legends and lore of illinois volume 1 issue 5
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Contents From the Author 1 Your Letters 1 A Quick and Dirty Guide 2 The Fallen Investigate 3 Personal Experiences 5 Trivia 5
A Short Message From the Author
Usually when I go to these haunted places I at
least expect to see something interesting, if not a ghost,
maybe some clever cemetery art. Once, I found an old
outhouse that looked like it was a relic from the 1920s.
Dug Hill Road (Lane, more precisely) had none of these
things, except for an old barn, but it was on someone’s
property.
If it weren’t for the fact that it gave me
something to write a new issue about, the trip would
have been a colossal waste of time. When Troy Taylor
wrote, “the more sinister aspects of the passage have
vanished and the road is unrecognizable from the way
it once was,” (Haunted Illinois, 50) he wasn’t kidding.
It’s possible that I misinterpreted the directions
to the site located in the Field Guide to Illinois Hauntings,
but since the most specific description of the
thoroughfare seems to be “road cut through a hill about
five miles west of Jonesboro” (Haunted Heartland, 39),
This sinister road sign guards the gateway to the nine levels
of Hell, maybe.
and this lane was the only road labeled “Dug Hill”
five miles west of Jonesboro, I’m going to have to go
with my gut instincts on this one. g
Your Letters
In subsequent issues, we hope to print your letters
commenting on what you have read. Only the best
(shortest) letters will be published. Here are two
examples of the kind of letters we’re expecting:
Legends and Lore of Illinois, Your electronic serial is an inspiration to us all. Your word usage is amazing. I am personally going to wallpaper my cell with it.
Bud, Joliet State Prison
Legends and Bore of Illinois, The only thing that keeps your electronic serial from actually being crap is the fact that I printed it out and used it as toilet paper.
Annoyed in Cicero
Please e-mail your letters to
thefallen2@gmail.com and we will try to publish
them. Also, we will read your personal experiences,
but we do not publish unsolicited experiences.
Page 1
I don’t see any
man-beasts
around here…
A Quick and Dirty Guide to Dug Hill Road
Both Haunted Illinois (2004) and Field Guide to
Illinois Hauntings (2001) erroneously place “Dug Hill
Road” (it’s actually called Dug Hill Lane) off of “State
Highway 126.” It is, in point of fact, located off of
Highway 146 in the western portion of the Shawnee
National Forest, nearer to the tiny town of Berryville
than Jonesboro. To be fair, Highway 127 (not 126)
splits off from 146 in the vicinity of that point, so there
may have been some confusion over the numbers.
At any rate, this serial isn’t about cartography,
it’s about ghosts. To picture what this road must have
once looked like at the time of the hauntings would
take an active imagination, since the banality of its
flowering fields, woods, and serine pond seem to
evaporate any sense of foreboding.
There are several strange stories concerning
the area. The first is a classic haunting, and according
to Beth Scott and Michael Norman’s Haunted
Heartland (1985), it is “the most notorious ghost in
Southern Illinois.” As they describe the incident,
Union army deserters ambushed and killed a provost
marshal named Welch in 1865. There are two
versions of the story, one involving three deserters,
the other involving a dozen or so. In the second
version, Welch’s own friend betrayed him and led
him into the ambush.
Welch’s ghost is occasionally seen along the
road. A man driving a horse-drawn wagon,
presumably in the late 1800s, happened upon the ghost
lying face down in the road. According to Scott and
Norman, the man unsuccessfully attempted to pick up
what he thought was the body of a flesh-and-blood
person. He then returned to his wagon and drove over
it.(!) He never looked back, they wrote, but the authors
of Field Guide to Illinois Hauntings claim that when the
man looked back the body had disappeared.
Also, a “half idiot” named Bill Smith reportedly
witnessed a spectral wagon pass over his head along
Dug Hill Road. (Haunted Heartland, 41) The wagon was
a typical ghoulish fare― pulled by a pair of black
horses. This is the only reported encounter with this
particular phantom.
