Haunted Gary

by Ursula Bielski

  The Gary Police Headquarters, today housed in a wing of the now-defunct main hospital, is a hotbed of haunting phenomena. Photo by John B. Stephens

  Looking out over Gary from the ruins of St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital, January 2014. Photo by John B. Stephens.

  Besides the obvious sources of hauntings—the many, many deaths at this oasis of help in a sea of violence—Len also says there are some other possibilities. According to legend, there was once a doctor who did unnecessary surgeries and experiments on patients. Rumors say that many died by his hands. Nothing has yet been found to substantiate the claims. Len wonders if this legend is a horror story inspired by something very real indeed: a tuberculosis outbreak in the mid-twentieth century. He wonders if perhaps doctors were trying experimental methods or treatments to be helpful to the sick.

  In July 2014, an organization called Michael’s Dream Foundation announced plans to restore or rebuild St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital as a children’s medical recovery center. The foundation is a worldwide organization of Michael Jackson fans whose purpose is to renovate or build medical recovery centers for children. The foundation announced that, in the case of St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital, the site assessment alone—to evaluate the possibility of restoration, the costs that would be involved and the condition of the land—was quoted at more than $9,000. The huge undertaking, if successful, will be a long time in the works. For now, the ghosts of St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital are the only inhabitants, the only voices.

  CHAPTER 3

  GHOSTS OF THE GREAT CIRCUS TRAIN WRECK

  In January 1993, during the Monday morning rush hour, two South Shore Line commuter trains running between Chicago and South Bend, Indiana, plowed into each other along the west edge of Gary, killing seven passengers and injuring more than sixty. The trains had been traveling in opposite directions, and both entered a narrow section of passage where only one train is supposed to run at a time. The trains were both running at full normal speed, and the impact ripped open the train cars, causing decapitations, severed arteries and massive injuries from flying debris.

  The trains both came to a stop at the edge of a trailer park on the outskirts of town, where residents—hearing what sounded like an explosion—came out of their homes, discovered the scene and called 911. One of the first police officers on the scene was Len Miller, who remembers the event well:

  I was one of the first officers on the scene, and when I was running up the hill I saw a child’s severed head on the ground. When I went into the train, there was so much blood. It smelled just like a butcher shop. It was a cold day, but it was really bad. What happened was apparently the trains were on the same track but didn’t realize it till the last moment. There were deaths…Too many…A good amount. I had a CI [confidential informant] who lived there at the hill. A very run-down trailer park. She lived about thirty feet from the tracks where it actually happened, and after the accident, for a long time she would report people…cries at night…moans…There were shadow people running around. At night she would see shadow people, walking at night, with no one actually there.

  Residents in the area still talk about the residue of that horrific day in 1993, continuing to report shadowy figures and also the occasional sound of what seems like an explosion. Those who remember the crash say they cringe when they hear the sound, fearing another deadly tragedy on the tracks above.

  Ghost lore in other parts of Northwest Indiana also testifies to the tragic past of the lakefront rail lines. In South Bend, the ghost of an old engineer is seen standing with his lantern along the tracks, reportedly the phantom of a suicide many years ago. In Chesterton, witnesses say the ghost of a man who was pushed or fell from a train still wanders near the site of his demise.

  Without a doubt, though, the most infamous wreck in Northwest Indiana history—and the most famous train crash ghosts in the Region—was the 1918 crash of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus Train. The Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus traveled across the United States in the early part of the twentieth century and, in its heyday, was the second-largest circus in America next to Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey. Based in Peru, Indiana, the circus employed Joe Skelton, the father of Red Skelton, as a clown for a time. His father had also performed with the circus before going on to the vaudeville circuit. World-famous American clown Emmett Kelly also started his career performing with Hagenbeck-Wallace as “Weary Willie” during the Great Depression.

