Bachelor’s Grove Cemetery, Illinois — Lady in White
by Dawg
Under the wasted eye of the moon, through the knot of tangled trees,
Bachelor’s Grove sinks into memory, surrendering to the freeze.
Overgrown with regret, moss claws at broken stones,
here, the dead don’t sleep–they wait, they grieve, they groan.
Each headstone is a wound, names chewed by lichen and years,
you hear the laughter of the lost mingling with old tears.
Even the wind keeps secrets, muttering through the brambles and brush,
a graveyard for the misplaced, where every hush feels heavy.
Blue orbs flicker in the undergrowth, playing tag with the dusk,
lighting the way for those with nothing left to trust.
Cold settles deep in your marrow, shadows run long,
the living sense the watching, know that something’s wrong.
Then–she appears: the Lady in White, floating in ruin’s embrace,
eyes wide as loss, lips fixed in sorrow’s grace.
Her dress blurs at the hem, trailing fog and the ache of the past,
she moves through the stones, searching for what never lasts.
Whispers wrap around you, tight as funeral lace,
every leaf’s a messenger, every shiver a chase.
Some say she waits for her lover, some say she mourns a child,
others see only a warning–love and vengeance reconciled.
Steps are swallowed by the soil, the air tastes of loam and regret,
Bachelor’s Grove is a ledger for debts no one will forget.
Gravestones lean together, murmuring as friends,
but the Lady walks alone, her heartbreak never ends.
She is more than a ghost–she is longing that never dies,
her path a circle of absence beneath Midwestern skies.
In the hush after midnight, you hear laughter turn to moan,
the living are trespassers, the dead call this home.
Bachelor’s Grove keeps its secrets–buried, blue, and bright,
haunted forever by the legend of the Lady in White.