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Tomb, Sweet Tomb
Historic mansion gets new lease on death courtesy of Edgar Allan Poe

Autumn twilight at Peabody Estate in west suburban Oak Brook casts a bright orange hue across its vast Tudor exterior which contrasts with the blackness of the hill-covered forestry that enshrouds the property. This is the kind of house and setting that films such as "House on Haunted Hill" and "The Haunting" made famous and for decades, generations of kids on a dare from across the area would trek across acres of dense woods to view the mansion from across a small creek that now has homes and condominiums leading to it. This wooded estate was once the home of coal baron Francis S. Peabody, who died suddenly on the property while hunting in 1922 and was buried in an ornate chapel built right on the spot where he fell. Ever since, Chicago folklore has maintained that the site—commonly called "Peabody’s Tomb"—was haunted, especially during the seventy years that the estate was known as Mayslake, a Franciscan retreat house where brown-robed friars would allegedly patrol the property for teenaged trespassers who, if caught, were made to kneel in the chapel on a cold floor all night long. These days, as a landmark building on the National Register of Historic Places surrounded by acres of protected forest preserve, visitors are welcome to the mansion year round, but for the last two Halloween seasons, it has given a nod to its longtime haunted folklore past by playing host to Mr. and Mrs. Edgar Allan Poe in play form.