  The circus had started out as the Carl Hagenbeck Circus at its founding by animal trainer Carl Hagenbeck, who introduced the use of rewards-based (rather than fear-based) animal training. In 1907, Benjamin Wallace, a livery stable owner from Peru, Indiana, bought the circus from Hagenbeck and merged it with his own, the B.E. Wallace Circus.

  Wallace’s Circus was legendary already. The show included a big top, a menagerie tent, a sideshow, two horse tents and a cook house. By the turn of the nineteenth century, the circus required twenty-six train cars and several railroad lines to move around the country. Advertising “high-class” shows, the B.E. Wallace Circus was known for its stunning horses, top-notch talent and intricately carved wagons. Wallace maintained his circus winter quarters in Peru, Indiana, on land once occupied by the Miami Indians, which has led some paranormal investigators to wonder if there was a “curse” on the circus that led to the tragedies that befell it.

  That tragedy visited the circus grounds in 1913, when the circus lost eight elephants, twenty-one lions and tigers and eight performing horses in the devastating Wabash River Flood. Unable to recover, Wallace sold his interest in the circus to Ed Ballard of French Lick, Indiana.

  Five years after the devastation of the flood, just before 4:00 a.m. on June 22, 1918, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train was traveling over the South Shore tracks in Northwest Indiana on its way from Michigan to the circus’s next setup in Hammond, Indiana. The train had just cleared the city of Gary when the engineer of a rear-following troop train, Alonzo Sargent, fell asleep and ran his empty train—a locomotive carrying no fewer than twenty empty Pullman cars—into the back of the Hagenbeck Wallace Circus train. A fire broke out from the oil lamps used to light the circus train’s sleeping cars, and the flames surged through the old wooden structures, destroying everything in their path. A staggering 86 people died and another 127 were injured, either from the impact or the resulting fire. Many victims were burned beyond recognition.

  Sargent later stated that he had slept little in the day before the crash and that he had indeed fallen asleep while conducting the locomotive at a speed of about twenty-five miles per hour after leaving Gary:

  Leaving Michigan City, had clear track to East Gary and there caught block of train ahead, reduced speed, but did not have to stop, as block cleared before I reached it. Reduced speed going through Gary to comply with rules, and saw no more signals at caution or danger until approaching curve east of Ivanhoe, where I found second signal east of wreck at caution. Was going about 25 miles per hour at this point, but did not reduce speed, as I expected that the next signal would probably clear before I got to it, or that I would see it, if at danger, in time to stop. The wind was blowing very hard into cab on my side and I closed the window, which made the inside of cab more comfortable. Before reaching the next signal I dozed on account of heat in cab and missed it. Not realizing what had happened to me until within 75 to 90 feet, I awoke suddenly and saw the tail or marker lights showing red on a train directly ahead of me. Not realizing that the rear end of this train was so close. I started to make a service application, but before completing it placed brake-valve handle into emergency position. We struck almost instantly after making the brake application. Don’t know whether I closed the throttle or not, but think I did. Looked to see where the fireman was and saw he was running toward the gangway. Did not see a fuse, hear a torpedo, or see any other warning signal up to the time I saw the red tail lights. Wreck happened at about 4.05 a.m., June 22, and I stayed there for an hour or more assisting in getting people out of the wrecka
ge. I have been in the service of the Michigan Central Railroad Co. for approximately 28 or 29 years, the last 16 of which I have been continuously employed as an engineer. I am in perfect physical condition, as well as mental condition, and have had no illness within 25 or 30 years requiring the service of a doctor. There was nothing defective about the air brakes or other mechanism of the engine or train that I was operating, nor was there any defective condition of any of the signals or track upon which I was operating to the best of my knowledge. The accident was due solely to the fact that I accidentally fell asleep, and I had no intent to injure any person, nor was same done with malice, but solely through an accident, as aforesaid.

  With the mass losses both in staff and equipment, other competing circuses, including Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey, offered both equipment and talent to Hagenbeck-Wallace so that only two performances had to be cancelled. But the losses were fatal not only to the performers who had died but also to the circus itself.

