Happy holidays from the team!

We at Ghostbusters: Chicago Division would like to wish you and yours a wonderful holiday season! We even made a video Christmas card for everyone!



Enjoy your holidays, and here's to a wonderful 2012!!

Ghostbusters: Chicago Division at Muvico for the Ghostbusters screening!

Your troop outside the loop will be outside the Muvico Theater in Rosemont on Thursday, October 13th before the show! Come get your picture with the Ghostbusters before going in to see the limited re-release screening of Ghostbusters! We will be outside for an hour before the 7:30 pm showing.

Muvico has tickets on sale online at https://www.muvico.com/default.asp?t=210 (just click Advanced Sales, Ghostbusters is the first option). It's $20 for the VIP Premier seating (21 and over), or $10 for the regular screen.

Chicago ghosts: Bachelor's Grove

Fall is in the air, and with it, thoughts of Halloween and ghosts! As our favorite holiday approaches, we here at Ghostbusters: Chicago Division would like to share some of our favorite local ghost stories. The Chicago area is full of spooky tales, enough to fill many books, most of which our researcher on staff, Dr. Chrabasz, has read. Keep checking back, as we'll be adding more tales in the weeks to come!

We'll start off with one of the most haunted places in the area, if not the world, Bachelor's Grove. Dr. Chrabasz investigated this cemetery with friends back in 2002, and all the photos included in this post are from her trip.

The area around Bachelor's Grove was first settled in the late 1820s through 1840s. There are two legends about the name, one that it comes from the number of single men who settled the area, and the other that it comes from a family named Batchelder. The cemetery was founded in the 1840s, with the first burial in 1844. The final burial in the cemetery was that of Robert Shields, cremated and buried in his family plot in 1989.

The cemetery is in a very isolated location, though that was not always the case. There once was a road running right past the front gates that led to 150th & Harlem Avenue, but when the Midlothian Turnpike was built, the road was abandoned. Now the only access is on foot, through isolated woods.

Once a place for families to come together for picnics and fishing in the nearby quarry pond, the cemetery became neglected and a target for vandals. Rumors of gangsters driving past on the turnpike and dumping bodies of their victims in the quarry pond have been passed down through the years. Reports of satanic rituals, drinking parties, and vandalism became rampant in the 1960s and 1970s. Many taller tombstones were toppled, and some stones were removed from the cemetery or dumped in the quarry pond. It is difficult to determine just how many burials are in the cemetery due to a combination of missing stones and a lack of paperwork.

Beyond the physical damage, there are many reports of spiritual phenomena in the cemetery and surrounding area. One recurring phenomena is that of a vanishing house, seen in various places in the woods and even in the cemetery itself. Most people describe almost exactly the same house, a white farm-style house, which shrinks into the distance as they try to approach and then disappears entirely. No physical evidence of a foundation has been found anywhere near the cemetery, nor is there any record of a house ever having been built nearby. Regularly seen spirits in the cemetery include a woman with an infant, a farmer & his horse who drowned in the pond, a two-headed man emerging from the pond, and black-robed figures who quickly disappear.

Other phenomena have included ghost lights, in various colors, seen in the cemetery and surrounding woods. Sometimes the lights are flashing blue, sometimes streaks of red, sometimes white. In the 70s, one photographer neared the cemetery and found his camera come to life, snapping off several shots which developed to show a white mist in the area. This mist has been photographed by others over the years, along with faces and people appearing on film. During an investigation by the Ghost Research Society in 1991, photographer Jude Huff-Felz captured a photograph on infrared film that later showed a woman sitting on one of the toppled tombstones, a woman who was not there in the cemetery when the photo was taken.

Beyond the cemetery gates, drivers on the nearby turnpike have seen phantom black cars streaking up and down the road. These 1930s style sedans appear and disappear at random, or sometimes will sideswipe drivers. Drivers feel the sensation of an impact, even hear the sounds of metal and glass as if they've been hit by another car, but when they stop and get out, no damage can be seen. The theory is these phantom cars belong to the gangsters who reportedly dumped bodies in the pond.

With all this activity, Bachelor's Grove certainly does seem to have earned its reputation as the most haunted cemetery in the area. The only visitors to this haunted spot are the brave ghost hunters hoping for a glimpse of the paranormal, as the few souls remaining in their graves no longer have living relatives who wish to visit. If you are determined to visit this location, it is on 143rd east of Ridgeland, in the Rubio Woods Forest Preserve. The entrance is hidden behind a cell tower, and you will have to park across the street. Keep your visits to the daytime hours, when the forest preserve is open, as once the sun goes down, local police come calling and will arrest you. Bring your camera and your bravery!

Stay tuned for more local Chicago ghost stories!

Ecto-Cooler Informercial!

This past weekend, your friendly neighborhood Ghostbusters got together and filmed ourselves a little infomercial! If you like the video, please visit our YouTube page and give us a thumbs up!

Everyone, we do work very hard to get you what you want and to make you laugh, please help us by buying a shirt from our Spreadshirt store. Proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society. Remember that Ecto-Cooler is great stuff, but Ecto-Cooler with laughter is better. Having your family healthy and with you is best.

Ecto-Cooler Commentary Continues...

"I Rondal as Vigo shall drink the Cooler! Begone you pitiful cola!"

Folks, it's been almost a week since our good friend Brad Jones posted his video taking a sip of our Ecto-Cooler mix and advertized it everywhere that it's about now I am starting to see random websites linking back to us. As a matter of fact, if you're reading this, you most likely came from the Strange Kids Club, 4chan's CK board, (if the link becomes broken at one point, that happens. Trust me, it was a mild thread), or some of the other odd places I've seen this site end up.

But there's one that holds one of the oddest placements of all the sites to drop our recipe on. It is another chan-type BBS, but this started as a thread about mixing seltzer water with juice, to talking about drinking tap water and not being a pretentious... Well, you can read it here, but I must warn you, you're brain cells are gonna start catching on fire reading it.

Anyhow, the post in question was nothing more than anything else you'd see on any chan-based board when suddenly BAM! Ecto-Cooler Recipe link!

"Would you like that to be in a fire, sir?"

Needless to say, it's was kinda odd. This does, however, prove one thing: We have done our job for King and Country by bringing back a famous drink and in the end people have taken notice. If it's going to wrestling websites, being passed around 4chan like your ex-girlfriend at an orgy, and making craptons of geeks that have a henti collection larger than the collective minuets they've stood in the sun happy, I feel as though I've done a great service to the world.

Lets just see how long it takes before trolls start attacking us.

~Dan