Between Ashland Avenue and Halsted Street on the northern end of Chicago's Bridgeport neighborhood, you'll find a collection of obscure streets that defy the city's grid system — all running either parallel or perpendicular to Archer Avenue and the Kennedy Expressway.

Two of the streets — Loomis and Throop — each bend to end up about three blocks east of their usual paths when they reach 31st Street. The others — Poplar Avenue, Quinn Street, Farrell Street, Keeley Street, Bonfield Street, Lyman Street, Gratten Avenue — are found nowhere else in the city.

Gratten Avenue, running alongside the long and narrow Bosley Park, carries the honorary street name of Ma Benton Lane. And in the middle of the street — which runs in one short piece from Lyman Street to 31st Street — you'll find the historic Benton House. The settlement house, headquartered at 3052 S. Gratten Ave. with a gym and activities building down the street at 3034 S. Gratten Ave., was founded in the vein of Jane Addams' Hull House a little over two miles to the north.

And rumor has it that Benton House is the site of some hauntings too.

The history of Benton House and the mystery of Ma Benton

According to records from the Chicago History Museum, Benton House was founded in 1907 — 18 years after Hull House.

An official Benton House history page that is no longer online said the Benton House was originally known as Providence Day Nursery, and provided children of mothers who worked in nearby factories with three meals a day and weekly health check-ups from a doctor. Nutrition and English language classes were offered for the parents.

In 1916, the settlement house added the House of Happiness recreation site for older children — with classes in reading, woodshop, various arts, and sports. In 1938, Pearce Hall and Gymnasium was added, the history page noted.

In an episode of "Ghost Hunters," Benton House executive director Mark Lennon called Ma Benton "the main funding source, the engine that turned the wheels of Benton House."

The history page says in 1942, the facilities were renamed Benton Community Settlement, or Benton House, in honor of Katherine Sturges Benton — the daughter of the founder. She was also known as "Ma Benton," the page noted.

While the Sturges family was famous in Chicago, there is limited information about Katherine or Kate Sturges Benton online, and very little about her connection to Benton House. The defunct Benton House website, and a subsequent article in the South Side Weekly, identify the founder of Benton House as Janett Sturges.

The defunct website identifies "Katherine Sturges Benton" as the founder's daughter.

The South Side Weekly identifies the founder's daughter as Kate Sturges Buckingham — a famous Chicago philanthropist — and says she was "Ma Benton" and took over the settlement house in the 1930s.

But the life of Kate Sturges Buckingham (1858-1937) is well-documented. She was a wealthy matron of the arts in Chicago who inherited a fortune built from banking, steel, and real estate interests, and was one of the best-known donors to the Art Institute of Chicago — donating the most famous of the art museum's collections at the time of her death. She also donated generously to the Field Museum of Natural History, the opera in Chicago, and other institutions and charities, published reports note. Most famously, she donated Chicago's Buckingham Fountain, which is named in honor of her brother, Clarence.

Kate Sturges Buckingham was the daughter of Ebenezer and Lucy Buckingham and was born in Zanesville, Ohio. Her paternal grandfather, Solomon Sturges, brought the family to Chicago — and the Sturges and Buckingham families controlled a chain of grain elevators in multiple states, according to the blog Connecting the Windy City.

There is no mention of Benton House in any biography of Kate Sturges Buckingham, and seemingly no reason why she would be called "Ma Benton" when Benton was not even part of her name.

There is, however, a Chicago Tribune obituary for Kate Sturges Benton — a cousin of Kate Sturges Buckingham — who died July 24, 1947, at the age of 78. The obituary says Kate Sturges Benton and her surviving sisters Caroline and Julia headed up of a charitable group called the Babies Friendly Society, which sewed layettes for the babies of the poor, but also makes no mention of Benton House.

There was also a Kate Sturges Benton who lived from 1840 to 1923, and who seems to have been the mother of the Kate Sturges Benton who died in 1947. This Kate Sturges Benton also wrote an essay about her mother, Lucy Hale Sturges, for a 1907 memoir compiled by the aforementioned Ebenezer Buckingham.

The elder Kate Sturges Benton's obituary mentions a son named William and daughters named Kate, Julia, Rita, and a married daughter whose first name is omitted in favor of "Mrs. Edward Evans." The younger Kate Sturges Benton's obituary also mentions a brother in addition to the surviving sisters, though it identifies their mother as "Mrs. W.H. Benton."

In their respective obituaries, both women named Kate Sturges Benton are listed as having lived in a house on Blackstone Avenue, which the younger Kate Sturges Benton's obituary places in the Hyde Park-Kenwood area. But again, there is no mention of Benton House or Bridgeport anywhere.

So who exactly was Ma Benton? Information available online is sufficient to deduce that she was part of the prominent Benton-Sturges-Buckingham family that came to Chicago from Zanesville, Ohio, but does not give a definitive answer as to exactly which member of the family she was. We put out an inquiry with the Chicago History Museum, which was unable to assist for the moment, as staff there are busy preparing for an exhibition set to open Oct. 25.