  After the tragedy, circus operators Jeremiah Mugivan and Bert Bowers bought the struggling Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, which became part of their growing empire of circuses. A year later, they invited Ballard to become a partner, and the three formed the American Circus Company. The former winter quarters of the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus at Peru, Indiana, now hosts the American Circus Hall of Fame.

  Although Sargent and his fireman, Gustave Klauss, were criminally charged in Lake County, Indiana, following a trial the jury found itself deadlocked, and a mistrial was declared. Prosecutors declined to re-try the case, and charges were dismissed in the summer of 1920.

  Five days after the crash in Indiana, most of those killed in the wreck or fire were buried in a mass grave at Woodlawn Cemetery in the Chicago suburb of Forest Park. Just a few months before the disaster, the Showmen’s League of America had purchased a substantial plot of land in the cemetery, set aside as “Showmen’s Rest” and earmarked for the burial of circus performers. Most of the dead were not able to be properly identified, due to massive destruction by the fire, and so most graves are marked “Unknown Male” or “Unknown Female.” A few of the remaining graves bear only the circus names of the dead, including “Smiley” and “Baldy.” Four stone elephants mark the corners of the site, their trunks lowered in a gesture of mourning. Each summer, the International Clown Week Festival is held at the site, with scores of circus performers and trainers in attendance, entertaining the large crowd and placing flowers on the graves of their deceased comrades.

  Showmen’s Rest, Woodlawn Cemetery, Forest Park, Illinois. Photo by Matt Hucke, Graveyards.com.

  Ever since the burials, visitors to the graves at Showmen’s Rest have reported hearing the sounds of wild animals—lions roaring, elephants trumpeting—and so legends began that circus animals buried at the site were haunting the mass grave. Curiously, however, no animals were killed in the disaster, leading some researchers to wonder if the sounds were audio hallucinations or some sort of energy residue from the crash itself, still attached to the site where so many who experienced it were laid to rest. Later in the century, though, a local police officer realized the much less dramatic source of the “haunting”: Woodlawn Cemetery is located only about a mile away from sprawling Brookfield Zoo, and when the wind is just right, the sounds of its very much alive inhabitants can carry on the breeze over the graves of Showmen’s Rest.

  But what of the crash site itself? Do the spirits of the Great Circus Train Wreck linger on the rails between Gary and Hammond, even nearly a century later? For years, paranormal investigators have traveled to the site of the wreck, hoping to capture evidence of the event in the form of photographs and video or audio recordings of frequencies out of human hearing. Numerous investigators have recorded “spikes” in the EMF field during investigations, as well as light anomalies captured on film—particular balls of light or “orbs,” believed by some to be spirit energy.

  Showmen’s Rest today. Photo by Matt Hucke, Graveyards.com.

  One gentleman who used to spend a lot of time trainspotting in the area claims to have seen the figure of a man pacing back and forth at the site of the crash and disappearing. Perhaps it is the long-gone spirit of Alonzo Sargent, wishing he could return and undo the damage. The witness related:

  I would come in the evenings to watch the commuter trains go by, and sometimes stay and watch for other freight trains passing, and it was always just at twilight, when it had just gone dark, that I would see this man appear. I never felt afraid or even thought anything of it, even after I had seen him once or twice. While it was happening, I would think, “Hmm…I wonder if he lost something or what he’s doing there,” and it wouldn’t be until he disappeared again that I remembered I was seeing this entity or vision or what have you. I haven’t been out there in many years, but I still think about that sometimes.

  Others have recorded what seem to be voices from the accident scene, including one recording I collected of a woman crying, “Help them!” and another of a male voice whispering, “Burning up.” J.C. Rositas, part of Heartland Hauntings, remembers recording a voice that he wasn’t expecting. As he played back a recording he had made at the accident site, he remembers, “I had to rewind it two or three times. It was very clear, but I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. It just said, ‘Boo!’ Leave it to a circus performer!”

