--- Chapter 3 ---
The first stop on our ride along the haunted rails begins in Altoona, Pennsylvania. Not just because Altoona is about an hour from my current home and served as the “big city” when I was growing up, but because it’s a place that is nearly synonymous with railroad history.
But that’s not the only reason.
Whereas some towns have a haunted railroad station or a cursed railroad crossing, the whole city of Altoona seems haunted. The city’s reputation for ghosts and spirits make it one of the most haunted spots in Pennsylvania and, possibly, the country. Because the railroad played an integral role in the city—so much so that Altoona was once referred to as the railroad capital of the world—it’s no surprise that many of those ghost stories are attached to the region’s many railroad landmarks.
Our exploration of the haunted railroad places begins with a look at a monument to Altoona’s railroad history, the Railroaders Memorial Museum, which has collected lots of historic artifacts from the region and country’s railroad past and, apparently, a bunch of haunted artifacts.
The Railroaders Memorial Museum
Altoona, Pennsylvania
According to a now-legendary Altoona ghost story, at the end of a hard day, the former finance director of the Railroaders Memorial Museum walked from his fourth-floor office of the museum to the building’s elevator. The fourth floor is a quiet section of the stoic brick building that was once part of the Penn Central Railroad shop complex, situated in the heart of Altoona’s once-bustling railroad hub. The fourth floor is typically off-limits to visitors and a special key is needed to access it.
The Railroaders Memorial Museum is shown in the foreground of this panoramic view of Altoona, Pennsylvania; date unknown.
This evening was anything but typical for the director. And someone didn’t need a special key to access the floor.
The finance director said that as the elevator door swung open, he hopped in, just like he had hundreds of times before. Because he’s usually the last one in the office, he’s often the only one in the elevator—and, more than likely, the only one in the whole building. On this ride, however, the executive found that he wasn’t alone. A man stood on the other side of the elevator with his back to him. Slowly, this unexpected guest casually looked over his shoulder at the dismayed finance director. He had no idea who this stranger was.
As the executive stood there, speechless, the man’s body started to shimmy electrically.
And just as suddenly, the man vanished.
Investigation at the Museum
The story of the financial director’s ghostly run-in joins dozens, maybe hundreds, of paranormal encounters reported by staff and visitors, along with pages of ghostlore written about the museum. Paranormal investigators John Albert and Beth Ann Karle, of JABA Paranormal (the initials derive from the investigators’ first initials), are in the enviable—or unenviable, depending on your openness to the supernatural—position of serving as key investigators into the weird happenings at the museum, Altoona’s living tribute to the city’s railroaders of past and present.
In a personal interview, John said that he and his wife have been investigating the paranormal since 2009. TV shows like Ghost Hunters spurred on much of John’s interest in the paranormal, while Beth is a natural empath, meaning she has a deep connection to the spirit world. The combination of Beth’s spiritual side and John’s more analytical side gives the couple a unique tool box of both scientific and spiritual instruments they can use to investigate hauntings, John suggested. The team has produced some of the most compelling accounts of supernatural phenomena at the museum, according to many familiar with the haunting.
According to John, the team has had run-ins with shadow figures and the ghost of a young girl. They may have even had chats with other spirits that roam through the museum, but it’s the ghost of the girl who seems to be the most willing to talk to and interact with the investigators.
On one investigation, JABA members zeroed in on the gift shop as a possible center for paranormal activity. Using dowsing rods, members tried to make contact with a spirit in the shop. The way John explains it, a person holds the rod and another investigator asks the spirit questions. How the rod moves indicates the spirit’s answer to the question. In the gift shop, one spirit got a little wild with the answers. During a spirited question-and-answer session, a ghost seemed to communicate with the team. The session revealed that the ghost of a girl who haunts the gift shop was young, but they’re not sure of her age or why she inhabits that spot in particular. They get the sense from their interaction that she’s a playful spirit.
“She loves playing with me during the investigations,” said John. “She will spin one of the rods in circles very fast.”
The information gathered at the gift shop seems to corroborate other weird events people have reported at this section of the museum. For instance, one morning, gift shop workers opened up and stepped into their shop only to find that every single item was taken from the shelves and placed on the floor. Nothing was stolen, however.
Who would spend all that time sneaking into a place and then waste all of that time gently placing items on the floor? The ghost of a playful little girl, believers answer.
