Place-24-04
Placed By: WWW (Formerly known as Chuck and Molly)
Location: Lyme Connecticut, New London County
Rated: Hike is approximately .25 of a mile one way.

Same starting point as:

Arkansas State Stamp, Happiness at Hartman
Gnomelett's Series, Gnomelett the Mini-Elf

At the intersection of routes 85 and 82 in Salem, go southwest on route 82. Coming from Colchester, this will be a right, from Montville it is a left. From route 82, take a left onto Darling Rd. Drive .3 of a mile and come to a stop sign. Go straight for 1 mile and turn left onto Gungy Road. Go South down Gungy Road for 1.7 miles and come to the parking area for Hartman Park on your left. Park here and walk over to the silver gate.

You will walk down the access road and soon take a left onto the green and orange trails. You will soon take a quick right, keep going and you will cross over a small wooden bridge. After crossing the bridge, take the trail that goes straight up the hill to an area known as the schoolroom. It looks like a picnic area. Go north on the Pink and Red trails. They soon split, go right, staying with the red. In a little while you will take the yellow trail that goes off to the right. You quickly come to a T. There will be a double yellow blaze on the tree because the yellow trail goes right. Go left here and quickly come to an area they call the cemetery. There are many crude, upright stones but they are not engraved. There will also be a bench. Go to the bench. Take a reading directly north and go 16 steps to a small cavern of stones. Move two flat stone doors to reveal the cavity and find the hiding place of the In Search of Resurrection Mary letterbox. Stamp in and return the way you came.

It is said that Mary was a beautiful young Polish American girl with long blonde hair and blue eyes. She loved to go out in the evenings dancing. One cold winter night in 1934, she was with her boyfriend at the O. Henry Ballroom, now Willowbrook Ballroom on Archer Avenue in Justice Illinois, a southern suburb of Chicago. The couple had some sort of argument that night and Mary walked out of the ballroom determined that she would rather walk home alone than ride home with her date. She didn’t walk very far up Archer Avenue when suddenly, a car struck her. The driver fled the scene leaving Mary either dead or dying on the side of the cold dark road. She died by the side of the road and was buried shortly after in Resurrection Cemetery.

There the story should have ended, but it was only the beginning. Not long after her death, reports of mysterious incidents began. The most common experiences were of people driving at night picking up a mysterious woman on the side of the road to give her a ride. The girl would always accept the offer for a ride and give the driver directions that took them down Archer Street. As they are passing Resurrection Cemetery the girl will either vanish or tell the driver to stop near Resurrection Cemetery. She will get out of the car and vanish as she approaches the gates of the cemetery. There have also been reports of young men actually meeting her at the ballroom, dancing with her and at the end of the night offering her a ride home, only to have her vanish during the ride home near the Resurrection Cemetery. She is described as looking like a normal living person, she has long blonde hair, blue eyes, speaking very little, wearing a 1930's white dress and her skin is cool to the touch. There are also reports of Mary walking out into the road and being run down by cars. When the drivers stop and get out to help the victim, no body or trace of an accident can be found. Strange occurrences concerning Mary go back to the mid 1930s and continue today. In the 30s and 40s Mary would jump onto the running boards of the passing cars and then vanish without a trace.

On the night of August 10, 1976 a man was driving by the cemetery around 10:30 at night. He saw a girl in a white dress on the other side of the cemetery gate grasping the metal bars as if she were trying to get out. He notified the police department that someone must have been accidentally locked in the cemetery. When an officer arrived, he could not find the girl but upon closer inspection he made an amazing discovery. The bars to the gate had been bent apart at sharp angles. The bars were green colored bronze but where they were pried apart, there were black scorch marks in the shape of small human fingers and hands. This discovery quickly became big news and crowds of people visited the cemetery to see the gate. Mary was instantly rocketed into the Chicago areas most famous ghost.

The cemetery officials denied that anything supernatural happened at the cemetery. They claimed that a truck backed into the gates while doing sewer work at the cemetery and that grounds workers tried to fix the bars by heating them with a blow torch and bending them. The imprint in the metal, was from a workman trying to push the bars together with fireproof gloves while they were still hot. After the publicity drew crowds of curiosity seekers, the cemetery tried a few times to fix the bars. Several attempts were made in an effort to discourage the crowds.