Forest Park, Illinois - Showmen's Rest: Circus Sleep 1913 - 1918

In the core of Forest Park resides Showmen's Rest - a tranquil neighborhood designed for those with insomnia, not the blissful. It hosts a pet cemetery, heaping with elephant statues, graves that date back to circus performers since 1913, under the guard of the Showmen’s League of America. This traced its roots to the heart-wrenching loss of the 1918 Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus train accident in Hessville, Indiana, claiming an estimated 86 lives. At night, ghostly laughter and fanfares can still be heard from this cemetery. Four imposing elephant statues keep watch, their features oscillating between delight and sadness, with feet in the air and trunks down. The departed spirits of the circus still linger, resonating within these statues.

Sources: Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons