--- Chapter 1 ---
GHOST TRAINS,
HAUNTED ENGINES,
AND HAUNTED CABOOSES
In this chapter, we will delve into a unique piece of railroad ghostlore: the ghost train. This requires some explaining. We’re accustomed to the notion of a haunted house, but what about haunted trains? These are trains that supposedly attract the ghostly interactions of spirits, entities, poltergeists, and any of the other cast of characters listed in the paranormal panoply.
But ghost trains are different: the apparition is the entire train.
In this chapter, there are examples of macabre ghost trains and ones that are mostly untethered from any human engineer or railroad crew.
Next, though, we patiently wait along the tracks on a pitch-black April night for a ghost train that some say appears each year—a grim reminder of a funeral train that rose from the ashes of a divided nation and animated by the spirit of an assassinated president.
Abraham Lincoln Ghost Train
Illinois
We’ll start our journey aboard one of the oldest, and certainly the most famous ghost trains: the Abraham Lincoln funeral train.
As the winds of the Civil War blew across the country, United States military officials ordered the construction of a train that would be used expressly for President Abraham Lincoln. The military thought the President could use the train not just as a means of transportation but as a symbolic way to unify the country once the war was over. The train would lead a grand victory tour of the country, or so they thought.
The military even briefed Lincoln on the train tour. But the president, somewhat strangely, wanted no part of the idea. On the surface, Lincoln’s argument against a presidential train was simple: it cost too much. But aides wondered if something else bugged Lincoln, a man known for his deep intuitive, and some would suggest, psychic powers. They just couldn’t figure out why Lincoln protested so vehemently against the presidential train proposal.
Despite Lincoln’s protest, there would be a presidential train, which would be named the Old Nashville. In fact, some sources indicate the president finally arranged an official visit and tour of the train. His tour was scheduled for April 15, 1865, the day he was assassinated.
Sadly, instead of a grand victory tour, the train pulled the Great Emancipator on a grand tour into the afterlife. On that drizzly morning of April 19, 1865, the weather matched the mood of the nation. Approximately 10,000 people gathered to watch Lincoln’s legendary funeral train depart from the depot in Washington, DC, on a circuitous journey to Springfield, Illinois. Draped in dark garlands, the nine-car train passed through more than 400 communities during the journey, traveling through the main stops of Baltimore, Maryland; Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; New York City; Albany, New York; Buffalo, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis, Indiana; Michigan City, Indiana; and Chicago, Illinois, before arriving at the president’s final resting place in Springfield, Illinois, on May 3, 1865. Officials picked the route to reverse Lincoln’s inauguration journey to the White House.
This train car carried the body of President Abraham Lincoln to his final resting place in Illinois.
Paranormal theorists suggest that the trauma the nation suffered during Lincoln’s assassination ensured that this funeral train could never truly reach its final destination, and that it must continue to retrace that somber route on the anniversary of the event for eternity.
Some people who are brave enough, or crazy enough, to wander near the railroad lines that were once part of the funeral train’s original itinerary say a strange feeling has served as a premonition that something is about to happen. They say it feels like time is standing still. Literally. The hands of their watches don’t seem to move and the numbers of digital time-keeping devices never advance.
If it’s a clear night, witnesses say clouds drift over the moon to make the night pitch black.
Then, the sounds of a train—the grinding steel wheels and the sizzling of steam—echo across the dark night sky. A blinding glare of an engine’s spotlight appears on the horizon and the rest of the train slowly emerges. Witnesses who see the train say it’s a near-exact likeness of the pictures of the funeral train published in history books and seen on video documentaries about the event. But there are a few differences. For example, some claim that the train belches huge explosions of fire, not listed as one of the options on the president’s official mortal locomotive.
As the spectral train passes, witnesses see that it’s not just a ghost train: it’s a ghost train filled with ghosts. People report that through the train windows they can see a coffin laid out, covered in an American flag. Watching over the coffin are a squad of silent, stoic men, who are the spirits of dead Union soldiers that must guard the body of the president for eternity.
Witnesses say that after the train passes, watches or timepieces restart, but have usually lost about eight minutes.
Ghostlore or Something More?
It sounds like a great piece of American ghostlore, which is just folklore and legends that center on spirits. But has anyone actually seen, or even thought they’ve seen the Lincoln funeral train for real? The answer is: maybe.
While all kinds of ghost hunting evidence, such as electronic voice phenomena (EVP) and photographic anomalies, have been collected about haunted railroad phenomena throughout the world, that type of hard evidence is especially difficult to find about the Abraham Lincoln funeral ghost train.
A few personal accounts do exist from people who purport to have a run-in with the funeral ghost train. An anonymous account found on the Seeking Ghosts blog suggests that some of these paranormal buffs have captured more than just folklore. The details of this story read like much of the folklore collected about the funeral train, but it starts—unlike the legend—in a car at a railroad crossing near a depot. According to the writer, he was stopped at the depot on an exceptionally dark night. He saw two railroad workers chatting on the train platform. Besides him and the workers, there was no one else around.
As he lifted his foot from the brake and began to press on the gas pedal, the arms of the railroad crossing gate fell and its lights began to flash. Then an odd train whistle shrieked, but it sounded different from the usual diesel-powered trains that frequently travel through the town. In fact, the approaching train looked completely different from the modern trains the writer frequently saw. This was an old-fashioned steam engine. Even more bizarre, the train tugged several antique cars, all draped in black crepe, he wrote. He also noticed that the train didn’t make a sound as it chugged toward him.
As he watched the engine pull into the depot, a blue glow surrounded the entire length of the train. It stopped briefly at the depot. The train slowed and stopped at the depot platform. The whistle blew once more. As the locomotive drew closer, the anonymous witness said he had a chance to take a much closer look, maybe too close of a look.
“One train car that stopped directly in front of me was decked out even more ornately,” he wrote. “I saw through its large windows a coffin. It dawned on me that this must be a funeral coach. An honor guard of soldiers watched over the casket inside. When I looked closer, I was taken aback, for these soldiers appeared to be skeletons.”
He even wrote that he saw a band on the train—a skeleton band, to be exact.
“To the side of this car a band of soldiers played slowly what I assumed was a dirge,” the writer added. “They, too, were skeletons dressed in midnight blue uniforms. I realized that I heard no music.”
The train disappeared into the night just as silently and frightfully as it had appeared. Before it completely vanished, a final echo of the phantom whistle pealed into the night.
Entranced by the spectral and skeletal spectacle, the writer suddenly remembered the workers on the platform, who remained frozen like statues as the train passed. Probably scared stiff. But at least there were other witnesses, he thought.
He said he left his car to talk to the men.
“My legs shaking, I got out of my car and walked to where the other two men stood. When I questioned them, they told me that no train was scheduled to travel through town that night.”
And now we are left with this question: Is this just a good piece of fiction writing, or is there something more going on along the path of American history’s saddest train trip?
Any Evidence of a True Haunting?
Accounts of actual encounters with the funeral ghost train, like the one discussed above, are fairly standard and similar. A quick web search will bring up a few. Newspapers also have a few articles, some stretching back decades, about visits from the funeral ghost train.
However, it’s hard to find accounts of any witnesses who will sign their name to it.
When in doubt, I usually rely on paranormal investigation teams to provide some actual evidence of any real encounter with the Abraham Lincoln funeral ghost train. Maybe a train horn caught using electronic voice phenomenon equipment? An image of a ghost train snapped by a digital camera?
Unfortunately, I came up empty here as well. In fact, I haven’t been able to track down a paranormal team that investigated the annual visit of the funeral train, let alone any evidence they might have collected.
And that’s okay.
Ghostlore is an important way to connect with history. Each time you tell a ghost story, or repeat a bit of ghostlore, you’re helping to pass on, in a way, a history lesson. The story of Lincoln’s train is a great case study. The story reminds us on a yearly basis of the great man’s accomplishments, as well as his sacrifices.
Still, if you’re stopped at a railroad crossing some midnight in April and your watch suddenly stops as a steam engine carrying skeleton soldiers and band members crosses in front of you, make sure you send me a note, or an email.
