Story sent in via email August 20, 2001

Hi my names Deborah, last June my husband and I took a vacation to Chicago. Id planned in advance that I wanted to visit haunted places in Chicago since I've always been interested in ghost. I found out about Bachelors grove cemetery on the Internet. The second day in Chicago we decided to find Rubio woods. At about four o'clock in the afternoon we found our designation. I couldn't wait to get out of our vehicle and start our adventure. With video in hand we entered a narrow path in the woods, the whole time I kept asking my husband if we were on the right path, he didn't really know so we proceeded on. What happened next scared us both so much that seeing a ghost instead would of been much better. As we were walking down the shadowy path all of a sudden there were three bald headed teenagers and an older bald headed adult all males sitting on a bench along side the path. The older man said"sorry man" I said,"why"? He said " sorry they didn't mean to call you that" I said "call us what?" He said "they called you a faggot". I said in nervousness "that's okay" and my husband and I kept walking. My husband said they never called us that and I asked him what do you mean, he said, the guy lied and when I said that's okay all four of them started laughing. That made both of us real nervous cause here we were in a strange place with no protection except my camcorder. We just kept walking down the path to our designation, the cemetery. My husband told me later that he was really worried about my security because he felt that we were going to get mugged, raped or whatever. I at the time felt the exact same way we both felt a terrible sense of fear. I just wanted to keep walking straight because I didn't want to turn around and have to walk past those people again. We came to a clearing in the path, I was getting really scared but tried not to show it to my husband, he later told me he was feeling the same way. We walked further on, in the distance we could see that the path was again leading us into a dark area again we entered the dark area of the path and we both noticed the damp feeling in the air and the coldness even though it was 90 degrees out, we also noticed all the tracks on the ground what looked like dog and a woman's high heel shoe marks there was also places here and there where someone lit small fires. I stopped and told my husband we have to go back, that I wasn't feeling right about the place at all. We turned back, I really wanted to run in a different direction as to avoid going pass those guys again but realized wed get lost and that would be worst. With my camcorder by my side now because I really didn't care about video taping anything we just wanted to get out, we walked on and when we entered the area before the clearing in the distance about 30 feet in front of us we saw the older 35-40 yr old man walking towards us, my husband and I didn't say a word but I know we were both thinking the same things. When the strange man saw us he turned around and started walking slowly back where he came from. So now he was in front of us and we had no other choice but to follow him, he kept looking over his shoulder at us the whole way and not saying a word. The other guys that were with him were gone; the question is were they behind us getting ready to jump us? Is that why the guy kept watching us so closely? My husband later told me that he looked on the ground for a big stick for protection, I was at the time doing the same thing. Then the older guy suddenly stopped and walked to the side as if to let us go by. This made me really scared because he acted so strangely and bizarre I knew he was planning on doing something to us. We walked quickly by him, I felt like I should make small talk to break the tension so I said to him as we passed"nice path through here" He responded with" that wasn't in my plan, that was 20 yrs ago, that hell doesn't exist anymore". When we got past him my husband whispered to me is" he behind us"? I turned and looked and yes now he was following us. My husband and I were walking very fast this time trying to get back to the safety of our vehicle. The strange man was now directly behind us walking just as fast, I whispered to my husband"get the keys out and open the doors fast, do you hear me fast" we made it to our vehicle and after a few minutes of trying to start it we sped off out of Rubio woods forest preserve and as far as I was concerned id never ever come back. The whole time the strange man got into his car which was parked next to ours and he followed us out and down Midlothian turnpike I could see him right behind us in the rearview mirror. We stopped at the first lights and we went forward when I again looked in the rearview mirror he was gone, just like that vanished.. My husband and I stopped at a rest stop to get our nerves back we were really shaken up bad. When we watched the video later allot of strange things were present, first off in the beginning before we headed down the path I walked past an older well dressed man to my left, he never showed up on film even though id seen him in my camcorder at the time, second as we first headed down the path I told my husband " look there's people down there" people id seen in the distance in front of us, probably those strange bald guys, but it never recorded me saying that. Remeber the camera is recording the whole time there is no pauses I never shut it off or paused it, and at the end when we got safely back to our vehicle I sat the camcorder between us I was not interested at the time in shutting it off but it shut off by itself as soon as we were safe. In the video you can see the strange man in front of us though. There's probably a lot of misspelled words here I'm sorry but it's been about a month since this happened and I'm still very upset about it. Please let me know your opinion...

Deborah Rieks

ebbierieks@marshallnet.com