'Shadow Figure' Caught On Camera On Archer Avenue Ghost Tour

HICKORY HILLS, IL — For a third consecutive year, guests on a ghost tour picked up possible shadow figures on their smartphones during a stop at Archer Woods Cemetery near 81st Street and Kean Avenue. As in past years, the shadowy figure appears at the cemetery gate.

The photos were taken Saturday night during a tour of haunted locations in the south suburbs hosted by Graveside Paranormal, which treats every stop on the tour as an active ghost site. Guests are encouraged to take photos and video of haunted locations with their smartphones where faces, orbs and other unexplainable phenomena have been known to appear in the digital images, be it day or night.

Paranormal investigator Neal Gibbons said he found the figures on photos texted to him by guests on the Oct. 21 tour. The figure, or figures, that appear could be who locals have dubbed “The Weeping Lady of Archer Woods Cemetery.” Supposedly, a female apparition hangs around the cemetery gate, weeping for a lost lover or lost child.

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Guests on a Graveside Paranormal tour of Archer Avenue captured a possible "shadow figure" at the gate of Archer Woods Cemetery. Courtesy of Graveside Paranormal.

“People have heard the lady weeping as they exit the gates of the cemetery or see mist,” Gibbons said.

The first image is the original photo of the cemetery gate taken by a guest on the tour.

“I added brightness to see exactly what was there,” the ghost hunter explained. “The second one, the figure looks translucent. You can see the bars through the figure.”

In the second pair of photos, there appears to be another shadowy figure standing to the left of the group by the cemetery fence, according to Gibbons.

The original photo of the half-figure (left) and the second, with added brightness to bring out what Gibbons says is a translucent figure caught on the Oct. 21 Archer Avenue tour. | Courtesy of Graveside Paranormal

“It looks like half a person,” he said.

This Wednesday, Gibbons will talk about his paranormal adventures on the “John Landecker Show” on WGN Radio 720 around 9 p.m. He also has a guest spot Oct. 30 on “Toon In With Me” on METV with host Bill Leff.

There are still a few seats left on the bus for Graveside Paranormal’s tours Oct. 27 and 28. Gibbons is also heading to the Roff House in Watseka, Ill. this Saturday — site of the first documented possession in the United States – for an overnight investigation.