Haunted Southern Illinois Dug Hill

 Heading west from Jonesboro on Highway 146, the driver follows the approximate route of the Trail of Tears, passing a sign commemorating the route about 3 miles from the city. Another two miles and the driver sees a low hill rising out of the Mississippi bottoms. Another 30 seconds and the car drops back into the bottomlands on the other side, never realizing they have passed through what was once a major trade route for the region and one of the most haunted spots in southern Illinois:  Dug Hill.

Although no one is quite sure, it is likely Dug Hill received its name from the original road dug through it by the early settlers, allowing them easier trade access to the Mississippi River. The original roadbed is still visible, though not drivable, by travelling about 50 yards north on a gravel road named Dug Hill Road, which runs parallel to the hill but has naught to do with the stories.

The original hauntings date back to the time of the Civil War and a provost marshal named Welch, whose first name is lost to history but who captured Union deserters and turned them over to the Army for the bounty paid for them. He was so successful at this that  Southern sympathizers lured him to Dug Hill with a report of a group of deserters hiding there. According to Carl Stanton's book They Called it Treason, Welch was murdered on April 15, 1863 while hunting for them on the hill.

For years after that travellers along the road reported hearing the sound of a man moaning in agony but a search found no one there. At least one driver reported seen a body lying in the road ahead of his wagon, but when he stopped to offer assistance, the body vanished.

 

The "boger" another of the Dug Hill haunts, has been variously described as a extremely tall man dressed in black  or a large black dog, both of which would follow the traveller who would naturally speed up his horse but to no avail as the boger would easily keep pace, vanishing when the rider reached the base of Dug Hill.

Reports of both haunts have vanished with time and those living in the area say they have never heard or seen anything but that could be due to Highway 146 running parallel to the haunted area rather than through it. Or maybe cars just move too fast today for a boger to keep pace.

Chicken

 Carbondale is getting a new chicken restaurant/take out place.  Remodeling is going on in the empty location between Subway and Domino's in the Grand Avenue Mall. No idea when opening will take place,

Mayoral Objections

 Mayoral Candidate Jarius Harvey filed objections against the other 4 candidates for mayor.  His petition states the reason he is seeking their disqualification is that they failed to use their legal names when filing their nomination paperwork. I think he got the idea from President Trump who is seeking to remove Rep. Ilian Omar from her House seat by claiming she did not use her legal name when filing to run for office.  I 

Dump

 Had a friend who was dropping off donations to the Thrift Store on North Illinois refer to that section of town as a "dump". They are right as that section of Carbondale is not that attractive once you get north of Jackson. That section is a complex of light industrial buildings with several abandoned and going to seed. The only really attractive location is the Payne Accounting building, which has nice landscaping around it. I doubt anyone will ever move into the long shuttered Tesa Tuck building and the DAG Transmission building either so they will just sit there and further deteriorate. Driving into Carbondale from the North is just not attractive.

Haunted Carbondale Rain House

 Rain House stood at the northwest corner of West Oak and N. Poplar and, until it was razed a few years ago was, after Hundley House, the site of the most notorious murder in Carbondale's history, though today few people have heard of it.

 During spring break in 1982, most of SIUC decamped for the week including SIUC marketing professor Sion Raveed. However, unlike the rest of campus, Raveed did not return to campus. On March 9th the campus and community found out why.  His body  was found stuffed into a laundry bag in the basement of Rain House, dead from multiple stab wounds to his chest. Since prior to his time at SIUC Raveed had worked in international finance, his experience in the field a major reason for his recruitment to the department, and some of the activities he had been involved in were questionable to say the least, investigators thought maybe his past had caught up with him and not only the local police but representatives of the State Police, FBE and SEC visits, although what they sought was never made public.

However, the truth, when it came out, was much more prosaic. Raveed owned several rental properties in town and, sometime during spring break, he and his property manager had an argument that ended with the manager knifing Raveed multiple times, hiding the body in a laundry bag in the Rain House basement and fleeing to Canada, from where he was later extradited and convicted of manslaughter.

For a number of years afterwards, tenants in Rain House reported hearing voices, footsteps, electrical powered items turning on and off, cold spots, items moving by themselves and the smell of something dead or rotting. For a number of years after the murder, Rain House would rent then a short time after a "For Rent" sign would again appear in the window and its demolition means no other renters will encounter the uneasy spirit of Sion Raveed.

Halloween

 There was a lot of foot traffic downtown both Friday and Saturday night. Fraterinties or someone had gotten permission to close off West College for a street party and people were walking around in costume Saturday afternoon for a Halloween pub crawl to most of the bars on the strip as well as Oakland Station in the old fire station on S. Oakland. S. Glenview closed for Trick or treating and a broke water main on Chautaqua made driving out in that area to get home pretty tricky.

Apparently drunks were sleeping under some of the Road closed signs in the area as well. 

Faner Hall

 Dedicated in 1975, the Brutalist architecture of Faner Hall cuts across the central part of the SUC campus like a wall. Named after former SIUC English instructor and department chair  Robert Faner, who taught at the university for 37 years and died of a heart attack in his office in a building located where Faner Hall now stands, and now the hub of the College of Liberal Arts, the design is unlike any other building on campus. In fact, there is an urban legend that, after the SUC student riots of May of 1970, Faner Hall was designed so that if rioters took over any part of the building, that section could be sealed off from the rest of the structure. Of course, anyone walking through the building will find, though it might take a couple of tries, it can be navigated from end to end, although, according to another legend, at least one student never made it out.

Described by those who have seen her as a young woman carrying a backpack with shoulder length brown hair, wearing a green top and jeans.  Generally when she appears, it is in the eventing. She will pass by in the hallway and  turn one of the building's myriad corners. When the person she passed turns the corner, they see an empty hallway before them. Students in the building at night have reported hearing footsteps behind them but when they turn around, they see only a deserted corridor.

On a Haunted Carbondale tour a few years ago, an adjunct professor with an office in Faner told her encounter with Faner's ghost. Several evenings while she was in the office, someone had knocked on her office door but never came in when asked and, when the professor opened the door, no one was there. On one  occasion, instead of waiting, she opened the door almost immediately to see a young woman in a green top and jeans turning the corridor at the end of the hallway. Following the figure, she called to her but got no response and, when she turned the corner, saw only the empty hall.