Haunted Watseka: Unraveling the Terrifying Possession of Mary Roth and the Ghostly Lore of Resurrection Mary

Tantalizing teaser: Brace yourself for a bone-chilling journey as Melissa and her friend Kristina get ready to venture into the heart of Watseka, Illinois. Uncover the terrifying history of the Roth house, its connection to America's first documented possession, and the mysterious case of Lurancy Vennum. Prepare to be captivated by eerie tales of cataleptic fits, spirit communication, and the shocking transformation of Laurence Vennum into Mary Roff. With the promise of a rare glimpse into the dark and aggressive hauntings that still torment this infamous location, this two-night investigation is not for the faint of heart. 

Personal story: Join Melissa and Kristina as they embark on an unforgettable exploration into the unknown. Step into the haunted past of Watseka, Illinois, and discover the chilling tale of Mary Roth, America's first documented case of possession. Uncover the startling similarities in the story of Lurancy Vennum, a young girl believed to be inhabited by Mary's spirit. As they prepare for their nerve-wracking visit to the Roth house, Melissa and Kristina also delve into the legend of Resurrection Mary and her ghostly encounters. Don't miss out on this spine-tingling podcast episode filled with ghostly narratives that will leave you questioning the boundaries between the living and the dead.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Hey everyone, it's your host, melissa at Strange, strange Pian Insane, and today I want to talk about the Roth house in, um, what Seca, or what Seca, however you say it Illinois. Um. My friend Christina and I will be going and staying there for two nights um next week, um, over the weekend. I'm super excited, so let me give you guys a little bit of a backstory. So this is the story of the first documented possession that ever took place. Tales of paranormal activity date back thousands of years, but a tiny Illinois town holds the distinction of being the site of America's first documented demonic possession. Okay, excuse me, all right. So today, what Seca? Illinois is a quiet Midwestern town nestled among wide swaths I'm sorry, a farmland about halfway between Chicago and Champaign. In the late 1800s, tales of paranormal happenings in the tiny town were spreading throughout the nation's newspapers, making what Seca a household name.

Speaker 1: 1:09

Mary Roth was a baby when she first had her catalopic fit, and the incidents became worse as she grew. When the girl grew old enough to speak, she told her parents Dorothy and Asa, I think, um, that she could speak to spirits when she was in one of her trances. As a teenager, mary gained the ability to read any book, while completely blindfolded and was prone to hours long Fits where it took up to about five grown men to hold her down. She often cut herself with knives, hoping to bleed off a pressure she said she felt in her head. She began hearing voices and began speaking in different languages, and she had no way of knowing that. This is according to the history of the house in Mary, okay. So her desperate parents wanted a care for her daughter and ultimately decided to commit her to an insane asylum, hoping that she could be treated. Mary died at the age of 19 in 1865. Okay, so this article reads on Mary, mary. Quite the contrary.

Speaker 1: 2:18

It turns out that Mary was neither truly gone nor happy about the death of her body. So on July 11th 1877, another young woman in Watsika, illinois, laurence Venom, I believe told her mother she didn't feel well and laid down. Much like Mary Roth, 13-year-old Larence suddenly became prone to long transes where she spoke in different voices and gave details about places she has never been. The girl also told her parents that she has been communicating with the spirits of two older siblings who had died many years before. According to morbidology, doctors wanted the venoms to send their daughter to an asylum, but they had refused. Asa Raaf, still reeling from the death of his daughter, wanted to see his other girl. With an eerily similar affliction, asa and a spiritualist who visited the venom home noted that Larence would introduce herself as different people, including an elderly German woman and a little boy. After meeting Asa, larence introduced herself as Mary and she asked to go home. Larence's body, inhibited by Mary's spirit, went to the Raaf house and lived as Mary for months, even visiting Mary's friends. Ten months after Larence first fell into a trans, the voice of Mary informed the Raafs that Larence's spirit was healed and that she had returned. When Mary's spirit reclinished the control of Larence's body, larence was reportedly healed and lived a relatively normal life. According to an Illinois library article, mary finally seemed to rest.

Speaker 1: 4:15

Something still lingers, though. This reads In an episode of Ghost Brothers lights out, dallin, joanne and Marcus head out to see what's still lurking in the Raaf house. Haunting there have reportedly turned dark and aggressive throughout the last hundred of years, with a variety of spirits and sometimes violent entities telling people I'm sorry, telling paranormal investigators to get out. So I'm gonna open up another article, but I am very excited to visit this house in Illinois. It's only going to be Christina and I, so we will get there Friday or ways at Saturday. I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll get there Friday. We'll be able to check in at 4 pm and then we will stay the night. And then we'll be there all day Saturday and be able to spend the night Saturday too, and then we'll head home. I believe it's just over five hours that we have to drive, so that's going to be really, really, really exciting.

