Rockport, Texas - On a cold night in late December, on the south side of Chicago, a taxicab travels along Archer Avenue as rain and sleet beats down on the road.

As the car rolls past the Willowbrook Ballroom, a pale figure, blurry though the wet and icy windshield, appears along the roadside.

The driver cranes his neck and sees a young woman walking alone. She is strangely dressed for such a cold and wet night, wearing only a white cocktail dress and a thin shawl over her shoulders.

She stumbles along the uneven shoulder of the road. Concerned for the girl’s well-being on such a miserable night, the cabbie pulls over and stops the cab.

He rolls down the window and the young girl approaches the taxi. Through the rain and sleet, and despite her disheveled appearance, the cab driver can see the young girl’s wet blond hair is plastered to her forehead, and her light blue eyes are the color of ice on a winter lake.

He offers her a free ride, and she opens the back door and slides across the seat. The cabbie looks into the rear-view mirror and asks her where she wants to go.

The girl replies that he should keep driving down Archer Avenue, so the cabbie puts the car into gear and pulls back onto the road.

In the mirror he notices that the girl is shivering, so he turns up the heater. He comments on the weather, making conversation, but she doesn’t answer.

The young girl finally does say a few words - in a low wavering voice she says she is so very, very cold. The driver is unsure if her whispered words are directed to him or if she is speaking to herself.

After another attempt to make small talk with the young girl, the cabbie realizes that she is not interested in conversation.

Suddenly the girl cries out, telling the cabbie to pull over to the side of the road - this is where she needs to get out!

He guides the cab to the curb and stops in front of two large, metal gates. He looks up and realizes where they have stopped. “You can’t get out here,” he says to the young woman, “this is a cemetery!”

When he turns to look in the back seat, he realizes that he is in the cab alone - the girl is no longer there. He never heard the back door open or close. The young girl had simply disappeared.

......  ......  ......

Sometime in the 1930s, a young woman was tragically killed while walking home from a dance. Since then, she has become the most famous ghost in Chicago history - a hazy vision of beauty known as Resurrection Mary.

Through the decades, she has often been encountered walking along Archer Avenue, a major thoroughfare that slices diagonally through Chicago’s Chinatown and into the southwest buburbs.

In was on that street that she was struck down by a car. Her death came not far from the graveyard that gave Mary her eerie nichname - Resurrection Cemetery.

The story goes that Mary had spent the evening dancing with a boyfriend at the Oh Henry Ballroom in Willow Springs. At some point, they got into an argument and Mary stormed out. Even though it was a cold winter’s night, she thought she would rather face a cold walk home than spend another minute with her boyfriend.

She left the ballroom and started walking along Archer Avenue. She had not gotten very far when she was struck and killed by a car, driven by someone who quickly fled the scene, leaving Mary to die.

Mary was laid to rest in Resurrection Cemetery, wearing a beautiful white dancing dress and matching dancing shoes.

Since then, there have been many claims of motorists who have seen the girl walking along the road. Those offering her a ride have been startled to witness her vanishing from their car.

These drivers could describe the girl in detail and nearly every single description precisely matched the previous accounts. The girl was said to have light blond hair, blue eyes and was wearing a white party dress.

Some more attentive drivers would sometimes add that she wore a thin shawl, or dancing shoes, and that she had a small clutch purse.

There have been numerous attempts to authenticate the story of Ressurection Mary. Research indicates the ghost may be that of Mary Bregovy, a young girl who died March 10, 1934 - not along Archer Avenue but in downtown Chicago.

The number of sightings through-out the decades has given the story of Ressurection Mary a prominent place in American folklore - and the strange tale is considered a classic example of unexplained phenomena.

Dean Terry for Our Strange World