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Devil’s Gate in Libertyville, Illinois

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Apparition from Beyond the Veil
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« on: December 05, 2015, 08:08:08 pm »

Devil’s Gate in Libertyville, Illinois


Read about this location and more in Legends and Lore of Illinois: The Definitive Collection
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Apparition from Beyond the Veil
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« Reply #1 on: December 05, 2015, 08:09:06 pm »

The truth behind the mysteries of Devil’s Gate, located near the Independence Grove Forest Preserve in Lake County, is elusive. What may or may not have happened there has been lost in the minds of the older generation, who have so far not come forward with the real story.

According to legend, sometime in the distant past a school stood behind the set of iron gates off of a sharp bend in River Road, about a mile north of Libertyville. One day, a maniac broke into the school and abducted several of the girls. He killed each one and mounted their severed heads on the spikes of the gate. Every full moon, the heads reappear on the rusted spikes.

Like most legends, there are very few facts to back up the story. There is no doubt, however, that an institution once stood on those grounds. According to the Chicago Daily Tribune, construction on what was known as the Katherine Kreigh Budd Memorial Home for Children began in the early spring of 1926. Britton I. Budd, the president of the Chicago Rapid Transit Company, funded the project. The institution itself was to be run by the Sisters of St. Mary, an Episcopal organization, and was expected to house around 150 children in its first year.

The Reverend Sheidon M. Griswold formally dedicated the home late in June 1926. At that time, fifteen buildings, including a pool and a “large farm,” had been erected on the premises. In 1931, the home began to also accept destitute children and their families.

In my own research, I discovered that the three fire hydrants located on the premises were one-piece barrel model Eddyvalve Hydrants. That business was purchased in the 1940s by James Clow and Sons, the company name that is stamped on the sewer covers also scattered around the area.
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« Reply #2 on: December 05, 2015, 08:09:40 pm »

Sometime in the late 1950s, Katherine Kreigh Budd Memorial Home for Children closed down. It was reopened several years later in the early 1960s as a summer camp known as St. Francis Home for Boys. Tragedy accompanied the transition. On May 11, 1961, a two year old boy named Glen Bottorff drowned in the Des Plaines River adjacent to the grounds of the not-yet-opened camp. According to the Libertyville Independent Register, he had been playing nearby with his sister, who ran home to ask permission to eat lunch outside. Depending on which version of the story you read, either two men who had been searching for the boy discovered his body, or his own loyal dog led them to it.

I do not know when St. Francis Home for Boys shut down, but I do know that the Park District owned the land in 1992. At some point, all of the buildings were knocked down and their contents buried on the premises. Today all that remains are cement foundations, rusted metal, and glass bottles that are slowly being reclaimed by nature, protected by a sign that proclaims it to be an “ecologically sensitive area.” My own hunch is that the ghost story regarding the severed heads dates back to when the boys camp was in operation. Many summer camps have their own ghost stories. It may very well be that this one has outlived the camp itself.
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« Reply #3 on: December 05, 2015, 08:09:59 pm »

http://mysteriousheartland.com/2014/09/26/devils-gate-in-libertyville-illinois/
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« Reply #4 on: December 05, 2015, 08:15:53 pm »

Libertyville, Illinois - "The Gate"

One of the most frightening places in Libertyville, Illinois is the stone structure known as "The Gate." It is off River Road near Independence Grove Forest Preserve. Just getting to the Gate can be terrifying, River Road is desolate and secluded and you have to go down it about two miles.  It is lined by the dense forest on both sides and there are no streetlights. During the summer when it is humid outside, fog comes in from the ponds shrouding the lower parts of the road. The road makes a sharp turn, continues on into the darkness, and then comes to what the residents have christened "The Gate." The first version of the legend says that the Gate was the entrance to a girl's finishing school in the early 1950s. A quiet and polished place where young women from Chicago's well-to-do families went for a proper education. The tranquillity was devastated one night when the principal had a nervous breakdown and killed four of the students, and then put their heads on the posts of the Gate.. Other tales say that the Gate was an entrance to a summer camp or an asylum, and the killer wasn't always the one in charge. It was either a camp counselor or a lunatic that had escaped from the asylum, went to the summer camp and murdered four children while they slept. The Gate in Libertyville Illinois Those that think it used to be an asylum say that the killer was a ward attendant who went insane and murdered four of his charges. All of the versions had a common ending, that the residents and officials trying to wipe out what was left of the buildings. It is still said that the Gate is haunted by those who died there. But few agree on what kinds of occurrences go on there. Some say that in the early morning hours when they visited the Gate they saw blood dripping from the iron supports.  Others say that at midnight on the anniversary of the murders, visions of the heads of those killed materialize on the fence posts, their mouths wide open as if screaming. Many other tales are told of apparitions, eerie screams, and unexplainable sounds.
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« Reply #5 on: December 05, 2015, 08:17:58 pm »

