Anthropologists and Metra security staff announced on Monday that a heretofore unknown Amish village has been thriving for decades in an unused portion of Chicago’s Union Station railroad terminal.

“We’ve seen the Amish wandering around Union Station for years,” said station security chief Ralph Valentine. “Up until now, though, we just assumed they were passing through from Indiana to Minnesota.   It turns out that they were actually searching their own secret refuge, a clandestine world of quilts, candlelight, and inbreeding right here in the station.”

The village, located in an abandoned sub-chamber three floors below Clinton Street, is reportedly home to over sixty members of the Amish Mennonite Church.  The settlement includes living quarters, a one-room schoolhouse, a meeting hall for the village elders and a fully functioning stable, complete with cows, goats and horses.  It also features a Dunkin’ Donuts, a Starbucks as well as a branch of Chase Bank.

“We’re pretty excited.  It’s the first confirmed sighting of an actual Amish village in the Chicagoland area in well over a hundred years,” said Loyola University anthropology professor David Brown.  “From time to time, we’d get calls from people who thought they spotted an Amish village, but it usually turned out to be just some smelly hippie family trying to live off the land.”

According to reports, the discovery came at approximately 3:30 am on Sunday morning, after a maintenance worker chanced upon a group of farmers practicing a barn raising in the station’s Great Hall.  After they were finished, he followed them down a back stairway to their village.

“It was a pleasant surprise for us,” said Metra spokesperson Michael Tavekoli during a press conference. “Union Station has always had its share of unofficial ‘residents,’ but they usually smell like urine and are in constant need of two more dollars to buy a ticket back to Palatine.   In contrast, these Amish can churn their own butter and make delightful scented candles.  It’s wonderful!”

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