Ghost Whispers - Tales from Haunted Midway

In your hands you hold a bit of a curiosity, a personal offering from me to you. Ever since I can remember, I've been fascinated by the voices of the past. Folk tales and legends have always drawn me, rich in their language, mysterious in their telling and retelling. At a very young age I came to appreciate the familiar, rhythmic relating of forgotten lore, of childhood fear. Of ghost stories. Contemporary ones as well as the more traditional variety. The Midwest is alive today still with such tales: spectral lost souls sorrowing forsaken down dimly lit Victorian corridors, portals flickering unseen between worlds, iridescent fog creeping eerily through the lacy darkness of crumbling Illinois cemeteries. Where does one begin? We could start I suppose with our locale, the city of Rockford and her nearby environs, a place which was first called Midway back in 1834 by a Connecticut land speculator named Germanicus Kent (although rumor has it that it was actually Mrs. Kent's suggestion, the former Miss Arabella Amiss) who found that the village boundaries lay roughly midway the distance between Chicago and Galena.