Rebel Ghost Train Rises Again
West Point, Virginia
Historians consider Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson one of the early masters of incorporating the railroad into actual military campaigns. In his brilliant Shenandoah campaign in 1862, Jackson used the near-magical speed of trains to help deceive his Union enemy. In one bold move, Jackson marched his army out of the Shenandoah Valley toward Richmond, Virginia, leaving his Union counterparts to conclude Jackson’s troops were retreating, or were responding to orders to reinforce the Confederate capital. Once out of sight, though, the Confederates hopped a ride on a train and stealthily arrived back in the valley, where Jackson launched a violent surprise attack on Union armies, sending them into a disorganized retreat.
But Jackson wasn’t the only one who recognized the strategic and tactical military advantage of the railroad. In fact, you might say that the military capacity and value of the railroad came of age during the Civil War. It also made trains, railroad factories, and the rail lines themselves tempting targets of rampaging raiders and cavalry units.
That might explain the following story from the Tidewater region of Virginia.
For years, residents of nearby West Point, Virginia, have claimed they have seen strange lights hovering just down the tracks from a railroad crossing located on Route 30. One of the explanations for the ghost lights goes back to the Civil War. According to the tale, a train full of wounded Confederate soldiers who were urgently needed for a looming battle never arrived at its destination. When rescuers rode up the line to see what had happened, thinking perhaps the train had broken down, the mystery only deepened. There were no signs of either the train, or its passengers. The train had seemingly disappeared.
But trains don’t just disappear. People quickly guessed at what had happened: Union raiders stumbled onto the train and attacked; they killed all the soldiers on board and then burned the train. Another guess: the Union soldiers stole the train.
Whatever had happened, there are those who believe the lights that play along the train tracks are evidence that the train is gone, but that the ghost train will live forever. People still claim it’s now a ghost train that continues to roll down the spectral tracks near West Point. Some people see the lights of an old-fashioned steam train and hear its phantom bell and whistle.
Like all good railroad spook stories, though, this tale features some clever historical revisionism mixed in with some actual weird phenomena. People really do spot strange lights and orbs at the crossing.
For instance, a few members of the West Point Historical Society told the Virginia Gazette that they’ve witnessed the lights. The description of those lights—the color, how high off the ground, and the number—varies from witness to witness. Member Edwin Malechek told the paper he first saw the lights back in the 1960s when he and his friends were out for a summer adventure. Malechek, along with his friends, saw something that looked “like a big flashlight” swaying back and forth. He said it was spotted on the eastern side of the crossing beyond the tree line.
Another member of the historical society, Donald O’Connor, said he had his own brush with haunted Civil War rails. O’Connor, also of the historical society, said he and his group of high school friends saw the light a few times. When he and his buddies saw the light, which he described as fuzzy and round, they claimed it hovered just above the train tracks. He told the newspaper he saw the light on two occasions.
One witness told a more graphic tale in an email sent to Haunted VA Blogspot, a website that focuses on Virginia-area hauntings. He said a whole bunch of witnesses got a good look at the light when it appeared.
“Everyone gasped in shock at the exact same moment, which tells me it wasn’t any kind of figment or our eyes playing tricks on us,” he wrote.
They thought it might be some local trickster but then discounted that: the area is remote and there were no signs of other vehicles.
The writer continued: “It looked like a welding arc. It was bright and shimmered for about three or four seconds and vanished. It appeared very far away. The second time it appeared as red, moving from left to right and it illuminated the tops of the rails, so it was easy to gauge its distance. The light appeared to turn into several lights and they again vanished after about four seconds. It then appeared randomly four more times, each time moving closer to our location. The last two appearances were in quick succession about ten seconds apart and they very clearly illuminated the ground underneath.”
Based on all the testimonies from witnesses that stretch back over decades, it’s hard to discount that something is happening on those Tidewaters tracks, but not everyone buys the Civil War ghost train story.
First, there’s no historical record of Confederate trains disappearing there.
Local historian Bill Palmer told the Virginia Gazette that the way the story portrays the Union attack in the area is problematic. Confederates had stopped Union forces outside of Richmond. If the Confederates had decided to evacuate the wounded by train, they would have moved them away from the fighting to Richmond, not to West Point, Palmer added.
Palmer pointed out another anomaly. According to his research, the lights started to appear in the 1950s. “If they were Confederate ghosts, they waited almost 100 years before doing ghostly things,” he told the paper.
Still, he does admit that this section of rail, like a lot of tracks, has its share of tragedies. A train derailed in the 1880s, but no deaths were reported, and a mother and daughter died in a vehicle-locomotive accident in the 1950s.
And that might lead some ghost light believers to conjecture: If the lights started to appear in the 1950s, could the spook lights be related to this accident?
To that skeptics might add: Or does that just mean that the spook lights are nothing more than headlights?
The debate on the Confederate ghost train—like the ghosts of Civil War heroes and the spirits of restless train engineers—seem to be eternal.
Bravehaunts: The Ghost Trains of Scotland
Scotland
There’s something solemnly spooky about Scotland. Misty and majestic, the United Kingdom’s rugged northern land rightly takes its place as arguably the kingdom’s most haunted. And if ghosts do traverse the moors and mountains of Scotland, they probably take the train.
Scotland is the home to several tales about ghost trains that scream through the night. Some are related to incidents of the country’s railroad past. The origin of other stories is a little harder to nail down.
We’ll start with a disastrous train wreck, the echoes of which, apparently, are still resounding across the dark, moody waves.
Terror on the Tay Bridge
The Tay Bridge spans the Firth of Tay between Wormit and Dundee. In the late nineteenth century, the bridge, designed by Sir Thomas Bouch, stood as a testament to man’s ingenuity. Bouch received a knighthood from Queen Victoria, in part because of this achievement. But Mother Nature has an ingenuity all her own, and a destructive follow-through to match. On a December evening in 1879, a storm battered the bridge with side winds, causing a section of the mighty structure to tumble into the waves like it was made of matchsticks.
A train crossing the bridge plummeted into the water, killing all—at least 75—on board. But one more name would be added to that list. Bouch’s design never accounted for wind load. That, and other design problems, were blamed for the disaster. The engineer died within a year.
Since then, witnesses say that on the anniversary of the disaster, a ghost train crosses the Firth where the bridge once stood. More hauntedly, they say you can hear the screams.
Paranormal investigator Geoff Holder, author of Haunted Dundee, decided to spend the evening of the anniversary near the site of the collapse. He reported nothing strange happened that night—no screams and no apparitions of six-carriage trains appearing in mid-air.
But that hasn’t stopped some believers from continuing to tell the tale. After all, the Tay Bridge Train of Terror is just one of many ghost trains tied to the sites of railroad disasters.
Gorbals Ghost Train
Gorbals is a section of Glasgow that sits on the south bank of the river Clyde. It became a center of the city’s rapid industrialization, and steam-powered locomotives played a huge role in that.
This mixture of steam-powered and spirit-drenched Scotland produced an unforgettable encounter for Tom Rannachan, a psychic medium who writes about it in Psychic Scotland. According to Rannachan, as a child, he and a group of friends and family decided to investigate a claim that a ghost train still rode the rails of an abandoned section of track in Gorbals. In the evening, they climbed through nettles and up an embankment to reach the site. And it was nothing to look at—just a bunch of rusty rails.
The band of little ghost hunters stayed silent until someone shouted, “There’s a ghost train coming!” Rannachan can’t remember hearing or seeing anything out of the ordinary at that moment; he was too busy running. But when he reached their entry point he looked back.
“I swear there was this huge, dark steam train making its way along the tracks toward us,” he wrote. “I remember the whole scene as if it was yesterday; the smoke and the sound as the ghastly locomotive travelled along the broken tracks.”
But, Rannachan knows there’s a problem with his testimony. He’s a psychic. Maybe he just saw the whole thing through his mediumistic powers.
Rannachan wrote that he asked his cousin, who had accompanied him on the ghost train hunt, and she not only remembered the night in question but actually remembered the ghost train.
The psychic chalks up the adventure as just another night in the life of a psychic medium in Scotland, a place he calls “one of the most spiritually rich places on earth.”
Demon Train
Another source of railroad hauntings are accidents and crimes, and they prompt their share of ghosts. Strong personalities—railroad workers who just won’t die, for example—are another reason for railroad hauntings. Scotland has a unique Celtic twist to a tale of a spooky railroad legend. Celtic mythology suggests that nature spirits inhabit the earth, the water, and the skies of the region we now refer to as the United Kingdom.
These spirits, natives say, must be appeased, or, at the very least, respected. The coming of the steam engine at the advent of the Industrial Age neither respected, nor made any attempt to appease, native spirits. And those spirits took their revenge.
In the Scottish Highlands, residents near the Kyle of Lochalsh say that when railroad engineers built a rail line through the countryside, the native spirits were angered. Their revenge: a ghost train. People said they’ve seen an ominous-looking black locomotive racing along the tracks. It doesn’t just send smoke and steam billowing into the air. Witnesses say it also shoots out flames.
They add that the train heads directly into those sacred Scottish hills.
And disappears.
A Time-Traveling Ghost Train?
South Wales
Two Welsh fishermen took a few moments to load up their tackle and gear and head home after another successful day on the stream. Although it’s unclear how many fish they caught, it was successful because, as the old saying goes, even a bad day fishing is better than your best day at work.
The men were fishing along a pristine stretch of one of the United Kingdom’s best trout streams. In the 1860s, this parcel was considered one of the finest spots for fishing because the Industrial Revolution, which was paving the rest of Europe, had happened to leave this spot of wilderness virtually untouched.
But the Industrial Revolution was about to make a loud, and spooky, introduction—or maybe it was about ready to make a loud premonition.
One of the men—who owned a nearby farm—was enjoying a little extra time on the river and lingered a bit longer than his friend. He later said that as he paused and lit his pipe, he felt the earth tremble slightly, or maybe it wasn’t trembling at all. It was, as he described it, a peculiar sensation. Everything was silent around him, but full of noise, he tried to explain. That tremble eventually erupted. It knocked the pipe out of his hand. Briefly, he thought about running away, but a shrill whistle froze him in place. He said he heard what could only be described as the grinding of thousands of wheels. He watched as a herd of horses reared up and ran—scared out of their wits—away from the noise and toward the stream.
Eventually, the terrible noise faded away, leaving the poor fisherman all alone with an incredible mix of fear and wonderment. What was the noise? What did he experience?
Those questions may have been answered years later when engineers tore a hole in the mountains near that spot to make way for the South Wales Railway.
The reporter wrote about the opening of that tunnel in the paper, Once A Week, saying, “The mouth of which opened at the very spot from whence what was now explained as a spectral train had issued, and upon opening day the farmer and a crowd of country folk upon the spot to witness the effect, which certainly exactly answered the description by him, even to the horses galloping into the Tav.”
Other elders of the towns surrounding the new railway claimed that they, too, saw a ghost train roaring across the valley long before the railroad was built.
Was it a premonition? Was it a time slip? Or was it another example of spectral trains?
Those questions remain unanswered.
Ghost Train of the Santa Ana
Santa Ana, California
Trains once chugged along the line that ran northwest from Santa Ana, California, to Anaheim. Built in the late 1870s to early 1880s, the trains mostly transported freight to businesses located along the line.
In many ways, the Santa Ana line is a microcosm of how the automobile eventually edged out the railroad as a preferred way to transport passengers and goods. In the 1990s, officials wanted to widen a nearby highway, meaning the railroad would lose its right of way.
The Santa Ana line was abandoned and now serves more as a hiker’s destination than anything else.
But some of these hikers tell us that just because you abandon a rail line, the rail line doesn’t necessarily abandon you. Folk tales and actual witness accounts still circulate—and maybe have even escalated—about the area’s haunted activity and, in particular, a ghost train that still plows through this haunted section.
While walking along the path and taking pictures of the tracks, one witness wrote in Backpackerverse, a forum for hikers, that he heard what sounded like laughter. But you’ll excuse him for not joining in: it wasn’t that type of laughter. He described the sound as a bit creepy—sweet and naughty but not childish. The weird laughing sent a chill up his spine.
He initially thought he wanted to abandon his photographic hike.
“I wanted to turn away and leave,” he wrote. “My friends were all heading back into town; I got my photographs of the tracks. After hours of shooting, I was ready to leave.”
