Story/Question: A few days ago, a friend of mine e-mailed me a link to the slimpictures website. He said he had been doing research on urban legends for a school assignment when he came upon some information he thought I would find very interesting. He was right. I clicked on the link and it brought me to your section on the supposedly haunted Gate in Libertyville, IL. I was very impressed with the information you provided, and felt compelled to share my own story.
We had, of course, known of the Gate for some time. Our older brothers and sisters knew of it, and perhaps our parents did as well. It was a secret, a mystery; something people, for the most part, tried to avoid. Maybe that’s why it appealed to so many adolescents throughout the years, because the story reached us at a time when the mysteries of the world had (at least, to our thinking) grown small, and the mysteries of ourselves had grown far too large. It reached most of us in high school, during the time in our lives when we no longer asked “why is the grass green?” or “why is the sky blue?”, but rather “what school do I want to go to?”, “will we still be together next year?”, and all those other terribly high school questions. So the story of the Gate and it’s secrets seemed a pleasant diversion, a way to escape our own heads and once again make those innocent “what are clouds made of?” inquiries. To go and explore those secret places of urban legend was fun. It was exciting. It took our minds off the difficult internal questions we wrestled with and turned them outwards once again; escapism in the truest sense.
I wonder if it is that feeling my old friend Justin and I set out to reclaim when we decided to explore the gate that night, one year after high school. That, of course, didn’t cross our minds at the time, as we searched for an inconspicous parking spot in a near-by neighborhood. We thought it was boredom, or sheer madness that guided us that night. But, recalling it now, a year and a half after the events of Easter morning, 2003, I think there might have been another reason. I think we wanted to find the imaginary horrors of the haunted gate to forget the all-too-real horrors of growing up. After all, it is a much easier task to look for ghosts than to worry about what one’s major will be. So we parked the car, zipped up our jackets, lit a cigarette, and set out to find something a little less personal to worry about.
What happened from that point on reminds me of something I once read. I do not remember the context, but the quote stands quite nicely on it’s own. What I read was this: “the price of getting what you want is having what you once wanted.” Very true, I thought at the time. How true, I would soon learn.
The Gate itself was somewhat of a disappointment. No dripping blood, no children’s heads, nothing that made our imaginations run wild with possibility. Sure, there was an ominous, imposing quality to the gate itself, but once we were close enough to touch it, we realized the experience was somewhat anti-climactic. We wanted adventure, damnit, and if the Gate couldn’t provide it, we would push further, down the path which led to the Des Plaines River Trail. So we walked on, swaggering with the kind of brazen confidence that comes with the realization that an experience wasn’t nearly as bad as you thought it would be. We laughed, we yelled, we tried to make each other jump… the night switched focus. It was no longer about a search for the supernatural, it was two old friends walking through the woods at night- talking, joking, remembering the days when this was all we ever seemed to do.
The path we followed, which started at River Road and led through the Gate itself, divided when we reached the Des Plaines River Trail. One could either follow the Trail north, towards Rte. 120, or south, towards 137. We stopped, let out a mutual sigh of disappointment, and surveyed our options. Justin shined the flashlight he had brought back and forth, back and forth, as we half-heartedly debated whether or not to pick a direction and continue walking. We had all but decided to call it a night when Justin’s flashlight happened upon a third option… a diminutive dirt path overgrown with branches. This path caught our attention for two reasons. One, because it seemed to barely exist. The path was almost invisible when standing in one place, yet hard to miss if one took two steps to the left. Secondly, it went neither right nor left, as the Des Plaines River Trail did, but straight ahead, an extension of the path we had come in on, the Path of the Gate. It seemed old and rarely used, and Justin and I are very much road-less-traveled type people. It was, to us, the obvious choice, and certainly we had proven that childish fear held no sway over us, yet… neither he nor myself were eager to abandon the broad River Trail and enter the woods with nothing but a flashlight and a path that scarcely seemed to exist. We became silent for the first time since passing through the Gate. We allowed our ears to adjust to the sounds of the night; we peered into the darkness ahead of us, beyond the flashlight, training our eyes to look for the slightest movement. After a moment, a moment I remember with absolute clarity, I lifted my foot and took the first step towards the Third Path, The Secret Path, The Path of the Gate. After that, things got very weird, very fast.
It’s strange how accustomed we become to the sound of our own breathing. Our whole lives we’ve been listening to our own inhalations and exhalations, every moment of every day. We’ve gotten so used to it, the only time we notice it is when it isn’t there. That was how I knew the sound I had just heard was not a figment of my imagination, nor the typical night noises of spring in the mid-west. I knew I had heard something strange because both myself and Justin stopped breathing. In that brief, rare moment I was able to stretch my hearing to absolute clarity, and what I heard frightened me in a way I had never before experienced. You’re familiar with the phrase “scared stiff”? That was us, unable to breathe, unable to move, or speak, or even acknowledge to each other that we were actually hearing something.