In another investigation a male spirit came through, according to John. This ghost may act as a guardian, of sorts, of the spirit of the young girl. The encounter happened during an investigation on the museum’s third floor. As the team swept through the area, using the dowsing rods to attempt to contact any spirits in that spot, they began to receive indications that a spirit was present. As JABA members began to ask questions, they say the spirit of a man began to make contact. He even showed the team his picture!
“This last time we were there, we were on the third floor and were talking to one man and found out his picture was one on the wall of the room we were in,” John said. “He used the rods to point to his picture, and we had two people holding rods and both sets of rods pointed to the same picture.”
John explained that the team tries to use several sets of dowsing rods to verify contact. They believe that if rods held by two people behave similarly, it increases the likelihood that they established real contact and that it’s not mere coincidence. They also invite non-team members who go along on investigations to use the rods to independently verify their results.
“We allow the public to use the rods so they see we are not manipulating them ourselves and we have even sat back-to-back so neither person can see how the other’s rods are responding,” said John.
As they continued to use the dowsing rods to interview the ghost, other details began to emerge about the connection between the ghost of the older man and the young girl’s spirit the team had met in the gift shop.
“We found out that the girl in the gift shop is watched over by a man,” said John. “The man is not mean to the girl, but does not like when she interacts with me. That came as heartbreaking news to me, as she always seems very active with me.”
They are pretty sure, however, that the spirit is not the same as yet another ghost that haunts the museum, perhaps the most famous of the facility’s many ghosts. Most people just call him Frank.
Famous—or Infamous—Frank
Frank is a bit of a standout for the many spirits who haunt the museum. While most of the spirits tend to be shy and only communicate with the living through dowsing rods and subtle signs and noises, Frank has appeared to startled visitors and staff—like the finance director in the elevator. According to experts on the haunting, Frank especially loves to show up during public tours and when ghost hunters investigate the premises. He also likes to freak out the volunteers and workers.
In one story, a woman who was working at the museum’s gift shop—located near the entry of the building—noticed a stranger lingering around one of the main exhibits in the building. Whoever it was, this person was engaged in activities that were decidedly off-limits for most workers and volunteers—and were certainly not permitted for visitors. The woman watched the man crawl all over one of the train engines on display near the museum’s entrance. It was baffling enough that the guy had the effrontery to violate the rules of decorum for a museum guest, but the way he was climbing on the engine gave this woman pause. He really knew what he was doing, like he had been working on this engine all his life.
She had no idea.
As she watched, the man dropped over the side of the engine —and simply vanished.
The woman later said she believed that she had an encounter with Frank. After all, her description matched up with other Frank encounters, like the ghostly figure who shared the elevator ride with a museum executive.
In another encounter, possibly with the phantom Frank, a paranormal skeptic visited the museum. He was, in fact, a regular visitor there. He said that after touring the third floor, he took a seat near the lab area. Another man started walking toward him. Nothing peculiar about that, but the skeptic did notice the man wore clothes from a bygone era and an out-of-style hat. The skeptic turned for a second and looked back.
The strangely dressed man had disappeared.
Hoping to hold on to his skepticism, the man asked a worker who else was in the building with him.
The answer wasn’t what he wanted to hear. He was alone. Well, maybe not alone-alone. Frank was with him.
Why Frank?
So, how did Frank get his name?
Most experts on the museum’s hauntings say that’s simple: Frank showed them his picture. After the financial director’s story spread among the staff, some of the museum’s employees led the director to a group of pictures of workers and he immediately pointed to a group photo showing a gang of steam boiler workers from the 1920s. He singled out one particular individual in the shot and said that this was the guy he shared his elevator with, according to numerous sources on the haunting.
But, here’s the thing: the executive pointed out the same man in the same picture that other people picked out after their own chance meeting with the long-dead railroader.
And the man’s name, according to the picture’s caption, was Frank.
More Haunted Happenings
Frank and the little girl are only the lead car in a long train of paranormal phenomena reported in the museum. JABA, for example, has collected other evidence in various spots of the museum. One of the spookiest bits of evidence indicates that a shadow figure—also called a shadow person—lurks in the halls. Well-known in paranormal lore, these inky black spirits are often linked to more negative types of hauntings, although there doesn’t seem to be evidence of any malevolent action from the museum’s shadow figure, the team suggests.