Speaker 1: 5:22

So I'm going to open up another article by American hauntings, and this one is called the Possessed the true story of the Watsika wonder. So again, this is an 1878,. A small town in Illinois gained all this popularity about this girl, mary that was possessed. So author Troy Taylor has spent years delving into the facts behind this chilling story, searching through dusty records, wandering through old graveyards and visiting the sites associated with the case. This book, which is a first full length nonfiction title to be written about the case since 1879. It unveils the true facts behind what occurred in Watsika in the 1870s and allows the reader to judge for himself whether Larence Venom was truly possessed by the spirit of Mary Roth. This eye opening and sometimes terrifying book is a must have title for anyone with an interest in the mysterious and fascination with the unexplained. So this book is called the Possessed the true story of the Watsika wonder, and this is by Troy Taylor, and it also reads can the dead return and can they inhabit the bodies of the living?

Speaker 1: 6:47

Okay, so the story of the Watsika wonder officially began in 1877, when a young Illinois woman named Larence Venom began to suffer strange seizures and spells that caused her to lose consciousness for hours and even days at a time. During these trances, she claimed to communicate with the spirit world. After being examined by a number of doctors, it was suggested that she had been sent away in an insane asylum. There was nothing physically wrong with her, they said, so her symptoms could be. I'm sorry, her symptoms could only be caused by insanity. So this just goes on again about a man named Asa Roth, whose daughter Mary. So the original story about the Mary girl being possessed. Again, this was documented. So this was. This did really happen. So Mary suffered from the same illness more than a decade before. So I think it's really important to know that this happened a whole 10 years before this next young woman was talking about all these quote-unquote insane, you know things. And going on these rants because it's not like Mary had died and then it just happened. You know, quickly after I mean, this is a whole another decade, all right.

Speaker 1: 8:12

So it says by the winter of 1878, asarov had became a follower of spiritualism and believed that Mary had not been insane. So again, asarov is her dad, mary's dad. She had been a gifted but misunderstood spirit medium. He begged the Venom family not to send Laurence away. He believed that a spiritualist physician could alleviate her symptoms and save her from Mary Roff's grim fate.

Speaker 1: 8:41

Okay, so soon it becomes obvious to the Roff and Venom families, as well as scores of local townspeople, neighbors, friends, relatives and more, that Laurence has somehow became a woman who died more than a dozen years earlier. She recognizes people that Mary knew, identified things that belong to the dead girl and knows intimate family secrets. That there was, that there was, that there was other way that Laurence could have known. It seemed impossible, but it was happening. So for the next five months Laurence lived as Mary Roff. So this article kind of like shows or, I'm sorry, tells you that she actually lived inside Mary's old house as, quote unquote, mary Roff. Whether that's like a role play or she really was being possessed by Mary. So she lived in the the Roff home, let's see for five months. That's fucking crazy.

Speaker 1: 9:43

So has anyone? So right now I'm actually doing a live on podcast too. So anyone on here has anyone been to the Roff house, illuminate the beyond? So that is someone on here that I interact with quite a bit. I know they've been like everywhere. I would like to get a lot of feedback about this place because this is the first time that I am just going with Christina alone. I know she's a little bit nervous. I'm actually I don't know if I'm more like excited anxious about this. I really cannot wait until we can actually get in there, and it'll be nice too, because we'll have a lot of time to like set up and hang out. Now.

Speaker 1: 10:32

Another thing that I want to look up is the haunting of the grave Mary. Let's see haunted grave in Illinois, because we're trying to find a see if there's a connection with this Mary and this other Mary that I have watched so many videos and looked up a lot of information. So this Mary is supposedly buried at Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, illinois. It's about 30-minute drive of Southwest of Chicago. This burial ground gives Mary her stomping grounds, as well as her iconic name, which is Resurrection Mary. So let me open up some articles about her. Alright, so this article is from Arts and Culture and it starts off saying Meet Resurrection Mary, the ghost of Archer Avenue, just Southwest of Chicago, and Archer Avenue in Justice, illinois. Across the street from Resurrection Cemetery is a bar called Shet's Melody Lounge. Shet's is a classic roadside tavern with a pool table, a jukebox, a popcorn machine and a large clientele of bikers. But Shet's has an unusual tradition Every Sunday the staff leaves a Bloody Mary at the end of the bar for a ghost. The ghost's name is Resurrection Mary and she has haunted the stretch of Archer since the 1930s. When she was picked up by young men dancing to the big bands at the O Henry Ballroom, an old South Cider named Vince was still telling his Resurrection Mary story to paranormal investigators half a century after it happened. When he did, he sounded just as haunted as he'd been the night he met the ghost Before he went out dancing that evening, vince put on his favorite suit, a double breasted gray number with squared off shoulders, and his most colorful tie red with Hawaiian hula girls in grass skirts.

