Since no one else is getting into the spirit of Halloween looks like I’ll have to start the ball rolling.
There’s an old ghost story that goes around that a trainman was decapitated in the performance of his duties and his head was never found. To this day he still seaches for his head. I’ve heard many versions of this story. Some say he was guarding a washed out brige, damaged track, he fell asleep and other versions say he was an engineer, a conductor, a cabooseman, and switchman. Most of these stories origionate in the Southeast United States, although there’s probably other versions in other states and across the world. I found a website last year about this story. http://www.geocities.com/trampingground/Macolights.html
I’m not asking for the true version, that would be rediculous. I’m just asking if you have any ghost train stories with trains? Or maybe you have more details on the one above. Or just make one up, I don’t care.
The only other ghost train story I’ve heard about is the Abraham Lincoln ghost funeral train. Is that thing still around?
Oh, and why did I type the subject line in all caps and make it possibly misleading? Well, your reading this now arn’t you? [:D] Gotcha! Happy Halloween! [}:)]
I know there’s a few across the river in NJ with a similar story, rail worker killed and then haunting the line he was killed on. There’s also one about a ghost train on an abandoned line, at http://www.weirdnj.com/_ghosts/hookerman.html
Doggoneit! Mikeygaw story there just reminded me one in Wichita. Very soon after the BN-SF merger they took the old Frisco line out of service, the one that goes from Wichita through Andover, Augusta, and down into in southeast Kansas. This means that at grade level crossings they’ve removed a small section of rail. There are also several places where the tracks have been torn out. In Augusta parts of the tracks have been washed out because of floods.
My dad I were talking to some guy that worked for the railroad sometime between 1996-1999. Somehow we got to talking about crazy experinces with trains and the guy told us how some lady in Wichita kept calling to complain about the loud trains blowing their horns all the time. The railroad she was complaining about is the one out of service. She happens to live next to these tracks. This guy told her it’s impossible for trains to go over that line but the lady swears up and down she heard and saw a train on it. This is after those short rail sections had been removed.
Simple explantion: There are active tracks all over Wichita, she probably heard one those trains, probably also go confused.
Or: it could be a ghost train. The tracks go by the university and when I was going to school there I never heard or saw nothing on those abandoned tracks. Infer what you will.
(btw: I like your signiture: that’s my other favorite Ralph Wiggum quote.)
I’ve heard the NJ one before. A friend of my father’s, a minister actually, was quite an expert on NJ forklore. As I remember it, on certain nights you could see his lantern swinging as he walked down the tracks looking for his lost head. And then ther was something esle about a Jersey Devil, the garden state version of bigfoot…who only seemed to visit kids who didn’t finish dinner or clean their rooms.
You guys are funny. Truth be told, in the hallway that connects our offices, we have a clipping from a tabloid (don’t recall which–does it matter?) telling a story about the headless rail worker looking for his head–and his smokes.
'Course, that’s up there with a bunch of other bizarre things we find or that people send us. It’s a delightfully weird group of guys I work with up here.
Hey, I worked with that guy a few trips ago. He was my brakeman! They did find his head, finally. Someone was using it for a paperweight in the yardoffice, When it started stinking, they threw it out. Head and owner were reunited. Now I feel bad about telling him that he needed to get his head on straight! What a insensitive jerk I am.
Ken
Well it looks like the Ghost stories are back., I don’t Quite have any Enthrawling Ghost stories to tell, But i do know about the headless conductor… thats what it sais in my ghost book at least