--- Chapter 2 ---
You don’t see those old cabooses traveling the rails like you used to, but at one time, the venerable cars brought up the rear of a train as surely as a period rides at the end of a sentence.
Times have changed and, due to new technologies, the caboose has become irrelevant. Crews no longer need a command center, which is basically what the caboose served as. Over time, train companies sold their cabooses, or just scrapped them. For some entrepreneurs, though, the cool-looking, almost romantic-looking, living spaces on rails made a tempting business prospect. They believed that they could turn the caboose into hotel rooms. What a lot of these entrepreneurs didn’t know was that the caboose is the railroad equivalent of a haunted house. Crews basically lived in cabooses, and those living quarters apparently became after-life living quarters for the ghosts of railroad crew members, and even some passengers.
In the next few pages, you’ll visit just some of the cabooses, which may have been the last car in the train but is definitely not last in tales of haunted trains and train cars.
Possessed Caboose
Topeka, Kansas
By this point in the book, you probably already have some sense that nearly all haunted railroad stories can be a bit hard to believe at times. But even among the tales of the strange and unbelievable, you’ll find some haunted rail tales are really unbelievable, like our next one: a story about a spirit-driven caboose. Yet, strangely, there have been credible witnesses who seem to back up these outlandish claims.
Just like other pieces of haunted railroad equipment, cabooses are said to be home to spirits. In previous tales, we have reviewed stories about ghost trains—the ghostly engines pulling cars that can appear one moment and just as easily vanish the next. Our next story about a ghost caboose is different. Way different. The witnesses to this bizarre phenomenon—first reported in the late nineteenth century—claimed that a caboose wasn’t just haunted by a spirit; it was, in some ways, a spirit itself. And the caboose didn’t pop in and out of existence, like some of the haunted trains we’ve discussed. No, this caboose was real enough. However, witnesses said the caboose could do weird things, like drive itself down rails and even defy the laws of physics by chugging up and over hills (remember, cabooses aren’t self-propelled). The story is told in the pages of Topeka State Journal.
According to the newspaper article, railroad workers for the Louisville and Nashville (L&N) railroad began to notice something was amiss with a caboose that had recently been involved in a horrible accident. Each tale about the caboose—number 1908—became increasingly more bizarre. Witnesses said that old 1908 would shimmy and shake while the train was stopped and otherwise motionless. It would jump and lurch, even when it stood alone on the track.
Perhaps the most incredible tale about the 1908 occurred when it decided it no longer needed a locomotive to drag it around anymore. It could violate the laws of physics on its own, thank you very much. One day, while the caboose sat on a side track in Richmond, Virginia, workers said the caboose suddenly lurched into operation, traveled down the track, up a hill, over an embankment, and into a nearby field. What’s even weirder: when the men ran to the scene, they confirmed that all of the brakes were set.
But the men had known old 1908’s haunted behavior a long time before that incident. Crews who rode in the caboose reminded people that this was the same caboose that would start to shake and hop at odd moments.
The idea that 1908 seemed to have a mind and a life of its own was no longer a question for the workers of the L&N. They wanted to know why the caboose was possessed, or, more precisely, who possessed the caboose.
A few theories swirled around about the possessed caboose. One explanation, though, climbed to the top of how a normal old railroad caboose suddenly became possessed. According to the newspaper, years before the activity began, a train pulling freight cars and old 1908 ran over a man right outside of Lexington. It’s believed that the spirit of this man possesses the caboose. As proof, theorists cite an incident that occurred at the crossing of the Russell Cave pike, the spot where the fatal accident occurred years earlier. Witnesses said that as the train carrying 1908 pulled through the crossing, it suddenly stopped. A few seconds of silence and stillness passed. Then, old 1908 began to “quiver and shake and crawl and creep like a man who had just awakened from a hideous nightmare,” the newspaper stated. Meanwhile, the rest of the train never budged and seemed unaffected by whatever “vibrations” had possessed its caboose.
The strange activity continued, according to the newspaper account.
“The lanterns and lamps danced up and down and flickered and waved viciously though not a breath of air was stirring,” the newspaper reports. “The brake beams and rods under old ‘1908’ groaned and creaked, though no other sound came from any other part of the train.”
This whole incident was terrifying enough for the train’s crew, but things would turn even creepier.
Just as old 1908 settled down and the train began to resume its journey, the men claimed they heard a horrifying scream. The shriek didn’t come from in the caboose. It came from under it.
They only had a few seconds to process this horrifying event when more unexplainable activity broke out. They said that the caboose began to jump up and down on the tracks “as if to escape some tormentor.”
Who the tormentor was, the men could only offer guesses. But the crew, who had years of railroad experience, knew a few things for sure. They knew of no other force that could shake a solidly built caboose, or lift it off the tracks. Whatever force caused the phenomena didn’t seem to be related to any natural occurrence that they had experienced in their careers. Skeptics might suggest a minor earthquake, or the work of a few trickster coworkers, but none of those explanations satisfied the men.
While the ghost of old 1908 seemed to fade into history, these men, no doubt, went on telling stories to generations of new railroad workers about their encounter with not a haunted caboose, necessarily, but a ghost-possessed caboose.
Haunted Caboose, Female Ghost
Rockford, Kentucky
Let’s face it: some haunted railroad cars are just luckier than others. In haunted railroad lore you have ghosts of rough-and-tough yard workers, a bunch of spirits of hard-working brakemen—some with a few limbs missing—and even the specters of some decapitated conductors. But a caboose, number 17,736—owned by a Kentucky railroad—had a far more elegant, and a far more reliable apparition gracing the crew quarters.
Reports that a female ghost haunted the caboose came from an impeccable source. J. H. Riley, a seasoned and well-regarded conductor for a couple of railroad companies, said the ghost of a woman frequently appeared at the same window seat in the rear of the caboose. Riley got a good look at the woman. He described her as slender and pale with a “sad, though beautiful, face.” The spirit had some fashion sense, too, sporting a broad-brimmed hat that perfectly suited her elegant countenance.
An account, which appeared in the July 6, 1888, issue of the Enquirer, adds, “The dress and garments are plain and modest and impress one with the belief that the owner was formerly a neatly attired lady and had, perhaps, been making a brief call on friends.”
Riley had such a good look at the woman because, unlike most ghosts who appear and disappear on a whim, this spirit would stay in the caboose for hours as long as she wasn’t disturbed. Usually, the ghost appeared when no one was in the caboose, but she could be seen through the caboose’s external and internal windows. As soon as someone opened the door to the caboose or rushed up the steps, she typically vanished.
This is a caboose used by the Michigan Central Railroad between 1900 and 1920.
The testimony of the conductor is bolstered by his status as a former skeptic. The apparition first tested, then blasted through, his skepticism, he told the reporters. When Riley first saw the ghost, he immediately investigated, trying to debunk the phenomena. He had the entire interior of the caboose carefully examined, looking for any natural explanations. Riley and his coworkers never found any way that the ghostly image of the woman could be an optical illusion—such as a weird reflection off the window, for example, or an errant shadow falling on the seat.
But they knew what they had seen.
Throughout the years, crews would get especially jumpy when the train was forced to stop during its trips through the mystical and spooky mountains of Kentucky. Crews said that when the train paused, they heard strange noises in the caboose, noises that didn’t seem to have any natural source.
Other witnesses stepped forward. According to the newspaper account, many citizens of the Kentucky town who, like Riley, also had impeccable reputations, said they also saw the ghost of the lady. One man said he didn’t just see the ghost but spoke with her. He said she spoke with him in a very sorrowful tone before she started to cry. Another man said the spirit followed him out of the caboose and gestured for him to return. When he did, she had disappeared, but laughter echoed throughout the caboose.
Long before people began to charge to visit haunted houses, the caboose kind of became a paranormal tourist attraction. People gathered along the tracks to watch caboose number 17,736 chug by. Some said they saw what looked like a misty apparition float out of the window of the caboose and fly “through the space like the fairies of an enchanted tale.”
The haunting of 17,736 caused such a stir that, logically, people began to speculate just whose spirit was haunting the caboose. According to the Enquirer’s story, people believed a woman who was injured in a railroad-related accident lived long enough to issue a curse on her deathbed. She said that as revenge for taking her life, she would haunt the railroad and its men. Other theories are less ominous. For instance, there is a theory that the woman is the wife of a man who died in an accident and who later died herself, the victim of a broken heart.
Several witnesses have stepped forward to corroborate the latter explanation for the haunting, according to the article. The witnesses—family members of the deceased lovesick woman—claim that they had been near the caboose when they heard the voice of a female sorrowfully calling out the name of her departed husband. They immediately knew it was the voice of their dead relative.
There are other strange stories attached to the ghost of 17,736. For instance, a legend grew that if a person disturbed the ghost of the caboose as she sat in her favorite seat, bad things would follow. The ghost, it seems, had a power to curse.
Besides this one newspaper article, it’s hard to find much more information about the haunted caboose. Old 17,736—and the broken-hearted woman—seem to have finally and, hopefully, restfully faded away.
Haunted Caboose Hotels
The dependable old caboose tagged along at the end of a train like a faithful pet. But it had several important functions. For example, conductors used the caboose as a mobile office to fill out paperwork. Crews staffed the caboose to stand watch from the cupola, checked on brakes, and generally got some rest. As mentioned, technology replaced most of these duties, and cabooses, one of the endearing pieces of the railroading operation, finally faded into obsolescence.
Sadly, many cabooses headed not to a well-deserved retirement for their faithful service, but to the scrap yard. Some remain, rusting away in railyards.
But other entrepreneurs felt the nostalgia people had for the caboose and sensed an opportunity. As mentioned previously, these entrepreneurs saw that these former railroad crew quarters would make excellent rooms for travelers as an attractive alternative to the same-old hotel and bed-and-breakfast stays. These railroad rescuers bought the cabooses—fairly inexpensively—and reconditioned them to their former glory.
A lot of these entrepreneurs had no idea that the sale of the relics included a different sort of railroad relic—spirits of the country’s locomotive past.
Featherbed Inn
Upper Lake, California
Located in the heart of California’s wine country, Featherbed Inn features nine vintage railroad cabooses that serve as rooms for guests. The owners decorated each caboose to reflect a theme, such as “Orient Express,” “Casablanca,” and the “Wild, Wild West.” Each caboose has an individual style and flare. And some of these pieces of railroad past and hotel future have ghosts.
Although it’s hard to say when the hauntings started, the current owners, June and Paul Vejar, said the ghosts were intact when they purchased the property. Guests and staff have recorded their run-ins with the paranormal at the Featherbed Inn for the past few years.
The ghosts are suspected in a series of mystifying events at the inn. The windows on the Santa Fe and Southern Pacific cabooses appear to be the focus of paranormal activities. Guests have closed the windows and then, a few moments later, find that someone has opened them again, even though no one else was with them in the caboose. Even the owners report this activity.
“When we first bought the place I would walk by one of the cabooses and the window would be open,” June said in a promotional video about the hotel. “There was nobody in there. I would go back in and shut the window. I’d walk back by and the window was open again. This went on for a couple of months and they finally, I guess, decided to not mess with me anymore.”
The owners also notice that objects, like soap and toiletries, appear to teleport. They set the soap down in one bathroom, then they go back to check on the room and the soap has disappeared, only to reappear in the bathroom of another caboose.
Closet doors have also been known to open and close by themselves.
While skeptics might attribute this activity to typical maintenance issues with old railroad relics, or just absent-minded guests and hoteliers, other phenomena are harder to explain away. The phantom footsteps are a good example. One guest told the owners that a disturbing noise woke her from a restful sleep. She heard the pounding of feet coming up the steps to the caboose she had rented. The footsteps sounded purposeful. At first, the guest thought her husband had returned from his morning walk, but when she looked out the window, there was no one there—and her husband returned much later, so it wasn’t him.
The guest realized something else: if the ghost had walked up the steps to her door, he might still have been in the room with her because she had never heard him leave.
“And she didn’t hear anyone walk back down,” June said. “She just heard footsteps coming up.”
One apparition has been reported too. Witnesses have claimed to see a man in a striped suit, but his identity remains somewhat of a mystery. And, while the ghost or ghosts haunting the cabooses are not always seen, people say they can be heard. Some guests say they can plainly hear someone call their name, but when they look around the caboose, there’s no one there.
So, who’s haunting the inn? There are a few guesses. Former owners of the property are among the suspects behind the paranormal activity. Other people suggest the cabooses are haunted by railroad workers who once lived and toiled in the cabooses.
The Canyon Motel
Williams, Arizona
Owners of another popular destination that converted cabooses into motel rooms have a similar problem—or opportunity, depending on the guest’s willingness to confront the weird and unexplained. The owners of the Canyon Motel in Williams, Arizona, say their guests and members of the staff have reported strange activity after their stay in Caboose #2.
Guests and motel workers have compiled a long list of paranormal phenomena in the caboose, including strange noises, lights and lamps that turn on and off by themselves, and moving objects. A housekeeper said she could hear people talking and whispering in the caboose during the middle of the day when the room was completely empty.
There’s even a report that an apparition of a man, who looks as though he’s dressed as a railroad conductor from years ago, wanders through the caboose swinging a lantern.