The wanderers of Sangamon County

On a country road outside of Springfield, Illinois there are sightings of two different ghosts that have not been widely reported. 
The first one I heard about eight years ago doing ghost hunting and looking for a particular cemetery.  After knocking on doors of a few houses around the cemetery, I realized that I had been given wrong directions, but also stumbled upon another ghost story. 
The person started to tell me about a strange encounter with a little girl.  They were driving late at night along the hilly country road that they live on when they saw what appeared to be a little girl dressed in a dirty t-shirt, dirty, and barefoot crying.  They pulled the car over and went around the car to the little girl.  "What's wrong?"  They asked, and she looked up, tears rolling down her face still and she asked, "Do you know where I am?"  Before they could respond the girl started to fade and disappeared into thin air. 
They said they hadn't told many of their friends or family about the encounter before because they were worried about what they would think and dismiss it as them dreaming or just being tired. 
The second story I heard from a few locals when I was running a small tour of ghost tours of some of the more obscure haunted sites in central Illinois. 
Along the same stretch of road several people say they have seen a man walking down the side of the road dressed in a black suit and a bowler hat.  Any time that people pull up near him and ask him if he needs a ride, he turns to look at them revealing a gaunt face, pale skin, and eyes that are solid black.  He always asks, "Do you know where I am?" before turning and walking away. 
The odd part of the story is that there is a little cemetery located on the road.  When I first saw it I drove by several times before even realizing that it was a cemtery.  There is a single tree located in roughly in the middle of the cemetery and the remains of the stones stick up from the ground like broken bones.  The remains of the tombstones are all sitting in piles around the tree in the middle.  There is no gate, just a chain link fence surrounding the cemtery.  Many people have started to theorize that the two ghosts that are seen along this road are two people who are buried in the cemetery who are just looking to find their tombstones. 
If you are ever driving along a hilly road outside of Springfield and see either of them, when they ask, "Do you know where I am?", you may be able to show them the cemetery....

Culver House

Groundbreaking was started in 1901 and finished in 1902 on a house that was slated to be one of the most opulent and astounding houses in the city of Decatur, IL.  Little did the owners know at the time they were building on top of a burial ground.  Workers were said to have removed bone fragments and even whole skulls during the excavation process for the basement and foundation levels.  Most reports say that workers relocated the skulls to the edge of the property and buried them in a pile, and a few may have been taken home with some of the workers for souvenirs.  

Shortly after the Culver family moved into the house, they reported a strange number of occurrences.  Many of the family members, especially Mrs. Culver started to experience night terrors as soon as they moved into the house.  She reported many of them had to do with strange bi-pedal creatures sitting on the foot of her bed watching them as they sleep.  

One occurrence happened about a year after they moved into the house, the family said that "something" came down the chimney and ran across the dining room as the family was having dinner and jumped out of the window.  Mr. Culver later said it could easily have been a bird or a raccoon, but his wife and kids were all in agreement that it ran of two legs and was black in color.  One of the Culver children told their children that one night they awoke in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and there was a solid black figure standing in the hallway swaying back and forth.  The said they quickly ran back to their room and hid under the blankets.

After Mr. Culver died in 1943, the family lived in the house for 7 more years before selling the house to a developer who turned the house into some apartments.  After the building was converted to apartments one of the tenants, Jacob Thomson said that one night after coming home early in the morning he encountered a strange man in the hallway who would not talk and was standing there swaying slightly like he was inebriated.  Two other tenants, Jessica Hartstripe and Denise Miller, both said they woke up in the evening to find a solid black figure of a man standing at the foot of their bed, swaying "like the branches in a tree".  Denise said this happened three times before she decided to move out of the building.  One other tenant whom I managed to interview but they wished to remain anonymous said they would hear footsteps up and down the hall at all hours of the night, but when they would open their door to see who it was, the hall would always be empty.

At least two people have died in the home after the Culver family moved out in 1950.  A suicide in 1966 in which a woman hung herself out of the window in the tower, and a brutal murder of a woman by her own boyfriend in 1988, after which the building was declared unfit for habitation and boarded up.  

The man who built the house, Mr. Culver died in 1943 an old man.  After his death people who would walk by the house reported seeing a strange glowing figure in the window of the tower, where the library is.  Many said he resembled Mr. Culver.  

In the years since, residents of the neighborhood have reported to see strange lights and figures in the house, and 27 police reports have been filed stating as such.  The house is in the process of being "restored" and has  been now for several years.  A few people who have done work on the house have said they have heard footsteps in the upstairs hallways but never found anything upon investigation.  One man even reported saying he saw the swaying figure standing in the hallway on one occasion.  

Check back regularly for updates on other haunted locations.