Voices, was the thought which first crossed my mind. Very faint, very distant, yet most assuredly voices. Not just any voices either, I realized as I strained my ears near to their breaking point, but the voices of children. I realized they were the voices of children, or at least young people, almost immediately, because they seemed to be speaking excitedly, almost giddy, as hyper-active children are prone to do. I was also given the impression of children because I could not determine any of their sexes by the pitch or tone of their voice, which, therefore, made it hard to pinpoint exactly how many there were.
(Believe me, I am perfectly aware that it is at this exact point where my story turns from one of interesting experience with urban legend to that of cheesy campfire ghost story. I know, but I don’t care. This is what happened on Easter morning. If I have retained the slightest bit of credibility, please read on).
Oddly enough, and this I swear to you, I did not at that time make the connection between the voices of children I was rapidly becoming more and more convinced I was hearing, and the urban legend which motivated us to visit in the first place. My first thought, which I held onto for as long as I possibly could, was that there were indeed children on the trail. Not the restless ghosts of children, but real kids, probably out doing the same thing we were- looking for ghosts, nevermind that it’s two a.m. Easter morning. It was the way the sound reached us which caused me to doubt myself, which frightened me so thoroughly and gave me chills- it was so ambiguous, so ethereal. Was it one voice or a dozen? Girls or boys? A mile down the trail or around the next bend? I could not tell, and, perhaps most frightening of all, at one point or another it sounded like all those things.
I would like to tell you how long this went on for, but in truth I couldn’t. I couldn’t even begin to guess at the amount of time we stood there, totally quiet, listening intently to these strange phantom voices. Nor could I presume to know what Justin was thinking about then, or what he thought of the sounds we heard. In fact, I had almost entirely forgotten Justin was there. I had forgotten about everything, except the woods, and the path, and the voices.
What snapped us (for Justin had been as silent as myself, which is a rare thing indeed) out of that weird, almost hypnotic state, and slammed us back into reality was something which frightened me so badly I can not remember what it was. Not in any documentable sense, at least. I remember the voices, which had been fading in and out the entire time we had been listening, remember how they faded down, down, and were gone. I tried to get my ears to follow them, straining, stretching my hearing as far as it would go. Imagine that… listening as hard as you can in near perfect silence, trying to hear the drop of a pin if one were to fall… imagine listening that closely, that quietly, that carefully… that is when the screaming started.
Screaming? Is that the word? It might be. Or shrieking. Or wailing. Or howling. Then I think back to that night, not to the sound itself, for I could not hope to reproduce that sound, not even in my own imagination. I think back to my reaction to that sound. I remember thinking very calmly, very rationally. What could make that noise? A person? No. Surely not. Certainly not. I felt sure no human being could emit the horrible cry that pierced my ears. A deer? Rabbit? Some animal? If it was, it sounded like no other animal I’ve ever heard, at least none indigenous to this area. It sounded… wrong. That’s the best way I can describe it. It rose up from somewhere deep within the woods, twisting and winding higher and higher, reaching it’s zenith, sustaining, and dying off as quickly as it came. There was no echo. It was in the… pattern, I suppose you’d say, of a tornado siren, but of course they sounded nothing alike. It sounded nothing like anything. Later, after we were far from the Gate, but before rationality had re-asserted itself, Justin compared the sound with that of monkeys being tortured in the jungle. Neither of us have ever heard monkeys being tortured, which is perhaps why that description sounds so much more suiting than any other we’ve tried to use. It is as close to, and conversely as far from, the truth of what we heard as anything could ever be.
It was the assertion of that noise, the tortured monkeys, if you will, that brought us back to reality. This was no vague impression of children somewhere within the forest. This was something within the woods screaming. Screaming at us, for all we knew. It was Justin that made the first move, backing up slowly, away from the trees of the Third Path, back towards River Road. I did not move at first, still very unwilling to react in any way to something which, I felt sure, should not be happening. Then the sound, that horrible wail of the tortured monkeys, came back. It was, without a doubt, louder. And closer. We turned and ran.
At first, when the sound rose up from within the trees, it was clearly audible, but soft. Distant. As we ran down the gravel path towards the Gate, and, just beyond, to freedom, it became terribly apparent that the sound was following us. At first quiet, then growing, rising to meet us, clearly heard over the harsh ragged breaths we drew in as we ran, over the crunch of our shoes on gravel, over the soft yet constant cries of “ohshitohshitohshit” coming from either me or Justin, probably both. We ran, and we heard that terrible cry get closer and closer, and we kept our eyes on the road in front of us, paved and sane and safe. Safety, a hundred yards away… ninety… eighty… and still the howl behind us grew closer, and louder.