A third story pertaining to the Dug Hill area
concerns a creature known as “the boger.” The boger,
or the boger-man, was something cooked up by parents
who want to scare their children, according to Haunted
Heartland. Two men have reportedly seen this boger
along Dug Hill Road in the past. The creature appears
as a nine-to-eleven foot tall man who wears black pants,
a white shirt, and a long scarf. No one has yet come
forward to explain where this creature found someone
to tailor his gigantic clothes.
Today, according to Kristina Dailing in her
article “A Hill of Haunts,” (Daily Egyptian, 2002) Dug
Hill is used as a local drinking spot. Many who live in
the area are skeptical of the stories. Paul Morgan, a long
time resident of Jonesboro and on whose testimony she
relied heavily for her article, said he believed the stories
had been simply invented.
From what I saw, I couldn’t agree more. g
This is the most interesting thing on Dug Hill Lane
Page 2
The Fallen ― Investigation file 005
“This can’t be it,” Greg yelled from the front passenger
seat of the Fallen’s ancient Toyota Corolla as gravel cracked
beneath its wheels and picturesque scenery rolled past the
window.
“Look at the sign,” Mike replied. He turned the hard,
plastic steering wheel and the car passed under the unassuming
green road sign that proclaimed ‘Dug Hill Ln.’
Halting laughter erupted from the back seat, where
Emmer sat beside Aurelia but distantly enough to avoid
physical contact.
“We must have made a mistake somewhere,” Greg
insisted.
“Do you see any other Dug Hill Road around here?”
Mike asked. “Look at the friggin’ map.” He tossed a folded
sheet of paper at Greg, who made a halfhearted attempt to catch
it.
Greg threw the piece of paper at the floor once it was in
his grasp. “What do you want me to do with that?” he asked
without expecting a response.
“Hey, there’s an old barn,” Aurelia announced. “Is that part of the story?”
“No,” Mike shot back. His knuckles turned white as Greg and Emmer continued to laugh. Suddenly, he
jerked the car over to the side of the one-lane, gravel drive within site of a wooded hill and abruptly depressed the
breaks. “We’re getting out,” he announced.
“But what if that booger― or whatever― thing attacks us,” Greg snorted. “It’s a good thing I brought my
cane.”
“You’re going to have to be more worried about me in a minute,” Mike grumbled under his breath as he
threw open the door and slammed it shut.
“What is this thing supposed to be anyway?” Emmer asked. He stumbled down the grassy incline on the
right side of the car, but quickly regained his footing. “Is it like Bigfoot?”
“No,” Mike replied. “It was an unnaturally tall man wearing normal clothes. It could have been an
Archfay. John Michael Greer says in his book Monsters that they sometimes inhabit hills like this.”
“Yeah, or it could have been just some guy
who was hitchhiking,” Emmer interrupted.
“Anyway, there are also ghosts along the
road.”
“Well, where are they?” Greg asked
impatiently. He cupped his hands around his
mouth and shouted, “heeere ghosty-ghosty-ghosty!”
Aurelia gave him a sharp kick in the shins
with her black, platform shoes.
“Maybe it would help if we went to these
places at night,” Emmer suggested as he removed
his baseball cap and smoothed his hair. “Or, maybe
we would see these ghosts if we smoked some
Page 3
Captain’s Log,
supplemental:
remember to
start selling
bone marrow
for gas money.
Who could imagine the horrors that take place on the road
alongside this murky pond?
weed beforehand.”
“No,” Mike spat. He removed his 35mm camera
from his pocket and began taking pictures of the area.
“Relax, man,” Emmer said. “I was just kidding.”
“Here’s an idea,” Aurelia interrupted. “Let’s go
in the woods. Didn’t that article you found say
something about the woods?”
“I don’t remember,” Mike replied. “But that’s
not a bad idea. Greg, do you have the video camera?”
“Yeah, I got it right here.” Greg raised the
camcorder up in his right hand. His left hand rested on
the cane he had bought in New Orleans several years
before. He believed it contained powers of attraction,
but it seemed to be faulty of late.
