Munger Road, somewhat famous as being haunted, is in northern Illinois, about 30 miles west of Lake Michigan. There is even a movie titled “Munger Road”, that is based very loosely on some of the scary stories about the road, that are still told around the area.

My family has its own stories about it that we actually experienced, and they occurred before anybody else thought the road was haunted. I shall proceed to recount one of them.

Back around 35 to 40 years ago, back when the area west of Chicago was mainly small towns surrounded by farmer’s fields, my brother Daryl and I (and no, I don’t have another brother Daryl, so let’s keep the Newhart show out of this) would go out to Munger Road, just to feel how creepy it was. Sometimes we would go at night, sometimes during the day. It could be pretty creepy anytime.

One day, I can’t remember if it was in the early spring or the late fall, other than that the farmer’s field on the east side of the road was brown stubble, and the grass in the forest reserve on the west side was not greening up yet, we parked on the side of the road and walked around a bit.

Daryl wandered up a low hill into the farmer’s field while I examined the water in the roadside ditch. I always look in any body of water I am near, for frogs, bugs, water snakes, or anything biologically interesting.

Daryl suddenly yelled, something like “Oh god, they’re killing them!”, or words to that effect. I stopped ditch delving and ran across the road and up the hill. He was on his knees crying, and mumbling about the burning tipis, the dead women, children, and braves he could see. He said he could smell the smoke from the campfires.

I saw nothing, I smelled nothing, but I heard sounds coming from the west side of the road. I went back over there, and clearly heard musket fire and men yelling in French, but just kind of faintly, more like the tail end of echoes.

There is no record of anything of the sort ever happening there. Munger Road is in DuPage county, which was named after the French trapper DuPage, who had his station on the DuPage river, oddly enough. French voyageurs followed the rivers all over Illinois, but Munger Road is a couple of mile from the nearest rivers, so the Frenchies were unlikely to be there.

Illinois is the Frenchified version of the name of the Illiniwek, or Illini tribal confederation. But, much of northeastern Illinois belonged to the Potawatomi tribe, who were not in the Illini confederation. The Potawatomi did not use tipis. They built dome-shaped wigwams, and rectangular lodges with bark covering called longhouses, so no tipis were there to be burnt.

No tipis, no Frenchmen, therefore no massacre, and no ghosts.

In my experience, and intellectual inclinations, there are non-physical entities, not terribly smart entities, that like to play tricks on humans. I’ve brought them up in previous quasi- theories. They are the Good Folk, the Sidh of the Kelts, the Fairies. They pick up thoughts and ideas from your head and use them to play with you.

My siblings and I were just getting into all things Native American back then. The local fairies grabbed that and ran over us with it.

First shared on the Squatcher’s Lounge Podcast:

For the reading impaired, an audio version of this quasi theory may be found here: