Self-Guided Tour of Mount Carmel Cemetery

Meet us where Chicago’s crooks and Cardinals are laid to rest

A self-guided walking tour of the Mount Carmel Cemetery in Hillside is a historic and even spooky experience, where you'll see the graves of mobsters and archbishops, as well as a rotating monument and maybe even a ghost!

A large number of graves in the cemetery belong to members from Chicago’s history of organized crime, including Chicago Outfit leaders Al Capone and Sam Giancana.

In an interesting twist, you can also find the gravesites of a victim of and a shooter in the notorious St. Valentine’s Day Massacre, a gunfight between gangs of Capone and his rival George Clarence "Bugs" Moran, that put Capone on the FBI’s radar.

John May, formerly Moran’s auto mechanic,  was gunned down in the melee, and was buried in Mount Carmel Cemetery, not far from the grave of Jack "Machine Gun Jack" McGurn, a caporegime of Capone's Chicago Outfit syndicate and likely mastermind behind the massacre.

Mount Carmel Cemetery isn't only home to gun-toting mafiosos and sinners, however. Holier types have been laid to rest there too, including eight cardinals of the Archdiocese of Chicago interred in the Bishop’s Mausoleum. The ornate structure was painstakingly built in Italy and transported to Chicago. Its bronze gates flank the entrance, symbolizing the gates of heaven. It is truly a sight to behold.

One of the more unique memorials in Mount Carmel is known as the "rotating monument" and it's definitely worth seeing. The massive monument, which swivels on its base when touched, is the final resting place of Italian immigrants Angelo and Rosa Di Salvo. The monument's intricate carvings are said to be representative of a Di Salvo family photo, while its massive size makes it ability to rotate a feat of engineering.

Cemetery visitors who love a good ghost story should make a stop at the grave of Julia Buccola Petta, who died in childbirth in 1921 and was buried in her wedding gown, alongside her dead infant son in Mount Carmel Cemetery. For six years after her death, Julia’s devastated mother Filomena reported having terrifying nightmares of her daughter, who would visit Filomena, insisting she was alive and in need of help.

With much persistence, Filomena was granted an order for Julia’s exhumation and in 1927 her daughter was removed from the ground. Instead of finding Julia in a state of decomposition, those at the exhumation were shocked to find Julia had not decayed at all. Though her infant son and the casket had deteriorated, Julia herself appeared as though she were, in fact, still alive!

Considering it a miracle, Filomena raised funds to erect a grand monument to her daughter and you can see the monument at the cemetery today. Fixed onto the stone is a photo that was reportedly taken on the day of exhumation, six years after Julia's death. The photo shows a woman in a white bridal gown showing no signs of death.

The ghost of a dark-haired woman dressed in white is said to roam the cemetery at night.