John said that the team investigated reports that on numerous occasions people have seen shadow figures moving on the far side of the bridged area on the second floor of the building. The paranormal investigators placed a specific type of technology, called a shadow detector, in the spot where people reported seeing the figure. The detector can sense when the light changes in an area. A sudden change in the light pattern, the team hypothesizes, means a shadow figure could be near. During one investigation, the detector signaled an alert. The investigators made everyone near the detector stop to see if their shadows could have caused the reaction in the equipment. John said they tried to debunk it, but failed to find any natural cause.
“Nothing we did would cause the detector to activate, bringing us to the conclusion that there was something moving around in that area that was not a living person,” John reported.
He added that JABA members heard evidence of the haunting, too.
“We’ve experienced the sound of a glass sliding across the counter in the bar,” he said. “We have had what sounded like a cabinet open behind the bar, with no one behind there and nothing actually moved. We’ve heard laughter in the corner of the gift shop where there were no people.”
Other witnesses said they heard big band music being piped into the museum, particularly in “Kelly’s Bar,” an exhibit designed to give the visitor an idea of what a railroader bar was really like back in the industry’s heyday. But, there’s one problem with that; the museum doesn’t pipe any music into that exhibit. In fact, they don’t play music in any section.
The phantom music, witnesses say, is a haunting melody, in more ways than one.
So Why Is the Museum Haunted?
As you’ll see in numerous examples throughout this book, railroad history is synonymous with haunted history. Wherever they build a railroad, ghosts and ghostlore soon follow. But why does this museum in Altoona, in particular, seem to harbor so many ghosts? Many paranormal theorists suggest that the building is, first, pretty old. Built more than a century ago, the building probably acquired a lot of spiritual baggage over that century-plus of existence to serve the needs of the railroad industry. Others say the building’s temporary duties—it was used at various times as an infirmary and as the Pennsylvania Railroad’s police station—probably generated enough strife and tragedy to explain a lot of the current supernatural activity.
Others say that Altoona is just a haunted hotspot. In the pages ahead, you’ll read about more hauntings in the Altoona area; some are related to the city’s railroad history, but some are not.
There’s still some debate about whether the Railroaders Memorial Museum is haunted at all. Skeptics say that the haunting is pretty easy to explain. Old buildings with lots of history look haunted. When people visit them, they are more likely to misinterpret natural phenomena as supernatural phenomena. That door closing by itself? It’s just the wind. Shadows dancing across the walls? They’re just shadows, or tricks of the mind.
The team from television’s Ghost Hunters conducted an investigation of the museum and came up, basically, empty. They did not find any evidence of paranormal powers at work in the building. Despite that, JABA and other ghost hunting aficionados, along with visitors and staff, continue to gather evidence and discuss incidents that suggest maybe the television team just happened to pick a quiet day for the spirits at the museum.
After all, even railroad ghosts deserve a day off every now and then.
Has a Haunted Hobo Boarded
a Railroad Museum Without a Pass?
Belleville, Ohio
Guests and workers at the Mad River and NKP Railroad Museum say more than a few ghosts have taken an afterlife ride in the building, but at least one of them probably did not pay for a ticket. NKP, by the way, is the reporting mark for Nickel Plate Road, a railroad that served the mid-central U.S.
According to a group of paranormal investigators, one of the ghosts that haunt the Bellevue, Ohio, museum might be the ghost of one of the world’s most famous hobos: Steam Train Maury. Maury Graham, who died in 2006, made it his mission to preserve the memory of the band of people that writer John Steinbeck called “the last free men on earth”—the itinerant railroad riders we usually politically incorrectly refer to as hobos.
While Graham, the five-time King of the Hobos, tried to preserve the memory of the hobo by writing about his times riding the rail and the people he met, he also served as an unofficial hobo spokesperson, offering countless interviews to the press.
There’s another way Steam Train Maury helps to keep the hobo legend living on—he simply refuses to take that last train to the afterlife. Many think that Graham is behind at least some of the haunted activity that takes place in the museum, which has hundreds of railroad artifacts on display, featuring everything from engines, cabooses, and World War II–era sleeper cars to uniforms, linens, and railroad timetables. Believers in the Steam Train Maury ghost believe his spirit is attached to one of the cabooses stored at the museum. They say that his ghost has appeared on the back of one of the cabooses in particular.
