Vintage Chicago Tribune: Celebrate spooky season — with a cemetery walk before Halloween

Dead men — and women — do tell tales, Chicago.

That’s what my colleague Rick Kogan wrote in August after reading “Graceland Cemetery: Chicago Stories, Symbols, and Secrets,” by local history buff and cemetery chaperone Adam Selzer. In it, Selzer provides walking tours of the city’s most famous burial ground, which is located less than a mile north of Wrigley Field. The book includes deeply researched insights into some of the 175,000 lives — both famous and not — behind the names inscribed on the grave markers and cenotaphs placed there since 1860. (I ordered Selzer’s book through my local shop, Bookends & Beginnings, and I’m really enjoying it.)

Really, Selzer writes, the deceased aren’t that different from the living.

“Most everyone here who lived long enough played games, told jokes, sang songs, pulled pranks, fell in love, fell out of love, got diarrhea, pursued hobbies, and landed in trouble. And though they can be hard to find, sometimes the stories survive.”

In order to learn the tales of the dead, however, takes time, patience and a bit of luck.

During her life, Helen Sclair — the sometimes-prickly yet always engaging former schoolteacher turned self-taught historian, lecturer, collector, tour guide and author — was an advocate for the dead. Her cremated remains lie under a headstone bearing that inscription at Bohemian National Cemetery on the Northwest Side.

She was also responsible for confirming a long-held belief — there are still people buried in Lincoln Park.

When she went looking for the city’s cemetery records, experts guessed they’d been lost to the Great Chicago Fire of 1871. More than 110 years later, however, boxes of old papers were found in a South Side warehouse and sent to Springfield for conservation. When the Illinois Regional Archives Depository opened at Northeastern Illinois University in 1990, the cemetery documents were there — and so was Sclair.

Chicago Tribune reporter Ron Grossman wrote, “Sclair seems to have been the first to guess that the archive might contain records of the old lakefront cemetery. ... Eventually, she found more than 600 relevant documents, had them photographed, then copied by hand their virtually illegible 19th Century handwritings.”

The discovery of this “demographic gold mine of undertakers’ reports” was monumental — especially for a novice. “It’s a one-in-a-million shot,” Melvin Holli, professor of history at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said in 1991.

Thanks to the tireless and sometimes tedious work by Selzer, Sclair, the community of Find a Grave volunteers and other dedicated researchers, you and I can visit their graves then share their stories — business people, athletes and performers. A vice president, an architect, a pilot, a critic. Founders of major chains and those who ran machine politics, blazed civil rights trails, designed skyscrapers and sang the blues.

How you can support this newsletter

Become a Tribune subscriber — it’s just $12 for a 1 year digital subscription.

Thanks for reading!

— Kori Rumore, visual reporter

Chicago history | More newsletters | Puzzles & Games | Today’s eNewspaper edition

Cemetery expert: ‘Dead people always seem to get in the way of the living.’

Helen Sclair’s final resting place is the same as her last known address — Bohemian National Cemetery on the Northwest Side. During her life, Sclair was vocal about the problems facing local cemeteries and even stumbled upon records that confirmed bodies still remain buried beneath Lincoln Park.

• Touring Bohemian National Cemetery’s grounds with ‘Cemetery Lady’ Helen Sclair

Photo essay: 6 Chicago graves are the resting spots for stories, some of them even true

What you see in these brooding, lonesome images by Tribune photographer Erin Hooley, is closer to how we imagine a gravesite — at least near twilight, around Halloween. See more photos, if you dare.

The first victim of Chicago’s 1919 race riots recently received a grave marker in Lincoln Cemetery — alongside other notable people interred there.

The cemetery in Blue Island is the permanent address for many memorable Chicagoans in the city’s African American community — especially those with ties to literature, sports, music and history.

Performers, politicians, pundits and more: Where to find their final resting places

Take a tour from Des Plaines to Alsip, Lake Forest to Homewood to the spots where some of Chicago’s best known people will reside for eternity.

Ernie Banks, George Halas, Jesse Owens and more: Visit the graves of 50 sports greats with Chicago ties

The Tribune compiled this list of noteworthy names whose burial locations can be found in or near the city — with details on how to find them.

Join our Chicagoland history Facebook group for more from Chicago’s past.

Have an idea for Vintage Chicago Tribune? Share it with Ron Grossman and Marianne Mather at rgrossman@chicagotribune.com and mmather@chicagotribune.com.