W hen I was young, I would lie in bed and listen to the non-stop train traffic as the engines curled around the big bend that arched along the Little Juniata River, a stream that meandered just a couple hundred yards from my family’s house in Tyrone, Pennsylvania. Like a ghost that rattles its chains or screams in the night, the train could often be heard long before there was any visible manifestation. First, the engine’s banshee horn moaned—part warning, part celebration—as it neared the station a few miles away, then the throaty diesel engine roared as it got closer, the percussive ensemble of steel wheels slapped along steel tracks and, finally, the rhythmic stomp of cars rocked along the rails.
At night, if I looked out the window, I could see a train headlamp scanning the path ahead, like a lost soul.
And, moments later, it was all gone. Vanished.
The whole encounter seemed ghostly to me.
Railroads, too, haunted the past of my community. The sounds of trains that came through town continually gave me a sense of comfort. These machines and the people who worked on them—people like my grandfather and dozens of others in my town—were delivering fuel and food, and who knows what else. They carried travelers home to loved ones waiting just beyond the horizon, where the rusty parallel tracks merged into one. When the railroad reigned as king in central Pennsylvania, the industry also invested heavily in the communities and in the workers and their families. The companies built bridges and developed infrastructure, constructed massive factories and roundhouses, and carved paths through the limestone-studded mountains. For the workers, these companies didn’t just provide jobs. They also built parks and recreation facilities for the workers and their families.
As the rail industry became less profitable and, therefore, less important, and as freight and passenger money switched more often to cars and trucks, these giant companies—the Pennsylvania Railroad and Conrail, for example—faded, too, taking away jobs and that precious community support.
But evidence still remains of the central role the railroad played in the region. Some of the old buildings remain. They’re vacant and idle, but the facades and shells are visible. A few station houses and other railroad outbuildings still stand. Several bridges are intact. And trains continue to run—bound for glory—through the hills and across the fields.
But that’s not the only reminder that’s left of the once-dominant railroad industry. There are ghost stories. Lots of them.
In Haunted Rails, you’ll find many tales of ghost trains that glide silently through the countryside along long, unused stretches of rails, legends of engineers and crew members who perished in tragic crashes but continue to haunt railroad landmarks, and stories about railroad workers who still show up for work years after their deaths. These are some of the most common motifs in a subsection of haunted mythology and folklore—often referred to as ghostlore.
Some of the stories I collected for this book can’t quite be classified as ghostlore because the people who tell the tales are real people who claim they have had real encounters with some of these railroad spirits. I usually dub these stories “ghost accounts” or “paranormal encounters.”
There are some stories that combine both the elements of ghostlore and paranormal encounters to create a genre all their own. In one case, a town’s railroad ghostlore led to the discovery of an actual mass grave and, possibly, evidence of a mass murder.
All these stories are covered here, and you can decide whether the accounts are real ghost stories, made-up mythology, or, quite possibly, something in between.
Check your itinerary. It looks like your first stop is a visit to places where ghost trains are rumored to still ride the rails and spirits are said to lurk in railroad cars and cabooses. That’s all ahead in the first chapter: Ghost Trains, Haunted Engines, and Haunted Cabooses.
All aboard!