When we were no more than fifty yards away I suddenly became terribly, deathly certain that soon we would hear another sound right in front of us, the sound of cold, ancient steel dragging across gravel. Then we would see the giant wrought iron bars of the Gate itself begin to shut- slowly, of course, to mock us. We would run faster, harder, then we ever have, ever could, but it would be too late. We would reach the Gate and it’s mouth would be shut, it’s big metal teeth clenched, smiling it’s bone yard smile. We would have time to turn back, to see the face of the being who’s screams sounded like monkeys being tortured in the jungle, see it right before us, and then…
And then we were out onto the road, down the street, not running, but not exactly walking either. The sound, whatever it was, was no longer close; but we heard it still, from somewhere behind the Gate, somewhere down the path. The lingering cries followed us almost back to the car, growing fainter all the while. As we drove down River Road, we slowed and stopped in front of the Gate. We rolled down the windows and listened. We would do this many times over the next year or so, but on that night, and the others to follow, no distant wails or childish voices reached our ears.
And so we found what we had been looking for. We had found a diversion, however brief, and forgotten about school, about work, about the complexities of women and the uncertainty of our future. Of course, the price of getting what we want is having what we once wanted. We wanted escapism, and we found it. But where had we escaped to? What had we found on that wild night? The question tormented us. It gnawed at our minds, ripping and tearing at the fabric of all we knew to be true in this world. It was as though a stiff breeze had ruffled the curtains of reality, twisting them briefly aside and revealing something huge and strange and alien beyond. Like learning of a twenty-seventh letter hiding in the chasm between A and B. How could we return to any semblance of a normal life after what we had experienced? It all seemed so thin, now… so frail. Thinking back upon it, that was the truly frightening thing. Not our glimpse at the world of the supernatural, but the knowledge that it may have been only a glimpse; merely one facet on the jewel of the unknown. If something haunts that Gate (call it memory, call it spirit, or refuse to name it altogether), then it leads one to wonder about all the other stories that frightened us as children. All those shadow things we were able to, as we got older, place in a box marked “fiction,” and forget, simply because by labeling it thus we could fall asleep without checking under the bed, without worrying about the bogeyman in the closet. But if this story is true… well, the world is full of gates. And now… after this… I can’t help but wonder what’s beyond them.
So that’s the story of my experience at the Gate on a cold Easter morning in 2003. However, I was never content to accept the disappearing coin as real magic, and so since then I have attempted, in my free time, to find out if there is any validity to the urban legend of the Gate. I began the very next day (and I stress it was during the day) by returning to the Third Path we discovered on that night.
We followed it back through the woods, straight back, wondering where it would lead, and what we would find. I remember seeing nothing but trees, and then, springing up almost out of nowhere, was a lamp post. How surreal it was, to be walking along a dirt path through a forest and suddenly come upon an old lamp post nestled between the trees. I don’t know what era that lamp post is from, but it looked ancient in the dim light of sunset. Certainly it was like no other street light I’ve seen over my twenty years.
We walked on, eventually coming upon the foundation of a building. Cement lain into the ground outlined what once, I imagined at the time, must have been the orphanage, or summer camp, or school, or whatever it was. A little beyond was the foundation of another, smaller, building, characterized both by a similar cement foundation and a few rusted pipes which jutted up from the earth. It was so exciting, to see these things; the first absolutely true, undeniable piece of evidence in proving, as much to ourselves as anyone else, that there might be some validity to the urban legend of the Gate. There was a building back there, right at the end of the mysterious path through the trees, right where we had been looking the night before. Seeing those ruins, I realized two things: one, that there was indeed a chance, however slight, that Justin and I were not crazy after all, and two, that this was a mystery which begged to be solved.
My next step was to inquire about the building formations at the Independence Grove Forest Preserve office, since the Gate and whatever lay beyond was on LCFP property, as you noted in your article. The land, I learned, was purchased in the 80’s from the Archdiocese of Chicago, which had previously operated Camp St. Francis on the site, under the management of the Chicago Catholic Charities. They were also able to tell me that the buildings themselves had been on the property since 1925 until they were demolished in ‘79, as you know. Unfortunately, that was all the information they were able to provide me with.
I then took my search to the Chicago Archdiocese itself, where I was informed that all the information they had on the site was published in a book called The History of the Institutions of the Archdiocese of Chicago, available in most Chicago public libraries. It is from this book that the bulk of my knowledge has come, despite the fact that what I learned only served to bring more questions to light.