Then, something knocked him to the ground—he remained on his knees, unable to move. His camera fell, eventually resting a few feet away from him. He reached out for the camera, but it moved away from him. It was like something was pulling the camera away and down the railroad line.
Kneeling there in the middle of the tracks, the witness suddenly felt incredibly vulnerable. And the paranormal activity was just starting to heat up. He could feel it ramp up physically, emotionally, and spiritually.
“The laughter got louder; the air got hotter. Sweat broke along my spine, and my hands felt clammy. I shivered despite the heat.”
The next moment, he heard something that he never expected to hear on a section of abandoned railroad tracks—the sound of metal wheels rolling along metal tracks. And it sounded like this ghost train was bearing down on him.
He hit the deck and prepared for the worst. The sound got louder and louder.
Fearing for his life and completely stunned by what he was experiencing, the witness managed to look up—and the shock only escalated.
“I did not want to look up, but I did not have a choice. There was a bright light, and I fell to my elbows, protecting my head. I couldn’t lie down.”
What kind of light? The light of an oncoming freight train?
He had no time to react and then felt heat all around him. He thought he was a goner, about to be hit by an oncoming phantom train.
“I was burning and suffocating,” he added. “And then, it was gone. It was the longest minute of my life.”
What’s Behind the Haunting?
Stories about the abandoned tracks of the Santa Ana, like this one, sound exaggerated to the skeptic, and even the typically open-minded seeker, but the stories continue to intrigue paranormal enthusiasts. They wonder what could be behind a ghost train haunting.
They suggest a few theories. One of the leading theories suggests that hauntings are commonly linked to high-energy incidents. Violence and crime certainly fit the bill. And that section of California rail ran right through the wildest of the Wild West during its heyday. Gunfights and gamblers, robberies and horrific accidents are all part of the legacy of railroad history in Santa Ana. These paranormal buffs suggest that some of these incidents somehow became imprinted forever.
It’s not just people who can become spirits, paranormal enthusiasts say. It could be that an entire locomotive becomes embedded in the time-space continuum.
Sounds crazy, right? That is, it sounds crazy until you’re on your knees in the middle of Santa Ana’s abandoned tracks listening to maniacal laughter and hearing the angry gnash of metal wheels grinding along metal tracks heading right toward you.
Do Famous Sci-Fi Writers
Dream of Locomotive Spirits?
Point Reyes, California
There are a lot of witnesses to haunted railroad activity—train engineers and crew, rail workers, paranormal buffs, and just regular people who stumbled onto signs of the railroad’s paranormal power. But our next witness is probably the most famous haunted railroad experiencer ever.
According to several accounts, Philip K. Dick, one of the world’s most lauded science fiction authors and creator of Through a Scanner Darkly and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, said he believed ghost trains still traveled along a stretch of narrow gauge rails once operated by the North Pacific Coast Railroad.
The line once carried lumber, agricultural products, mail, and passengers from Sausalito to Cazadero. Before the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, the passengers and freight would hop a ferry to cross the bay to San Francisco.
Towns along the route have a considerable haunted history. And they have every reason to be haunted. Shipwrecks, accidents, and conflict cut the history of the area just as deeply as the rocky crevices and cliffs gouge the rugged shoreline of the scenic coastline that the steam engines of the North Pacific Coast Railroad and other lines once carefully navigated.
One of the more famous pieces of railroad ghostlore centers on a stretch of Marin Shore Railroad and the vengeful spirit of an angry railroad engineer who lost his most precious cargo: his daughter.
According to the story, which appeared in a Northwestern Pacific Railroad magazine in 1928, the engineer, named Mahoney, once lived in a camp in White Hill, California, a community settled by many railroad workers. Mahoney was a single father. His wife had died unexpectedly, leaving him alone to raise their beautiful daughter. Single-parenting is difficult enough today—imagine what it was like in the late nineteenth century. But he tried his best. Unfortunately, he couldn’t be everywhere at once and his job frequently took him far away for long stretches of time. The sweet, beautiful young lady drew the attention of many suitors. She met a man, who became her boyfriend. Eventually, the engineer’s daughter became pregnant. And then her boyfriend abandoned her.
Mahoney’s treasured daughter died during childbirth.
The townsfolk said Mahoney’s fury could not be soothed. He spent the rest of his life seeking to exact revenge on his daughter’s lover.
They say he is still looking.
People say that they have seen a ghost train—sometimes called the Fairfax Ghost Train—appear on stormy nights, just like the night that his dear daughter departed this world. They say it’s old Mahoney still seeking to avenge her death.
It’s a great piece of railroad folklore, but Philip K. Dick—or PKD, for short—who once lived in the area where the ghost story of Mahoney was told, may have had his own encounter with Mahoney, or, at least had a brush with another ghostly reminder of the region’s railroad past. Dick had an on-again, off-again relationship with the paranormal, according to biographers. At times, the writer claimed to have experienced time slips and predicted the future. He even believed he used these powers to miraculously diagnosis his child’s illness. At other times, he completely discounted psychic powers.
In a biography of the sci-fi writer, however, his former wife, Anne Dick, wrote that PKD had a few ghost stories. For example, he once saw the ghost of an elderly Italian man in his residence. The couple lived in the Point Reyes Station, where PKD did some of his most prolific writing, and the writer complained of hearing trains—ghost trains, to be exact. On windy nights, PKD told his wife he could hear the sound of steam engines chugging through Point Reyes Station. Indeed, narrow gauge trains did use tracks to move people and freight in and out of the town. There’s one problem with his report, though: narrow gauge trains ceased operations in the early 1900s, decades before the couple moved into the area.
Anne had a better explanation: it was the powerful winds that swept off the coast that made the steam train-like sounds.
It seems like a natural explanation, but with the stories of ghosts and tales of vengeful railroad spirits that sweep over this area just as powerfully as the coastal breeze, is that theory a little too simple to discount the idea that one of the world’s most perceptive, paranormally prone fantasy writers possibly tapped into the sounds of Point Reyes Station’s railroad past?
Ghost Train or Eerie Railroad Premonition?
Alberta, Canada
In the early twentieth century, it took a special person to serve as a crew member on board a speeding wagon of steel, iron, steam, and fire that we call a locomotive. A fireman, one of those train crew members, didn’t put out fires on board the train; he kept them lit so the powerful engine could keep the wheels churning toward the train’s ultimate destination. A railroad fireman, whose main duty was to shovel coal into a steam engine’s firebox, had to be smart, tough, strong, and willing to put up with long hours away from friends and family.
One fireman, however, discovered it took more than brains and brawn to be a member of a locomotive crew. It also apparently required nerves steady enough to withstand a direct encounter with the ultimate strangeness of railroad paranormal activity.
According to our next story—which comes from Spooky Canada, S. E. Schlosser’s book on railroad folklore legends, and a newspaper account of the incident—a series of horrific encounters haunted a fireman for the rest of his life.
The story begins on a May night of 1908. According to Andrew Staysko, a fireman on the Canadian Pacific Railway, he and the rest of the crew were about three kilometers (just under two miles) away from Medicine Hat when they noticed something strange on the horizon. A light appeared directly in front of them. And there was no mistaking it, the light looked like a headlamp of a rapidly approaching locomotive. The light grew larger and brighter with each passing second. There was no doubt now; the two trains were on a collision course without any hope for evasive action. The engineer reasoned that trying to stop the train would be pointless. It didn’t look like the oncoming train was trying to slow down, either. The engineer was a well-respected man named Twohey, one of the best engineers in the company. He yelled at his fireman to jump, with the hope that he would leap clear of what would soon be an inevitable mangled mess of metal.
But Staysko didn’t have time. He stood helplessly watching as the light from the approaching train barreled straight for him and his train.
For those last few seconds, the fireman contemplated his own mortality.
And then, when all seemed to be lost, the oncoming engine miraculously swerved to the right and continued on its path on rails parallel to the fireman’s train. That only troubled the poor fireman more because there were no parallel train tracks. This was a single-track line, Staysko stated. The crew watched as the ghost train eerily passed by them. They even saw the passengers in the ghost train staring back at them.
