, wins out, leaving one dead and one on the brink of insanity"--

"Christmas seems to have been always with us. It is that time of year when we expect good cheer and goodwill, a moment's respite from the year's vicissitudes, solace during difficult times," writes James Ballowe in his introduction to Christmas in Illinois. This book is about the holiday as remembered by Illinoisans. Some are widely familiar--John W. Allen, Gwendolyn Brooks, Sandra Cisneros, Mike Royko, Carl Sandburg, Joseph Smith--but most are known only in their close-knit communities that together represent the very best of the Prairie State. We learn here about the customs of Christmas from Chicago to Cairo, Belleville to Danville, before statehood to the present day, through hard times and good. Tales, poems, news reports, memoirs, recipes, and images are arranged in sections on Christmas in Illinois history, living traditions, songs and symbols, Christmas outdoors, eating merrily, and memories. We see how bright an occasion Christmas has been, and sometimes amusing, raucous, or even dark. The collection's highlights include Chicago's Christmas tree ship, Peoria's Santa Parade, Rockford's Julotta service, a Victorian holiday in Bloomington, and Audubon's 1810 Christmas on the Cache River. Nature writers detail holiday bird-watching expeditions along the North Shore and in deepest southern Illinois. A letter from a member of the 130th Illinois Infantry captures Christmas Day 1863, and Jack McReynolds recalls West Frankfort's 1951 Orient Number Two mine disaster that thereafter haunted the holiday for him and many others. The holiday table is not neglected, with traditional recipes for wild game, pickled herring, and all manner of Christmas cookies. A wide array of illustrations includes images of Chicago's grand State Street parade, the Santa Lucia celebration at Bishop Hill, Belleville's Santa Claus House, Millikin University's Vespers tradition, the University of Illinois madrigal singers, Studs Terkel singing songs of good cheer, and the holiday art of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Heat up some cider, put a log on the fire, and curl up with Christmas in Illinois to share the holiday with friends both old and new.

Do creepy creatures really exist in America? After reading in this book the accounts of such monsters as Lizard Man, Champ, Momo, and Whitey, you can make up your own mind.