Visit haunted trolley, barn

VOLO - On an unassuming farm in northwest Illinois, down a country road off the main thoroughfare, you will find the largest collection of classic cars in the United States at the Volo Auto Museum. The antiques mall on the other side of the parking lot stretches across an old barn, renovated from the dairy farm structure created in the 1800s by the original owners, the Gale family.

Everything about the homegrown family business is quaint and familiar in a comforting way. During the daytime, it’s almost hard to imagine that the grounds are haunted by the ghost of a Civil War soldier.

“It wasn’t until 2010, when my brother [who runs the antiques mall] and I exchanged stories, that we discovered who was doing the haunting,” Gram said.

For people hoping to catch a glimpse of the ghost, the museum’s first annual haunted trolley tour promises to deliver, if not an apparition, a fun family outing in an exact replica of a Victorian trolley (price tag for the auto mavens’ 1915 knock-off is $300,000 a pop).

The first stop is in a dimly lit barn on the edge of the farm, where the majority of the activity has been detected. A digitized manservant solemnly delivers the tale of Wallace H. Gale, the 20-year-old Civil War soldier who grew up on this very farm and died in combat, only to be sent back and buried underneath a daunting white monument in the cemetery the trolley passes en route to its first stop. There is also a non-haunted segment featuring famous cars and demonstrations chronicling their past lives and previous owners.

Tyler Eutsler, a young seaman spending his weekend liberty at the museum, said he enjoyed the car exhibits, and that the haunted trolley ride made him recall his own brush with the supernatural back in his native Texas.

“I was staying at my grandparents’ farmhouse when something opened the closet door and tried to pull the covers off me from the end of the bed,” Eutsler said. “I pulled them over my eyes and just tried to fall asleep, but from that point on I was always scared to go visit my grandparents.”

The Grams had been experiencing their own personal brand of horror well before the Discovery Channel heard about the hauntings and decided to send out their own inspection team from their hit show, “Ghost Lab.”

“There’s things I can’t explain and I don’t believe in spirits, but there, at the foot of our bed, was a white shadow…”  said Grams, his voice dropping to a fervent whisper, “…and it was glowing! You could kinda see the hat, a trenchcoat…I never mentioned it to my wife, but maybe a week or two later, I said something about it and she stopped me and said, ‘I’ve seen it too.’”

After the Discovery Channel segment aired in 2009, the stories came pouring in.

The amateur antique aficionado who saw a Civil War soldier staring back at her in the reflection of an antique mirror she had been considering for purchase (before dropping it in shock); the semi-truck driver who witnessed a man dressed smartly in a trenchcoat turn and walk silently through the showroom wall in the dead of night – these are just a handful of the stories that have surfaced.

“So many people reported stories after the Discovery Channel show came out,” Gram said in reference to the material recited by the trolleys’ volunteer operators.

A collection of photos on the museum’s website shows a varying display of unexplained images. Not orbs, not specks of dust – honest-to-goodness faces, people made out of smoke and shadow (and mirrors?) in places where nobody should, or could, even possibly be.

“There’s a window at the top of the barn – no way of getting up there, nothing around – but when [a customer] developed pictures, there was some kid looking in the window,” Gram said. “That one, we can’t explain; it was a person, clear as a bell.”

“The story is out now,” Gram said. “The place is definitely haunted.”

There’s only one way to find out for sure—go and see for yourself.

The haunted trolley tours run on weekends through Oct. 28. For more information, go to volocars.com.