I half expected to hear the groans of one of the anguished apparitions rumored to haunt Cave-in-Rock while spelunking the southern-Illinois landmark recently. Strange sounds are said to occasionally reverberate from the 55-foot-wide maw of the cave perched on the banks of the Ohio River.
I don’t trust a restaurant that slow on a Saturday evening at 5 PM, so at Yelp’s suggestion journeyed ten miles west to try a catfish joint in a wisp of a place called Elizabethtown (not to be confused with nearby Elizabethtown, Kentucky, which inspired the terrible Cameron Crowe romantic comedy). But E’town River Restaurant, a small barge that floats on the Ohio River, was also unceremoniously closed. So, seemingly, was everything else. Broken or deteriorating storefronts dotted the main thoroughfare, among them a vacant building with a fading sign for a lost chapter of something called the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Ironically, the place with the most life was the Rose Hotel—an old tavern turned bed-and-breakfast famous as both the oldest active hotel in the state and one of the most haunted places in Illinois. As local lore has it, the ghost of former owner Sarah Rose can be spotted stalking the inn—guests have heard voices and the sounds of a party, and pennies in groups of three show up randomly throughout the hotel. I didn’t stick around to investigate the claims.
An estimated 297 people live in the town of Cave-in-Rock, according to the U.S. Census, less than half the number of residents in 1970. The population that remains is aging and poor: more than 40 percent are older than 45, and nearly 30 percent live in poverty. The unemployment rate hovers near 8 percent, but that doesn’t tell the whole story, because the labor participation rate keeps dropping. A 2015 report from the Social Impact Research Center lists 42 Illinois counties on its poverty watch list. Cave-in-Rock and Hardin County, home of Elizabethtown, are at the top of the list—meaning that people here face declining income, employment, and high school graduation rates. Life expectancy is 73.1 years for males and 79.2 for females, about four to six years less than the lifespan of the average Chicago suburbanite.
