The driver leaned forward in his seat, squinting through the windshield at the road in front of him.
The sun had just dipped below the horizon, casting Chicago in a midnight blue gloom made darker by the steady rain.
As he drove along Harrison Street, the cemetery began to come up on his right. That meant he was about halfway home. It had been a long day, and he was ready to put up his feet, have a couple beers, and maybe try and catch what was left of the game.
As he passed the north entrance of the cemetery, the driver could just make out someone walking alongside that side of the road up ahead of him. It looked like a woman wearing a white wedding dress.
“What the hell?” he said to himself. He had met some strange people in Chicago, but this had to rank near the top. It was raining, and here was this woman, wearing a wedding dress and walking through the muddy gravel alongside the road. Who would do that?
The woman stared straight ahead, unhindered by the rain and night, and apparently unbothered by the traffic passing just a few feet from her.
While he had been disdainful about the woman at first, the closer he got the more something about her just bothered him. A small voice in the back of his head told him that this wasn’t right, that there was something off about this situation.
It told him not to stop. Keep driving until you get home.
And he did, although he did sneak a few glances in his rearview mirror.
The woman didn’t veer from her path once. She just kept walking.
He blew out a slow breath. He’d been holding it without realizing it. An involuntary shudder went down his spine.
Like many drivers in that area, this man had just had an encounter with one of Chicago’s most famous legends: The Italian Bride.
—
Julia Buccola was nervous. It was her wedding day, and she wanted everything to go right. Ever since she was a little girl growing up in Italy, she had dreamed of this day.
She checked everything one more time. Everything was perfect. The beautiful bouquet of flowers looked gorgeous, adding a splash of color to accentuate her pure white wedding gown.
She had come to Chicago with her mother, Filomena, seven years ago, when she was about 22 years old.
Her older brother, Joseph, had already immigrated to the United States in 1900, and their brother Henry had joined him nine years later. The two brothers designed and made women’s clothing and had achieved at least some success in the business.
They were waiting for their mother and sister when they finally arrived from New York.
Julia was content in Chicago. She was surrounded by her family, and by people that not only spoke her native Italian, but also practiced the same customs and culture that she had grown up with.
Her husband to be, Matthew, had also been born in Italy. Julia smiled at the thought of him.
Matthew was a small man with brown hair and brown eyes and worked hard in a local shoe factory. She knew that he loved her and would be able to provide a good life for her and their future children.
As suddenly as she had smiled, Julia’s face darkened. Her dreams were always darkened by the thought of her mother.
Filomena was a formidable woman. Her husband, Gaetano, had died in Italy several years before. In the aftermath, Filomena had become an angry and bitter woman.
She filled the void in her life left by Gaetano’s death by becoming over-involved in her children’s lives. Filomena almost used them as a kind of emotional crutch, and seemed to become resentful of anyone who would dare intrude on her relationship with them, including spouses.
Especially spouses, Julia thought.
Julia couldn’t think of any of her sibling’s spouses that Filomena did approve of. For her, it was more of a tired tolerance of their presence. Julia loved her mother dearly, and she knew that Filomena loved her just as much, but that love didn’t necessarily extend to Matthew.
None of that mattered on that day though. This was Julia’s wedding day, and she wasn’t about to let anything spoil it, including her mother.
And she didn’t.
Matthew and Julia were happily married on that June day in 1920, and it wasn’t long before their union was blessed with even greater news: Julia was pregnant.
The couple were overjoyed. Julia was about to turn 30, and Matthew was just a few years older. They were more than ready to settle down and start a family.
But as the months wore on, there must have been signs that not all was not well with the pregnancy. What exactly that may have been is lost to time, but family members would later say that Filomena, who didn’t believe in doctors, wouldn’t allow Julia to see one.
On March 17,, 1921 – St. Patrick’s Day – Julia gave birth to a son, Filippo Petta. Sadly, the young infant was stillborn. Even worse, Julia herself died giving birth to her son.
Matthew and the rest of the family were devastated, especially Filomena. Julia was buried in Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery in Hillside, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Filippo was buried in the same plot with her.
But, as sad as it all was, life had to move on.
A few years later, Matthew remarried an Iowa woman and started a new life and family with her.
Henry and Joseph moved to Los Angeles, California, in 1926, where they continued to manufacture and design women’s clothes. The business thrived in their new location, and they became very comfortable financially. Filomena soon went to live with them.
At some point – there was later debate on exactly when – Filomena began to have nightmares about her lost Julia. In them, Julia was alive and pled with her mother to dig up her grave.
Night after night, the nightmare came to her. Filomena wasn’t sure what to do about it. Being a Roman Catholic, she decided to talk to a priest. At the end of their talks, the priest was convinced that Julia’s grave should be exhumed.
The Catholic Church granted their permission for the task and arrangements were made with Mount Carmel Cemetery.
As the last few shovelfuls of dirt were taken out of the grave and the coffin was slowly brought out of the ground, a nervousness hung in the air. Julia had died six years before. Most who would have been present probably expected to find a shriveled, grinning corpse inside.
But when they opened the casket, there was Julia, unblemished and untouched.
A courageous few reached out and touched her skin and were shocked at how soft and flexible it was. It was if the woman had climbed into the coffin and fallen asleep a few hours before. By contrast, the coffin clearly showed signs of age and decomposition from being in the ground for the past six year.
Oddly, someone arranged a picture to be taken of Julia’s corpse just a very short while after the casket was opened.
