Ian Hunter wrote an excellent song about this legend.

Resurrection Mary is a well-known Chicago area ghost story of the "vanishing hitchhiker" type, a type of folklore that is known from many cultures. The urban legend is based outside of Resurrection Cemetery in Justice, Illinois, a few miles southwest of Chicago. Resurrection Mary is considered to be Chicago's most famous ghost.

Since the 1930s, several men driving northeast along Archer Avenue between the Willowbrook Ballroom and Resurrection Cemetery have reported picking up a young female hitchhiker. This young woman is dressed somewhat formally in a white party dress and is said to have light blond hair and blue eyes. There are other reports that she wears a thin shawl, dancing shoes, carries a small clutch purse, and possibly that she is very quiet. When the driver nears the Resurrection Cemetery, the young woman asks to be let out, whereupon she disappears into the cemetery. According to the Chicago Tribune, "full-time ghost hunter" Richard Crowe has collected "three dozen ... substantiated" reports of Mary from the 1930s to the present.

In 1973, Resurrection Mary was said to have shown up at Harlow's nightclub, on Cicero Avenue on Chicago's southwest side. That same year, a cab driver came into Chet's Melody Lounge, across the street from Resurrection Cemetery, to inquire about a young lady who had left without paying her fare.

There were said to be sightings in 1976, 1978, 1980, and 1989, which involved cars striking, or nearly striking, Mary outside Resurrection Cemetery. Mary disappears, however, by the time the motorist exits the car. 

She also reportedly burned her handprints into the wrought iron fence around the cemetery, in August 1976