Introduction: Lifting the Veil

Every year, just before Halloween, the local Chicago talk shows and newspapers are full of ghost stories in the Windy City. There's the story of Resurrection Mary, a young blonde woman adorned in flowing white who suddenly appears and vanishes in the traffic in front of Resurrection Cemetery on Archer Avenue. There is also the ghostly legend of the two drowned altar boys who, in 1871, warned parishioners of Holy Family Church about the impending Great Chicago Fire. In neighboring Evanston, you will hear of the ghost that, in the darkness of night, rises soaking from cold Lake Michigan and paces outside the locked east gate of Calvary Cemetery. There are volumes of books on hauntings and ghost stories from the Chicago area, not to mention the rest of Illinois, the remaining United States, and all over the world. There are ghost stories from China, Canada, the Caribbean Islands, England, Ireland, Wales, Scotland, France, Italy, and, of course, Transylvania—yet among them all, I have never found the story of Muldoon.

October 31, 1999—Halloween. My younger son, David, stopped by with his roommates to rummage through the house for last-minute costumes. His friends, Greg and Mike, sat with me in the family room while my boy plundered the closets and basement. Then David yelled to me from afar, urging me to tell my Muldoon stories. Ever since my boys were small, I have regaled them with the ghost stories of Peter J. Muldoon, a Chicago Catholic priest, the founding bishop of the Diocese of Rockford, Illinois, and builder of Saint Charles Borromeo Church on the Near Southwest Side of Chicago. At the time of construction, the church was located at the northwest corner of 12th and Cypress Streets. In 1909 the street names were changed to what are now Roosevelt Road and Hoyne Avenue, respectively. After his death on October 8, 1927, it was said that Muldoon haunted the rectory and church of Saint Charles Borromeo until it was slated for demolition by wrecking ball in 1968 and leveled thereafter.

My Muldoon stories are not tall tales. Most of them come from my personal paranormal experiences while I served as a newly ordained Roman Catholic priest at Saint Charles from 1956 to 1960. Some of them are secondhand from others who surrounded me in the parish during that time. Usually, their experiences only confirmed the happenings that I, too, could not logically explain.

To my surprise, Greg and Mike had already heard some of these stories from David. I later found that, through the years, both of my sons had repeated these stories in school, at campfires, in pubs. With great enthusiasm, my son and his friends suggested that I chronicle these stories. From that day forward, I vigorously pondered the idea of writing a book about the ghost of Muldoon.

But write a book? Writing a book is not a simple matter for a 70-year-old man in my physical condition. During the last 12 years, I have had two quadruple bypasses, have had a series of angiograms and angioplasties, and have lost kidney function. Due to these factors, I am subjected to kidney dialysis three times a week, am on a strict diet, and have restricted water and fluid intake. I am almost always physically and mentally fatigued. Because my debilitating condition knocks the starch out of me, I find that I have only fragments of time in which I am able to focus my thoughts and capture my experiences. On the contrary—to me, writing a book is an overwhelming and difficult task, indeed.

I have personal reservations as well. For the most part, I am a quiet person and like to keep my personal matters private. Up to now I have enjoyed years of anonymity, especially after enduring the somewhat-celebrity status of a diocesan priest for 15 years prior to living the life of a layperson. I went from Our Lady of the Angels grammar school, to Quigley Preparatory Seminary, to Saint Mary of the Lake Seminary, to assignments at the Chicago parishes of Saint Charles Borromeo, Saint John Bosco, and Our Lady, Help of Christians. I remember the religious life I once lived-which, until now, I had always chosen to keep as an unspoken past. To write about Muldoon means describing my religious life and the lives of the people with whom I lived at Saint Charles Borromeo. I would have to reconstruct and rekindle that distant past and unveil it.

And I have never before tried to write a book! Never in my wildest imagination had I even thought of it. The prospect of getting enough words out on a printed page is daunting to me. I am not a good typist, my computer skills are nil, and I don't know if I can muster enough words to captivate a reader. Nor have I ever before felt the urgency to write a book. Until now.

Virtually every priest who once served at Saint Charles Borromeo is now deceased. Who else is left then to tell the strange and engaging stories about the life of Bishop Peter J. Muldoon and the legend of his ghost? So, despite my challenges and personal reservations, the idea of revisiting my days at Saint Charles Borromeo—the good, the bad, the unexplainable—compels me to put pen to paper.

I believe the story I am about to tell. I lived it. To the best of my knowledge, it has not yet been publicly revealed. Ever since that Halloween, the legend of Muldoon has resonated in my mind, and as the days go on, my need to tell it grows stronger. My intent is not to present a scientific, historical, or theological study. This book will not be strictly a biography or an autobiography, nor is it an analysis of the Catholic priesthood. What you are about to read is a series of engaging stories that resurrect my life as a Catholic priest at Saint Charles Borromeo, explain the impact of Bishop Muldoon in the Catholic Church and at this parish, and detail the bizarre range of events that related primarily to me, Father Bill Schumacher, Father Ray Goedert, and Pastor Kane (whose name I have changed).

In 1956 I walked into Saint Charles Borromeo newly ordained with the consecrated oils fresh on my palms-eager, idealistic, and totally unprepared for the difficult years ahead of me. With this first appointment I had to grow up quickly on the mean streets of Chicago's most vile slums, awed and chastened by the sheer depth of human misery around me. My equilibrium and strength during those hard times came from desperate prayer, coupled with the affirming and spiritual conversations with Father Schumacher and Father Goedert. And living among us was a presence that we came to believe was the ghost of Bishop Muldoon. Four years later, I left sobered, fatigued, and indelibly altered with the seed of resigning from ministry planted deep inside of me.

Chapter 1: The Haunted Rectory

At the corner of Rush and Chestnut Streets, just a block away from the historic Chicago Water Tower and the bustle of Michigan Avenue, stands Quigley Preparatory Seminary, a Catholic entry-level school of theology for teenage boys aspiring to the diocesan priesthood. (The word seminary is derived from the Latin noun semen: a seed carefully sown into an environment of strong faith, to develop strong and vigorous stock.) Today, the old school seems like a lost homeless person among the modern glistening skyscrapers—unkempt, injured, and misplaced. Much has changed since I was a student there, when the religious compound comprised some of the largest structures in the area. The Gothic court buildings of the seminary stood tall and majestic then—a beacon amid a sea of shabby houses, scattered parks, and cheap taverns. In particular, I remember a balmy spring afternoon in 1949, just weeks away from my graduation ceremony at Holy Name Cathedral. This was the first time I had ever heard of a haunted rectory in a Chicago parish.

At the time I attended Quigley, the minor seminary of the Archdiocese of Chicago was a five-year school, offering three years of high school and two years of college preparation. Quigley was different from most minor seminaries in the nation because students did not have to move away from home to attend. Most other seminaries were boarding schools in which students were isolated from family life, and society. But Quigley was founded on the progressive idea that a minor seminarian could pursue studies leading to the priesthood while living a typical life with his family. The devout purpose of the school was to support the young seminarian in his growth as a person of prayer, spirituality, and intellectual understanding, as a trained messenger who would bring the Good News of Jesus Christ to the waiting world. Classes were held five days a week, with Thursdays off and classes on Saturday. This kept fellows from common adolescent social activities, especially dating. The school days were from 9:00 A.M. to 3:15 P.M. daily, with a guaranteed three hours of homework each night.

Classes had a strong emphasis on language studies. Everyone studied English along with a modern language tied to his ethnic background, such as Italian, Polish, Lithuanian, or German. The predominantly Irish student body learned French. Latin was required through all five years, and classic Greek with its ancient alphabet was required of all seminarians from sophomore year onward. Quigley's difficult and complex curriculum was weighted heavily in the humanities, reflecting a wide range of thoughts and feelings of every human age and providing deep insight into the human psyche. Each student studied a significant amount of literature, including Latin classics such as Caesar's Gallic Wars and works by Cicero as well as Greek literature pieces like Xenophon's Anabasis and Oedipus Rex by Sophocles. Ancient, medieval, and modern history was studied. English literature concentrated on the works of Shakespeare: Julius Caesar, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet. The significance of all these classical studies was to develop a well-rounded parish priest as someone able to understand, connect with, and counsel desperate souls.

My senior English literature professor was Father Vincent Casey, a monotonous and no-nonsense teacher. He had a round, serious face and stood about six feet tall, weighing some 200 pounds. He was meticulous, from his trimmed, graying black hair at his temples, to his pristine black cassock, to his well-organized teaching style—he always stuck to his appointed text. Though his lectures were lethargic and dull, Father Casey was a teacher who, in order to perform, needed total control over his pupils. When the class faded from his attention, the easily flustered Father Casey would nervously start coughing and stuttering, his face would turn crimson, and he would begin rapidly distributing demerits. Like so many other mild men of the cloth, when Father Casey blew his stack, it was catastrophic and everyone ran for cover.

On this particular spring afternoon in 1949, Father Casey was concentrating on the main characters of Shakespearean plays. According to him, each of the Bard's characters was a worthwhile study of human behavior. As we discussed the significance of Banquo's ghost from Macbeth, Father Casey made a rare interruption from the coursework that I never forgot. He paused for a moment and completely changed the subject. With uncommon energy, he began talking about an old rectory in the archdiocese—a dark, musty place that smelled like death and had a creaky staircase leading to the second floor. Soberly, he told the class about the ghost of a former pastor who had been seen walking up the staircase, almost bumping into a priest from the house. Father Casey went on to tell of this ghost who made itself known many times, year after year, both visually and sonically. The story seemed fresh to him, as if it had just happened recently. And Father Casey told it very seriously. When some of the class chuckled in disbelief, he deliberately cleared his throat and retold his story, speaking in a stronger and more nervous tone. This was something that obviously shook him up. I could tell that he wanted to be heard. He wanted to be believed.

Father Casey gave few details or facts that would reveal the name or location of the haunted rectory. He just kept saying it was a dark, ominous place. After discussing it briefly, he turned back to the lecture topic just as abruptly as he had begun telling the ghost story. It was apparent Father Casey was uncomfortable speaking of ghosts and spirits. Though he never brought up his ghost story again, and I can't remember ever discussing the story with any of my classmates, I was enthralled by his short narration. I could not help but wonder where that haunted rectory could be.

Having been a priest, I can appreciate Father Casey's need to cut his ghost story short. Priests know that the discussion of the spirit world is dangerous territory, as it can easily challenge traditional Catholic beliefs. Historically and to this day, the Catholic Church refuses to officially recognize the concept of ghosts. Though Christianity promises immortality through the spiritual afterlife of heaven and hell, it rejects the concept of the manifestations of spirits returning to earth. Therefore, there is a vague, yet significant, difference between the definition of a human soul and a ghost: The soul goes to a completely different conscious afterlife unknown to our physical world, while a ghost, seen as a tortured spirit trapped in our material world, for unexplainable reasons does not move on to future rest. For men of the cloth, it might be all right to joke superficially or to allude briefly to ghostly happenings. However, it is more comfortable to blanket unexplained occurrences with silence, avoid deep theological debate, and move on to safer topics.