Some who heard about the lack of decomposition in Julia’s corpse thought that it must have been a sign of her holiness, and that, as a result, she was incorruptible. This was a term that was used when referring to the remains of some Catholic Saints whose remains also showed no signs of decay.
The body was carefully reinterred, and a new monument erected on the grave. On it was a statue carved in the likeness of Julia on her wedding day.
Below it, on the base, were two photos of Julia set on porcelain-ceramic inserts. The upper one was of her on her wedding day, the lower was her inside of her coffin on the day it was exhumed six years after her death.
The story eventually spread through the city, and by the 1970’s gained further notoriety as local authors, folklorists, and historians began to tell the story in books and articles.
The story of Julia Buccola, the Italian Bride, became a legend in and around Chicago. Like so many legends, many made-up details made their way into the tale as it was retold again and again.
Some stories claimed that Julia had died as a virgin on her wedding night, and others said that Filomena had the dreams for the entire six years between her daughter’s death and the exhumation. Neither were true.
According to Chicago author and historian Adam Selzer, who did extensive research into the story, Julia died in childbirth the year following her wedding night.
The scant existence of contemporary records about Julia Buccola simultaneously make it harder to establish hard facts about her story and to disprove these embellishments.
For example, there are virtually no records stating how permission was granted for the exhumation or even why it was done in the first place. There is also contention over who paid for the new monument erected on the grave, or even why the family decided to place it there.
According to family members whom Selzer interviewed, the replacement stone on Julia’s grave might have cost upwards of $10,000, the equivalent of almost $173,000 today.
Henry, who was doing extremely well in California, paid the entire cost out of his own pocket.
Other versions of the story state that the family believed that the almost miraculous condition of Julia’s remains was a sign from God. It was said that family members used this belief as a way to collect money from friends and family to build the new monument.
Some relatives also claimed that Filomena hadn’t started having her nightmares about Julia until 1926, when she had moved in with Henry and his family. They speculate that Filomena, who allegedly didn’t allow Julia to see a doctor when she was pregnant, felt intensely guilty about that and, out of that regret, might have wanted a better monument placed on Julia’s grave.
They speculate that Filomena may have made up the nightmares, using them as a kind of leverage to force Henry into paying for the new monument because she knew her son could afford it.
Some family members said that Henry later lamented buying the new headstone, saying that if he hadn’t spent that money than he and his family would have been financially comfortable the rest of their lives.
The new headstone became such a point of contention in the family that it was very rarely ever spoken of again.
Over the years, some people have taken soil from Julia’s grave in the belief that it can help with infertility or cure the sick. Some even regarded her as a saint.
However, other bodies have been exhumed in the city that were remarkably well-preserved. These were regarded as having been preserved by natural processes. Perhaps it was the same with Julia, but the power of her legend allows people to overlook that.
But being incorruptible isn’t the only supernatural thing that Julia Buccola has been associated with.
Many have claimed to have seen the ghost of a woman wearing a pure white wedding dress and veil walking along Harrison Street or through Mount Carmel Cemetery itself.
One story about the woman in white states that a young boy was once accidentally left behind at Mount Carmel. When the panicked parents returned soon after, they found him still there, calmly holding the hand of a young woman wearing a white wedding dress.
Overjoyed to see them, the boy ran toward them. As he did, the woman vanished.
People living nearby have said they have heard the unmistakable sounds of a woman in emotional distress, sobbing and moaning from somewhere outside. Whenever anyone goes to find the source of the sounds, no one can ever be found.
Does the restless spirit of Julia Buccola Petta still wander the area where she was laid to her final rest? Did she haunt her mother’s dreams, begging to be exhumed, or did Filomena Buccola make up the nightmares as a way to have her son erect a new headstone on his sister’s grave?
Regardless of what can be proven as fact or fiction, the story has doubtless had an impact on the people of Chicago and has taken its place among the many ghost stories of Chicago legend.
Sources
Selzer, Adam. The Ghosts of Chicago: The Windy City’s Most Famous Haunts. Woodbury; Llewellyn Press, 2013
Crowe, Richard T. and Mercado, Carol. Chicago’s Street Guide to the Supernatural. Oak Park; Carolando Press, 2000.
Selzer, Adam. The Italian Bride of Chicago. The Order of the Good Death.com 6/13/2013
Taylor, Troy. The Strange Story of the “Italian Bride”: The Haunting Story of Julia Buccola Petta. American Hauntings.com, 2017
Year: 1910; Census Place: Chicago Ward 15, Cook, Illinois; Roll: T624_258; Page: 17b; Enumeration District: 0740; FHL microfilm: 1374271
United States, Selective Service System. World War I Selective Service System Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918. Washington, D.C.: National Archives and Records Administration. M1509, 4,582 rolls. Imaged from Family History Library microfilm.
“Illinois, Cook County Marriages, 1871–1920.” Index. FamilySearch, Salt Lake City, Utah, 2010. Illinois Department of Public Health records. “Marriage Records, 1871–present.” Division of Vital Records, Springfield, Illinois.
National Archives at Chicago; Chicago, Illinois; ARC Title: Petitions For Naturalization, 1906-1991; NAI Number: M1285; Record Group Title: Records of District Courts of the United States, 1685-2009; Record Group Number: Rg 21
Julia Buccola Petta. Find a Grave.com
Filomena Buccola. Find a Grave.com