From the book I learned, as you know, that the 200 acre property was first used for the Katherine Kreigh Budd Memorial Home for Children, built in 1925. The site was used as a school and residence for a hundred orphaned children and managed by the Sisters of Mary of the Western Province of the Protestant Episcopal Church. In 1939, the land was purchased for $25,000 by Bishop Bernard Sheil, vicar general of the Archdiocese, who turned it into the CYO Boys’ Camp. In 1955, Chicago Catholic Charities turned the camp into the St. Francis Camp for Boys. The camp closed in 1973 due to “problems of aging facilities, a shortage of capital funds, and decreasing staff.” The following year, the camp re-opened on a smaller scale (89 acres of the land originally purchased) and became Camp St. Francis, which served girls age 6 to 13 under the direction of a Ms. Nancy Howe. The final piece of information on the site reads as follows: “In October 1979, Camp St. Francis, which had been functioning on a shoestring budget, was closed and demolished, leaving 89 acres of beautiful fauna to roaming wildlife.
So that is what I’ve learned of the Gate thus far, information which is widely available and which you yourself have acquired (though I would be interested in hearing of your sources). Most every bit of trivia concerning the site is laid out in the History of Institutions, from who ran the property to how much was paid for it to why it was closed, during all it’s incarnations. All, that is, except one. In your writings on the Gate, you posit that “what caused this orphanage to close may be the answer to why this gate has such a famous reputation.” I believe my findings in that book may help support that claim, although only in theory. You see, the one portion of the History article which does not provide specific information is on the closing of the Budd Home. It was one specific passage which caught my eye, both for the vague information given and the oddly passive voice in which it was relayed. The passage begins by explaining that the site was used as both a residence and school “until the mid-1930s, when the decision was made to sell the land.” I had to stop and re-read the information: “mid-1930s”? “The decision was made…”? This provided a sharp contrast to the specificity of all the other information provided, and gave me another straw to clutch at. Like yourself, I concluded that if anything had indeed happened on the site during it’s 79 year history, it would have happened during that mysterious period of time known as “the mid-1930’s, when the decision was made to sell the land.”
At that point, I felt had made excellent progress. I’d discovered that, yes, there was indeed a school, orphanage, and day camp on the site. So the basis of the mystery was founded on fact. And while I had not discovered what, if anything, actually happened to give the Gate it’s haunted reputation, I had narrowed my search from one which spanned 79 years, to one which spanned a decade. Less then that, depending on how seriously you took the “mid-” prefix. However, it is at that point that I became stuck, at a loss for where to look next, or who to turn to for answers. I went to the Warren Newport Public Library, intent on studying a decade’s worth of microfilm if need be, and was pleasantly surprised to learn that the Chicago Tribune’s entire news database is available online. I tried every combination of words and phrases connected to the Gate that I could possibly think of, but not one article was brought to my attention. It is at this point that my research has grinded to a halt. If a murder did occur, even just one, surely it would have been reported in a newspaper like the Tribune. I feel a bit better about my inability to find out anything via newspaper database after reading your story on the Gate: “Libertyville has been mostly successful in hiding unnatural deaths from just twenty years ago,” and “catching wind of it is often a difficult task.” Still, I feel there must be some way to discover the truth behind the mystery of the Gate. With all due respect, I refuse to accept the notion that the answer is “lost in the past.”
But where to look next? I’m out of ideas, which is why I’ve chosen to write to you. Based on what I’ve read on slimpictures.com, I’ve developed a great deal of respect both for your narrative style, and the critical approach you take to such outlandish subjects. What I’ve read is not the writing of someone who seeks to scare the superstitious with camp fire ghost stories (sort of like my own tale), but someone who is interested in the power of myth and legend as re-occurring themes in our lives. Which, now that I think on it, begs another question. If there was no murder at the Gate, and thus, presumably, no haunting, what was it that frightened Justin and I that night, and sent two twenty year olds running off like frightened children? Conceivably, I suppose, the sound could have been made by some sort of animal; but then, why did it have as powerful an effect on us as it did? Could it be that some stories strike so resonantly within humanity that they gain a real physical power over us? Could the story of the Gate have caused me to hallucinate everything that happened that night? And if so, are the power of legends given by us, the story-tellers and believers, or are they taken by the stories themselves? These are things, in my opinion, worth thinking about. To even begin to tackle such subjects, I must know if what happened is real, in the historical sense. To do that, I must find out whether or not the heads of children were posted on that ancient gate… I must find out whether the power lies in the story or in the truth behind the story. And for that, I am asking your help.
Sincerely,
Sean Ellis Dotson
P.S. I do have a couple possible ideas on how to continue the search, but they are very iffy ideas and I would have no idea how to pursue them. For instance: would there be records somewhere of the exact date the orphanage shut down? Would there be a record of why? Would it be possible (and this is a definite long shot) of tracking down any of those hundred orphans who may still be living? I know these are shots in the dark, but, hell, if I knew how to find this information myself I’d be a journalist instead of a college drop out. Thank you for your time.