The quartet trudged into the sparse woods, but
the thrill of discovery seemed to lag far behind. After
about five minutes Mike, Greg, Aurelia, and Emmer stumbled upon a pile of empty beer cans and an old, moldy
sleeping bag.
“Ew,” Aurelia announced.
“I don’t see any ghosts here, Mike,” Greg said as he zoomed the camera in on the sleeping bag. “Except
maybe the ghost of virginity.”
“I can’t believe we drove all this way to see this,” Emmer laughed.
Mike wasn’t amused. “Damnit,” he cursed. He hunched his shoulders and walked toward the car.
“Stop!” Greg yelled. “We must have made a mistake somewhere. Maybe we misread the directions.”
Mike halted just inside the forest perimeter. “No,” he responded. “No. This is the only road called Dug
Hill anywhere around here.”
“But the book says Dug Hill Road was a short cut to the Mississippi River,” Greg explained. “That means it
had to run east-west. This road goes north-south. Maybe the old Dug Hill Road was a part of the highway.”
“That’s impossible,” Mike shot back. “If it was why didn’t they just say that? Why do these books have to
be so damn vague all the time?”
“Maybe we should just wait until the ghosts show up,” Emmer interjected with a grin. “Then we’ll know
if we’re in the right place or not.” His attention was
only partially focused on the conversation. He tried to
lift up the discarded sleeping bag with a branch, but
the branch, which was quite rotten, broke.
“Man,” Greg continued. “If this was Buffy the
Vampire Slayer some creature would jump out of
nowhere right about now. No one can have a
conversation on that show without something crazy
happening.”
“Well this is real life,” Mike replied bitterly.
“What about that time in the cave―”
Mike cut Greg off with a deadly glance before
he could finish his sentence.
“What cave?” Emmer asked, but neither Mike,
Greg, nor Aurelia answered. Instead, they turned and
walked silently back to their car. g
Page 4
True! Amazing! Unbelievable!
Personal Experiences
I’ve lived on Dug Hill for several years and yeah,
I saw that boger one night. It was dressed just like the
story, in black pants and a white shirt. It came to my
door and started talkin’ ‘bout Jesus and askin’ me if I
was “saved.” Scared the bejeezes out of me!
Bill, 32, Berryville
I go to SIU in Carbondale, and sometimes me
and my… well, me and some guy I was seeing would go
up to that hill with our friends. It was a half an hour
drive, but it’s super out of the way and no one really
cares what we do there.
Anyway, we had a fire going and we were all
sittin’ around drinkin’. Suddenly we hear these
branches snappin’ like someone was walking around.
At first we thought it was the cops, but we were near
the road and hadn’t seen any lights.
So that guy I was with went to check it out. He
disappeared into the woods and didn’t come back for a
while. My friends got worried, so we took our
flashlights and went to look for him. Well, it was dark
and cold, so we didn’t want to stick around lookin’
forever or nothin’. We left and figured he’d been eaten
or something.
Turns out he just passed out and had to hitch a
ride back to campus. What a dumb ass. Hehe.
Aimee, 19, Carbondale
Trivia
In this new section, tough questions will be asked. It
is up to you to uncover the clues and determine the solutions.
Sometimes you will find the answers buried in the current
issue; other times you will need to go to the location itself.
The answers to this month’s questions will be posted in next
month’s issue.
1. What small town is nearest to Dug Hill?
2. What is the highway number that Troy Taylor
incorrectly places Dug Hill near?
3. What were the names of the two men who
supposedly encountered the boger?
4. Who was Welch the ghost in his former life?
5. How tall was the boger supposed to be?
6. Dug Hill Ln is paved with what material?
7. In what county does Dug Hill lie?
8. What did The Fallen do wrong during this
investigation?
Go out and explore, and good luck!
Answers to last month’s questions:
1. Chinese Daylilies 2. ML 3. Korner Café 4. The Kaskaskia
River 5. 3.6 miles from the edge of Arcola 6. Amish and
Mennonite 7. Douglas 8. Plank’s
Page 5
Is this the mysterious road described by many to be haunted
by gruesome specters?
Perhaps a boger man or boger men lurk in these woods…
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