'It's a spooky, scary place': New Chicago school grounds being built on site of estimated 38,000 unmarked graves
CHICAGO - A 15-year effort to build a school in the Chicago's Dunning neighborhood is underway with an unusual complication: Construction workers are taking careful steps to avoid disturbing human remains that may lie beneath the soil.
The $70 million school is to be built on the grounds of a former Cook County Poor House where an estimated 38,000 people were buried in unmarked graves. Among the dead are residents who were too poor to afford funeral costs, unclaimed bodies and patients from the county's insane asylum.
"There can be and there have been bodies found all over the place," said Barry Fleig, a genealogist and cemetery researcher who began investigating the site in 1989. "It's a spooky, scary place."
Workers have until April 27 to excavate and clear the site, remediate the soil and relocate an existing sewer line. The school is scheduled to open in time for the 2019-20 academic year, though a