As to Benton House itself, the South Side Weekly reported that the institution gained nonprofit status in 1970, but struggled to keep up its facilities over the ensuing years as bills piled up. In 2008, executive director Lennon launched a residency program in which residents were offered rent-free housing in exchange for helping keep up the space, the South Side Weekly reported.

The South Side Weekly reported in 2017 that the residency program created a community made up primarily of people of color and people who identified as LGBTQ+, who developed what the publication called a "radical, progressive space." The residency program was later discontinued, the publication reported.

In 2021, the CIRCLE (Creating Inspirational Realities Collectively Lifting Everyone) Foundation took over Benton House. The facility continues to serve the needs of youth and adults in the Bridgeport community and beyond with a food pantry, a partnership with After School Matters, career pathway training through the Illinois Youth Investment Program, and other programs.

Reputed hauntings once brought "Ghost Hunters"

But you wanted to know about ghosts, didn't you?

Benton House declined to talk about ghosts or hauntings or to let CBS News Chicago inside its facility. But the facility was the subject of an episode of the Syfy Channel series "Ghost Hunters" back in 2014.

For that occasion, Benton House director of programs Angela Dedenbach gave the "Ghost Hunters" crew a grand tour, and  mentioned all kinds of hauntings. In particular, she said Ma Benton — who, despite the confusion about her exact identity that comes up in online research, is depicted prominently in portrait form at the house — was still spotted in the building in spirit form.

Ghost hunter Tony Szabelski of Chicago Hauntings Tours said apparitions of Ma Benton were seen throughout the main Benton House building, in particular in a kitchenette area in the back. Ma Benton's spirit was also known for seemingly making a library store shut by itself, Dedenbach said on "Ghost Hunters."

Also in the "Ghost Hunters" episode, Mark Lennon's son, Christian Lennon, reported a spooky experience with a fireplace.

"I lit a starter log to clean the flue trap. We sat by the tire, and I tell the ghost story of how my great-grandmother died right at the doorway. My friend Mike turned to me, he goes, 'No way!'" Christian Lennon said on "Ghost Hunters." "As soon as he said, 'No way,' it went out, and it sizzled as if somebody was pouring water on it."

Dedenbach herself also reported on "Ghost Hunters" that in her bedroom at Benton House, she heard footsteps coming in behind her and stopping — and when she turned, nobody was there, but she also never heard any footsteps retreating.

Also in "Ghost Hunters," Dedenbach also mentioned some hauntings in the gymnasium building up the street on Gratten Avenue.

In an art studio in the building, she said a man heard a mysterious voice that he thought might have been coming out of a radio he was using, but the voice kept speaking when the man unplugged the radio. Dedenbach said the voice said something like, "Gaylord was hurt here, and his family was lied to," and legend has it that someone died in the room.

In the gym at the second building, Mark Lennon told "Ghost Hunters" he and some others were picking up a table after an event.

"I just remember feeling like somebody's coming towards us — enough where we stopped raising the tables mid-lift — and then whatever it was, whoever it was, felt like they stepped on the table that we were carrying and just slammed it to the ground," Lennon said on "Ghost Hunters."

In the "Ghost Hunters" episode, Jason Hawes and Grant Wilson of The Atlantic Paranormal Society saw a small, dark apparition of a child run past in the hallway as they investigated on the third floor at Benton House, only for the apparition to be gone before they caught up. Strange footsteps and creaking floorboards were also reported.

Also on the "Ghost Hunters" program, workers were trying to move a table in the gym at Benton House when the table became very heavy and fell down, the synopsis noted.

However, the crew concluded that the "eerie feelings and mysterious events" happening in the gym were caused by high electromagnetic fields rather than the paranormal. They also concluded that the spirit of Ma Benton opening and closing a door in a library and common area was actually just the result of a door with high "swing-back" action. Indeed, most of the stories of paranormal activity at Benton House were debunked in the "Ghost Hunters" show, though the childlike figure on the third floor apparently remained a mystery.

Meanwhile, whatever one thinks of haunting and ghost sighting stories at Benton House, it seems the facility actually hosted an event called "Ma Benton's Haunted House" for kids around Halloween, as evidenced by Chicago Tribune listings from the 1980s.

And by the way, if you search for the Benton House online and find yourself on the page for the Benton House & Historic Gardens, you are on the wrong website when it comes to this story. There is also a historic Benton House in the historic Irvington neighborhood of Indianapolis, Indiana, built in 1873 for Allen R. Benton, a former president of what became Butler University.

Is that unrelated Benton House in Indianapolis haunted? Legend has it that the answer is yes.

To add just a little more confusion, the University of Chicago also once had a Benton House, at 5737 S. University Ave., which had no connection to the settlement house in Bridgeport. The William Benton House, named for a former U.S. senator, hosted the William Benton Fellowship program for broadcast journalists in the 1980s and 90s. 

The building is still there, but has not gone by the name Benton House anytime recently — it later became the Student Counseling building, and now houses the University of Chicago Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression.

Is the former William Benton House on UChicago's Hyde Park campus haunted too? There's nothing out there suggesting so. But there used to be a Haunted Hyde Park Tour touching on some stories that may be worth exploring another day.