Speaker 1: 12:45

He cruised Archer Avenue with the top down on his Chevy cabriolet the night. The night was warm and he'd, and he had slipped back his hair with enough bristle cream to keep the wind from musing it. The O Henry Ballroom was going to be jumping, as it always was on Saturdays. Vince had danced to some of the biggest of the bands there Harry James, artie Shaw, tommy Dorsey. Tonight was just Chet Bar Suits and his Mary Min from the southwest side of Chicago. But even the local combos knew all the hot numbers on the hit parade.

Speaker 1: 13:27

Inside the ballroom, vince spent the first half hour drowning enough Cuba Lebray's and smoking enough lucky strikes to work up the courage to ask a girl for a dance. By the time the band had started on jumping at the wood side he was in bold state of mind, saw a little bit of liquid courage. It's always good Spotting a pretty blonde girl in a white dress. He said as casually as he could manage hey, it ain't right to stand still for Count Bassey, why don't we cut a rug on this one? The girl smiled and they joined the jitter bugging throng on the parquet floor. The band played a few more fast numbers boogie woogie and Jeepers Creepers. Oh, I love that song Very creepy, but I absolutely love Jeepers, creepers and I'm always singing it.

Speaker 1: 14:19

Okay, so Vince didn't get a chance to talk to his partner that he didn't mind too much. Sometimes girls asked what he did for a living. He was a bookkeeper at the Union Stockyards, even though he didn't work anywhere near the slaughterhouse. That gave some girls the willies when the band came in to begin the bageen. I think Vince was finally able to get close to his partner. Her name was Mary and she lived, she said, on Damon Avenue in the Brighton Park neighborhood. That wasn't far from where Vince lived in the house he shared with his parents. Something else he didn't like to tell the girls. As a slow dance he noticed for the first time that the girls' hands were very cold. Her skin was very brittle. Mary seemed to notice that. He noticed it, so he made what he hoped was lighthearted remark Cold hands mean you have a warm heart. Mary smiled and they danced together for the rest of the evening.

Speaker 1: 15:19

After the final number Vince offered Mary a ride home. Her place was just a straight shot up, archer, but after they had driven north for a few miles, mary insisted he pull the car over outside the locked gates of Resurrection Cemetery, the graveyard of Chicago's Polish community. Vince was baffled, but he complied. Mary opened the door and stepped out onto the roadside. I have to go and you can't follow me, she said. Then she walked toward the gates, laid a hand on the iron chain that bound the gates together and then vanished.

Speaker 1: 16:00

Vince spent the rest of the night driving his Chevy up and down Archer Avenue looking for a blonde girl in a white dress. He drove until dawn and then, when the cemetery gates opened, he drove through the rows of tombstones engraved with crosses and angels and names such as Butkowski and Guzeda and Pitrz—I'm sorry, I'm horrible—names on Pitrzak, I think. He was impelled not simply by the mystery of having seen a ghost, but by the hope that the girl that he had danced with was not a ghost and that he could dance with her again on some future night. Catching no sight of Mary, he decided finally to drive to the address that she had given him before they got into his car. It was a brick bungalow on a street of nearly identical houses, separated by concrete gangways a few feet wide. Only the adormants on the porches and in the yards, with American flags, a statue of the Virgin in a half bathtub, was different of the dwellings. Again, you guys, I'm reading from an article.

Speaker 1: 17:13

Alright, so Vince rang the doorbell. His eyes were red with sleepiness, his dark beard had not been shaven for a day and his hair had fallen loose over his forehead. The middle-aged woman who answered the door looked startled by the young callers' dishevement. She looked even more startled when Vince asked Is Mary home? Now, this is the part of the story that I've never heard. So this is actually very interesting to me, because I never knew that he actually went to her house and talked to anybody. Mary does not live here anymore, said the woman. She looked old enough and enough like Mary to be her mother.

Speaker 1: 17:54

Mary died in a car accident four years ago. Who are you, she asked? He says I knew Mary in high school. Vince obviously lied. It was the only plausible story for why he had been unaware of her death. And then the mother replied with and you didn't know. He said I went off to college downstate after I graduated. That much was true. He had attended Illinois State University. I just moved back to Chicago.

Speaker 1: 18:25

Looking past the woman who was blocking the doorway, vince spied a framed photo resting atop a piano in the front room. It was a girl he had danced with the night before. An ever-youthful face, never to age, the face of a ghost, I am sorry to be the one to tell you. The woman said Mary went out dancing with some boys she worked with at Brock's, but they never made it to the dance hall. One of the boys crashed the car into the L at Walker and Lake. Mary was thrown through the windshield and died on the way to the hospital. He replied with I'm sorry to hear that, retreating down the steps, and then he turned around and said I'm sorry for your loss. The mother then replied to Vince and said if you want to visit Mary's grave, she's buried in rec resurrection cemetery. Wow, vince never returned to the oh Henry ballroom or to the resurrection cemetery. He had never learned Mary's last name, so he could not have located her tombstone. In fact he was so shaken by having danced with a ghost that he never set foot in a dance hall again.

Speaker 1: 19:43

But resurrection Mary, as the girls ghost came to be known, continued to haunt Archer Avenue when the big band era ended after the war. Mary rested quietly in her grave because the music she had hoped to dance to on her final night among the living was no longer heard at the oh Henry, but in the 1970s her ghost rose again. Mary's family, not being wealthy, had buried her in a term grave, a rented plot that only held remains for a quarter of a century. By the time the term expired, all of Mary's loved ones had joined her in the cemetery, leaving no one alive to renew it. During a renovation, mary's coffin was removed to an unmarked grave in a remote corner of the cemetery.

Speaker 1: 20:29

One night, a suburban police officer received a report of a woman in a white dress walking through the grounds of Resurrection Cemetery. When he arrived at the gates, he found two bars pried apart with scorched marks where a pair of hands would have gripped them. The following year, a couple driving down Archer Avenue saw a girl wearing the same white dress lying in the street. The man at the wheel swerved to avoid her, but she disappeared before his tires could make contact. In the 1990s, the owner of Chet's Melody Lounge was pulling out of the driveway when he saw a man running up the road waving desperately. I need to use your phone. The man said in a stricken voice. I hit a woman back there, but I cannot find her body. Was she a blonde woman in a white dress. The owner asked. The guy says how did you know? The man replied with that was Resurrection Mary. Don't worry, you did not hit anyone.

Speaker 1: 21:36

Despite these reappearances on Archer Avenue, mary has yet to drink her bloody Mary at Chet's. When a ghost is roaming your neighborhood, though, you have to be ready to soothe her restless spirit. Okay, so that is the tale of Resurrection Mary. I think Christina is on here. Hey, christina, I'm doing a podcast right now about where we're going next week and I'm just doing a live TikTok too, on Resurrection Mary, and I guess we're gonna have to look up how further this place is, because we need to go chat. I haven't.

Speaker 1: 22:17

I've heard so many fucking stories about Resurrection Mary. I've talked to Tom about it. I've talked to a lot of people in the paranormal world that are like really knowledgeable and actually really interested too, so it's definitely something that I want to go see. So we will have to figure out how, like what the distance is Actually. Let's see, I'm gonna do it right now while I have everyone on here.

Speaker 1: 22:44

So Resurrection Mary, that's Archer Avenue. So let's see Archer Avenue Avenue to Batsica. Okay, christina, it's an hour and 33 minute drive. So if you're interested, we can go, but I really think we should go try. So I don't know, because I'm guessing you just got off of work. I'm not sure how much you heard of this episode, but I think her grave now their thing is unmarked. So, yes, from the Airbnb. Yep, again. You guys, I'm on TikTok Live and Christina just happened to be on here on my live and while I'm podcasting. So I will definitely have more content soon after we go out to this place and stay for a couple of days and we will definitely be doing some live podcasting from this house.

Speaker 1: 23:59

And, like I said, I'm really looking forward to it just being Christina and I and being relaxed and like having time to just set up and like hang out. I'd like to have some wine this time to unwind, right, because we're always in such a rush when we do anything paranormal, like trips, actually like big trips, you know, we can never seem to be on time or we're always rushing, or we forget something at home, or something doesn't work, or we forgot to grab another you know piece of equipment. So I think this is going to be a great trip. Christina says okay, well, we got two days, so we can definitely hit that up. All right, she says, let's do it. So I guess we're going to do it. So her and I will again, and, christina, I'm sure you could help me out. I think it's what Seca, illinois, the Roth House, is where we're going. And then we're also going to visit Resurrection Mary or Resurrection Cemetery on Archer Avenue and, like I said, there's been a lot of reports of people seeing her and even interacting with her.

Speaker 1: 25:03

So thank you guys for tuning in at Strange, strange Beyond Insane. And again, you guys can find me on TikTok. You guys can listen to our podcast on Spotify, amazon, apple, anywhere where you listen to podcasts at. So the YouTube channel is starting. It is not, it's still in the work. So that's like I said, again, that's going to take a while. And again, if you guys ever want to be on here, send me suggestions, talk, send pictures, videos, anything interact in any way with the podcast, you can always email me at Ghost Sisters2124 at Gmail. That's Ghost Sisters2124 at Gmail. Alright, you guys, thanks for listening and tune in soon.