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« Reply #6 on: December 05, 2015, 08:19:20 pm »

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« Reply #7 on: December 05, 2015, 08:20:10 pm »

Those who think that nothing happened there say that if any murders had occured it would have been impossible to cover them up. There is the three more recent murders that have been evaded and almost forgotten, which shows how easily the previous murders could have been buried. They all took place at the Rouse Mansion which was given the name "Murder Mansion" until it was torn down in 2003. In 1980, Bruce Rouse and his wife were murdered in their beds�shot at close range in the face, bashed in the head, and stabbed multiple times in the chest. It was a cold case until 1996 when their son confessed to murdering them for insurance money. The third murder happened in 1982. This killing finally revealed the history of organized crime that was in the area. At the time, prostitution and illegal gambling�helped by the corrupt sheriff's department�was still widespread. The Rouse mansion had become to site of most of the vice, with the police "watching over" it during the investigation. Instead, they turned it into a den of vice. It all came to an end when Bobby Plumber was murdered. He was beat to death and his body was found in the trunk of his car, parked at a Holiday Inn. After his murder was solved, the residents threw out the corrupt officals and the violence subsided. Now days it is next to impossible to get any information about the murders or the corrupt officals. Which raises the question: If they have blocked the public from getting any information about the recent murders, could they also be hiding the facts about the murders at the Gate more than a half a century ago? Some information that was found confirms some of the pieces of the legend. The Gate was once part of an orphanage, the Katherine Dodridge Kreigh Budd Memorial Home for Children, which opened in 1925. It was shut down for unknown reasons in the late 50s and was turned into the St. Francis Boys' Camp. The Camp was closed without explanation. It is presumed that whatever caused the orphanage to close could be what started the bloody legends of the Gate.
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« Reply #8 on: December 05, 2015, 08:21:02 pm »

Tale from Jamie C.

"The Gate up in the Gurnee area is one of the spookiest places that I have ever been to. A friend of mine was taking me around to places that were haunted, and we drove out there one night. It's in the middle of nowhere, out in the woods. They say that it used to belong to a school and one of the teachers went crazy and cut off some of the students' heads and stuck them on the Gate. I don't know if this is true, but I was so scared that I made my friend leave as soon as we got there." -Jamie C.
Tale from Todd R.

"Up in Lake County is this place called the Gate, and it used to be at the driveway back to this mental hospital. One of the inmates went crazy and killed some of the guards and then escaped. Well, he cut off their heads and hung them on the Gate for the cops to see when they got there. They were so scared that they never even chased the guy. Anyway, me and some buddies went out there one night, and just as we drove up, I swear that we saw somebody looking out from behind the Gate at us. When we stopped and put the headlights on him, there was nobody there. Man, we left fast!" -Todd R.
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« Reply #9 on: December 05, 2015, 08:21:18 pm »

http://www.hauntedusa.org/thegate.htm
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« Reply #10 on: December 05, 2015, 10:21:13 pm »

The story goes that at one point there was a an all girl's school that existed there in the 1950s. Well during this time, there were murders that occured on the school grounds. A couple of girls were killed, and decapitated. On the gate, the murderer placed the heads of his victims. Supposedly to this day you can sometimes see the ghost heads of these girls on that particular gate that still exists. The video I found on youtube shows foundations, cement blocks, and even a pool that once existed there.

Has anyone heard this story before?

Here's the link to the video

http://api.viglink.com/api/click?format=go&jsonp=vglnk_144937570333214&key=83df4a0912f2a79b86a621d745e0b7fd&libId=ihtxyojm01002axf000DAhl210arm&loc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.chicagolandfishing.com%2Fforums%2F19-northern-illinois-lakes-ponds%2F59010-independence-grove-haunted.html&v=1&out=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DBxAhTCqN_LIhttp%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DBxAhTCqN_LI&ref=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Furl%3Fsa%3Dt%26rct%3Dj%26q%3D%26esrc%3Ds%26source%3Dweb%26cd%3D5%26cad%3Drja%26uact%3D8%26ved%3D0ahUKEwj-n9OkkMbJAhWnqYMKHcSiAP8QFgg4MAQ%26url%3Dhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.chicagolandfishing.com%252Fforums%252F19-northern-illinois-lakes-ponds%252F59010-independence-grove-haunted.html%26usg%3DAFQjCNG-pNw6u9axgjXP4H5tuGeiJFk1Xw%26sig2%3DdlZNtvKrkBb4WbSv6jOJ_w&title=Independence%20Grove-Haunted%3F%20-%20Chicago%20Illinois%20Fishing%20Forum%2C%20Information%20%26%20Reports&txt=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DBxAhTCqN%20...%20xAhTCqN_LI
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"Forever let this place be a cry of despair and a warning to humanity, where the Nazis murdered about a million and a half men, women and children, mainly Jews, from various countries in Europe."

Auschwitz-Birkenau, 1940-1945
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