According to legend, the Gate marked the entrance to a girl's finishing school back in the early 1950's. The stillness of the school was shatered one night when the principal suffered a nervous breakdown and killed four of his young students, placing their heads on the metal posts of the gate after he severed them from their bodies.. There are other versions of the legend; all encompassing a horrific tale of violence, bloodshed and murder and ending with local residents razing the school, camp, or asylum and trying to obliterate the remnants of the building.
To this day, it is said that the Gate is haunted by the souls of those who perished there. There are those who claim to have visited the Gate during the early hours of the morning and found blood dripping from the iron supports. Others say that on the stroke of midnight on the anniversary of the murders, phantom heads of the murdered girls appear on the fence post; Their mouths gaping in silent screams. There are countless tales of apparitions, eerie screams and mysterious sounds that cannot be explained.
If any murders took place here, they have been erased from public record, and when officials are asked about it today, they deny that anything ever occured.
Weird Illinois did manage to turn up a little sketchy information that verifies some elements of the legend. The Gate was once a part of an orphanage, The Katherine Dodridge Kreigh Budd Memorial Home for Children, which opened in 1925. It was shut down for unspecified reasons in the late 1950's and became St. Frances Boys' Camp. The camp ceased operation without explanation and faded into oblivion some time ago.
Some surmise that whatever caused the orphanage to shut down may have been what spawned the blood-soaked legends of the Gate...
...taken from Weird Illinois, by Troy Taylor