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Ghost Train! by Tony Reevy American Railroad Ghost Legends Soft Cover
Ghost Train by Tony Reevy American Railroad Ghost Legends
Soft Cover
166 pages indexed
Copyright 1998
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements iv
Introduction vi
Chapter One
Ghost Trains 1
Chapter Two
Wreck Re-enactments 37
Chapter Three
Headless Ghosts and Ghost Lights 45
Chapter Four
Other Ghosts Along The Tracks 75
Chapter Five
Haunted Tunnels 127
Chapter Six
Haunted Railroad Stations 139
Chapter Seven
Haunts In Rail Cars 147
Afterword and Sources 158
Index 165
The ghost train is a common motif in railroad folklore. It is the -Flying Dutchman" of the rails, running on into folk history without end. A broader look at railroad folklore reveals many other ghostly manifestations associated with trains: ghostly lights: ghost whistles: ghosts walking, running, or standing along the way: hoodooed engines: haunted cabooses. All of these and more have been reported along America's railways.
It's a bewildering plenty of phantoms. In trying to group these legends together. I found six main categories of railroad ghost legends--and that's the way this book is organized. The first chapter focuses on ghost trains. Of all railroad specters. the ghost train has the strongest hold on the American imagination--the wheezing. clanking. old, steam train. staffed maybe by skeletons. creeping along a track somewhere in America. One of our most famous railroad ghost legends. that of Lincoln's Train. falls into this group of stories.
Closely related to ghost trains are the phantoms in the second chapter. which highlights ghostly wreck reenactments. Usually realistic. often appearing on the anniversary of the tragedy, ghostly wreck reenactment legends can usually be traced to an accident that actually occurred.
The most common category of railroad ghost legends. haunts along the tracks, is discussed in the third and fourth chapters. Haunts along the tracks may be divided into two main identifiable types-headless ghosts and ghostly lights-both of which are discussed in Chapter Three. What is perhaps the most famous American railroad ghost-the Maco Light-shows up among the ghostly lights along the tracks. The remaining stories of ghosts along the tracks, grouped together for convenience's sake in Chapter FMK are a ghostly miscellany of shape-changing phantoms, ghostly music. ghostly mist. ghost tramps and more.
The fourth category is Chapter Five's haunted tunnels. the most famous of these being West Virginia's Big Bend Tunnel. Big Bend Tunnel is the place where John Henry reportedly worked. died. became a legend in song and story-and then returned from the dead.
The most interesting thing about the stories in the final two categories. haunted railroad stations and haunted rail cars. is how few of them there are. It is difficult to account for the lack of legends about haunted train stations, outlined here in Chapter Six. At first thought. it seems that haunted stations would be commonplace: after all. train stations were an important part of most American communities and have often survived to the present day. Yet they seem much less likely to be haunted than houses, for example. The only explanation that suggests itself is that they were rarely the scene of a fatality. Although train stations were often the settings of tragic personal events, seldom did anyone actually die in one. The release of psychic energy. whether actual or psychological, brought about by a death does seem to be what causes most hauntings.
In the case of rail cars, engines and rolling stock. discussed in Chapter Seven, the explanation for the dearth of legends is probably transience. The same passenger rarely sees the same sleeping car. for example. and that sleeper may only have a service life of twenty or thirty years. Its hard for ghost legends to form about an object that's always in motion, and that isn't visited by the same people on a regular basis.
Finally. what about the most interesting ghostly subject of all. the question that anyone studying ghosts is asked over and over again? We have to accept that, at least as things stand now. it is impossible to say whether ghosts really exist: whether any of these legends has a basis in observed fact. Perhaps we'll never know if ghosts are reported because they really manifest themselves or because people have a deep-set need to believe in the possibility of existence after death. The issue. of course. has been a subject of debate for centuries.
This book does not try to answer any of these deep philosophical questions: it merely retells railroad ghost stories. Whatever the reason for their prominence. ghosts play a crucial role in our thought and legend. Not surprisingly. then. ghosts have become an important part of railroad folklore over the years. and railroad ghost stories are well worth studying on their own account.
Rather than analyzing and getting my thoughts in your way. I've chosen to assume that what the American people have said about these stories down through the years is true. This approach allows us to present America's railroad ghost legends. categorize them. and seek for the kernel of truth that tends to lie at the center of every piece of folklore. Some of the stories are famous. some of them are obscure. but all of them are redolent of coal smoke and signal oil. and of railroad days gone by.
I just hope you enjoy reading the stories as much as I enjoyed finding them.
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