The ghost train let out an ear-shattering, heaven-piercing shriek of its horn. And just like that, it was gone.
According to Staysko, the crew made it to their destination unharmed and in one piece, but the incident had caused a great deal of damage, mainly psychological damage. Twohey decided to take some time off to recover. When he finally came back to his job as engineer, he asked to be assigned to work in the railyard, at least temporarily. At that time, the shock was still fresh in his mind and he had no desire to take command of a train that might cross paths with the ghost train that haunted the hills outside of town.
While the incident seriously scared Staysko, he decided not to give up his position. A fireman, after all, was a step on the fast track toward a career as a higher-paid engineer.
A few weeks later his ambition would again be tested. This time he tended the fire onboard a train headed by an engineer named J. Nicholson. While the engineer was different, the route was uncomfortably familiar. Again, the train chugged along on the tracks outside of Medicine Hat in the depth of night. They were right about where the first incident with the ghost train had occurred when the screech of a train whistle broke the silence of the cool night air.
The fireman looked out the window and thought it must be déjà vu. The bright light of an approaching train flooded the cab of the engine. And, just as before, an eerie visage of a train appeared right in front of the crew and a head-on collision seemed imminent.
The locomotive phantom, though, snapped to the right and ran alongside the train, as it did a few weeks prior. Nicholson and the fireman saw the same grim expressions etched on the faces of the passengers as the train faded into the night.
That was enough.
Promotion or no promotion, the fireman asked to be transferred temporarily to the yard division. That’s where he worked throughout the late spring and early summer before summoning up the courage to assume the role of fireman again.
One evening in early July, he was in the yard firing up an engine when he heard the devastating news. Two trains had collided outside of Medicine Hat. Staysko recognized from the description that the accident must have happened near the spot where he had his supernatural encounter with the ghost train.
Then he heard the names of the engineers: the engineer of the oncoming train was Bob Twohey.
At the helm of the second train?
Engineer J. Nicholson.
Scary Scandinavian Ghost Train
Stockholm, Sweden
Swedes sensed something different about the train, almost menacing. It stood out. Most trains in the Stockholm Metro service back in the 1960s were painted green. This train, though, shimmered in a silver sheen that inspired the train’s nickname, Silverpilen—or the Silver Bullet.
Built as a test model, manufacturers only produced one Silver Bullet. Swedes are probably happy about that. Ever since the construction of the flashy silver train, urban legends began to circulate that the train possessed supernatural powers, and even long after the model was discontinued and taken off the line, sightings of the eight-car Silver Bullet continue. And, what’s even freakier, this silver-colored ghost train has even been implicated in a series of mysterious time slips.
But first, let’s talk about the ghostly appearance of the Silverpilen. According to numerous sources and witnesses, people claim to be minding their own business at a train station when they see and hear a train approaching, usually coming in from out of the mist. This train, however, doesn’t look like the other trains on the line—and it sounds much different. The Silverpilen, it should be pointed out, had a special motor that produced a “whining” sound. That’s exactly how the ghost train witnesses describe the sound of this phantom on rails.
Often, stories from these witnesses suggest that despite the strange look and weird noises, they don’t give the train too much thought. Just another train. However, that indifference turns into complete astonishment when they watch the train pass by them and disappear into the mist.
Skeptics, of course, have a meteorological explanation—the train just becomes covered by a thick fog. It doesn’t actually disappear.
Or does it? A few witnesses claim that the train doesn’t just physically disappear; the sound of its engine abruptly stops as well.
And there are other accounts that indicate it’s more than just a blanket of mist that covers the train. The Silverpilen, somehow, is able to mask time and space. There are a few rumors of people who mistaken the silver bullet train for their ride and hop on. Oddly, when they exit the train, they say that they lost time—a five-minute ride took twenty minutes, for example. Fog might be dense, but can it warp the very nature of time?
More ominously, a few reports—unconfirmed, as far as I can tell—say there are people who got on the Silverpilen and never got off. Never.
While the Silverpilen has long been taken off the rails, the stories—or the urban legends, depending on where you fall on the supernatural belief spectrum—continue. In fact, this funky new train is considered one of Sweden’s biggest unsolved supernatural mysteries.