CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Uptown’s Graceland Cemetery is full of history, architecture and, depending on your source, hauntings — and it’s getting plenty of visitors this week.
“I’ve been a tour guide and historian here in Chicago for 20 years now,” said Adam Selzer.
Selzer said he’s seen his share of cemeteries in that time, but he added that Graceland is special.
“It’s just a serene part of nature in the middle of the city,” he said. “There’s a lot of fascinating wildlife here. We see coyotes all the time.”
Among the tombstones is a $250,000-statue, which was built in the early 1900s for a man named Henry Graves.
“He specifically said in his will: ‘I wish this to be the most substantial and imposing monument that the money set aside will allow,’” Selzer told WBBM. “He probably could’ve gotten a bigger one for $250,000 in those days, really. But what he got was this really haunting statue of Father Time wearing a hooded cloak and holding it up over his face.”
Along the tour of the Graceland grounds, Selzer also spoke about rumors of a more paranormal nature that surround a statue for Inez Clarke, a young girl who died of diphtheria at age 6.
“There’s a story that the statue will disappear when there’s a thunderstorm,” he said. “I’ve been here on many thunderstorms, and I haven’t seen it, but sometimes it does get cloudy and fogged up, so maybe that’s where it comes from.”
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