  CHAPTER 4

  THE HAUNTING OF DUNELAND

  Perhaps the most eerie aspect of Gary, Indiana, is the juxtaposition of its crumbling, urban ruins with the sweeping natural beauty of the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore on which the city was built. No traveler to the Region can escape the strange contrast of industry and nature here: the skyline of steel mill smokestacks (and the grey silhouette of Chicago on the horizon) against the unspoiled expanse of sand and water. Even in the city of Gary, the neighborhood of Miller Beach (also known as simply Miller) is a startling anomaly: a pleasant and relatively safe community of beachfront homes and condominiums, restaurants, coffee shops and family-owned businesses unfolding out to the water from the erstwhile “Murder Capital of America.” Residents here still tend to write “Miller” or “Miller Beach” (not Gary) as their address (though the town of Miller was annexed in 1918), and for the most part, they live very different lives than those confined—and resigned—to the dark and sad residences of Gary proper.

  If you look at a map of Lake Michigan, Miller is the very southern tip of the lake. The shoreline, publicly owned only here, is interrupted by a few lakefront cottages lining the beach. Despite being a neighborhood in one of the most infamously criminal, destitute and urban cities in America, Miller is enclosed by protected forestland, with Miller Wood to the west, even separating the beach from U.S. Steel’s Gary Works. But while the land is separated, there is no separating the vista. The public beach here offers perhaps the most shocking example of the typical beachgoing experience in the Indiana Dunes, which finds bathers frolicking against a backdrop of adjacent factories and smokestacks above blue water, golden sands and dune grasses.

  Miller Beach visitors, circa 1910. Courtesy of Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana University Northwest.

  The Miller section of Gary has an almost incredible modern history, but the importance of the Indiana Dunes for the history of the Region and the nation—and for the ghostlore of Gary—stretches much further back in time. Humans have flourished in the Indiana Dunes for some fourteen thousand years, since the retreat of the glaciers, developing from the glacial lakes that formed between the Valparaiso Moraine and the receding ice. After the ebb of the glaciers, the area was a thriving hunting ground but with very few permanent settlements, the oldest of which probably did not emerge until around 200 BC to AD 800.

  With the advent of European exploration and trade, native populations either dug in their heels and tried to monopolize the trade centers or simply moved to avoid the encroaching foreigners. Artifacts from early native history have been found all across the Dunes, dating back as far as 7800 BC. Of course, one o
f the most recognizable signs of Indian settlement are the plentiful burial mounds scattered across Dunleand. Several groups of mounds were previously identified, some of which have been lost over time. Excavations at the Big Blowout area of the Indiana Dunes State Park—near the Little Fort site—yielded a skull and vertebrae with an arrow lodged inside. Another site contained seven complete skeletons. By 1931, nearly one hundred mounds that had been previously discovered at Mound Valley had been lost.

  Legendary tales passed down by the Potawatomi and Miami trace these tribes to the Indiana Dunes prior to the Iroquois War or Beaver Wars, which dragged on from 1641 to 1701. It was during the war period that both nations migrated north to the Door Peninsula in Wisconsin with many other tribes for protection. Most of the history of the Iroquois War is from French records and so focuses on French Canadian interests. Little is known about the details of the wars and their effect on the native populations of Northwest Indiana. What we do know is that by 1677, the Miami and Potawatomi had begun to return to the southern shore of Lake Michigan (the Miami to the western bend of the Calumet River, near present-day Blue Island, Illinois). On the far eastern edge of the dunes, the Miami and Mascouten had returned to the St. Joseph River area of Lake Michigan sometime after 1673. Another village grew at the portage from the South Bend of the St. Joseph after 1679. Additional villages may have been located through the Dunes by this time, but there is no mention of any villages in the journals of the French explorers.