While Steam Train Maury haunts the caboose, the whole museum has its share of spooky activity. According to Ruth Fuehring, Mad River and NKP Railroad Society trustee, visitors and workers have heard strange sounds and voices echoing in the halls of the museum.
“We’ve had people tell us they hear voices from the cars,” Fuehring told Shop Bellevue Ohio, a Bellevue events website. “A lot of people say it gives them the spooks when they come here and hear those voices.”
People reported so much paranormal activity so often that the museum officials called in some experts. A few of the paranormal teams confirmed these spirit interactions. The researchers, too, heard strange noises—and even a few more terrifying sounds.
“At one point a few years ago the investigators could hear someone screaming for help in the museum,” Fuehring reported. “There are a lot of strange, interesting things that can happen when investigating the paranormal.”
Not all the haunted activity in the museum can be seen or heard. Some must be felt, Fuehring indicated. Guests and workers report weird feelings at certain times and at certain places in the museum. For instance, people say they experienced a sensation like they’re being watched while in the museum. Others just spontaneously feel creeped out for no apparent reason.
While the society trustee has never had a run-in with an actual ghost, she can affirm much of the phenomena at the museum.
“I’ve never actually seen anything, but sometimes I’ll hear a voice or feel like I’m being watched when I’m there at night,” Fuehring said. “I believe in that stuff, but some people are more sensitive to it than I am.”
A group called Ohio Researchers of Banded Spirits, or ORBS, investigated the site. The team, which has appeared on television shows such as My Ghost Story and The Haunted, said they collected some EVP while checking out the museum. One of the team members suggested in an article on Mental Floss that because spirits can sometimes attach themselves to objects like uniforms, or even the King of the Hobos’ favorite caboose, railroad museums that collect a lot of these objects, like the Mad River and NKP Railroad museum, may be a sort of passenger station house for several spirits.
“Spirits can attach themselves to certain items,” Karlo Zuzic, a paranormal investigator and project manager for ORBS, told Mental Floss.
Waves of Paranormal Phenomena
Laupahoehoe, Hawaii
On the morning of April 1, 1946, news began to sweep across Hawaii that a series of massive waves had hit the Laupahoehoe peninsula on the northeast section of Hawaii’s big island, essentially wiping an entire town off the map.
Most residents thought this was a horribly inappropriate April Fool’s joke.
Later, they soon discovered the awful truth: the news was no joke at all—a tsunami had actually smashed the shore of the quiet section of the island and killed about 160 people. Like a ravenous monster, the wave grabbed some of the bodies off of dry land and pulled them back into the sea. The railroad, which was so painstakingly constructed along the shore to help transport sugar cane from the fields to Hilo, bore the brunt of the waves, according to sources. The tsunami smashed bridges, trestles, and buildings. The tsunami also wiped an engine right off the tracks.
Essentially, the tsunami destroyed the railroad industry in the area. It couldn’t recover. But the railroad workers haven’t disappeared—not completely, at least. Staff members of the Laupahoehoe Train Museum and their visitors continue to collect evidence that the ghosts of the tsunami victims still haunt Laupahoehoe—and that the departed railroad workers, specifically, haunt the building and grounds of the museum.
Witnesses claim to hear weird noises when they’re in the building. Late at night, or when the museum is quiet, people hear the sounds of footsteps pacing up and down the halls. When they walk toward the spot where they think the sounds originated, they’re stumped to find the area is empty. There’s no one else in the hall.
Some people even claim to hear music playing, but there are no radios or stereos turned on. The music seems like it’s coming from nowhere, or maybe from heaven.
While many railroad museums admit that their buildings are haunted—which this section of the book proves—the train museum at Laupahoehoe has made considerable efforts to document the paranormal activity. Over the years, the museum has gathered a sizeable collection of pictures taken by visitors and volunteers that seem to show shapes and images; the visitors and volunteers believe this to be evidence that ghosts haunt the premises. Based on these photographs, the ghosts have primarily attached themselves to several areas in the building and in a few displays located on the grounds of the museum.
Paranormal experts who have investigated the museum suggest that the most haunted spot in the building is the train conductor’s office. At first glance, one photo taken in the office appears to show a man in a railroad conductor’s costume. The weirdest thing is that the man’s costume seems to be of a much earlier period. It’s too authentic, believers say, speculating that this is no man in a costume. In other words, this is a ghost in an actual conductor’s uniform.
Another photo shows a foggy form hovering near the piano that’s on display. The form stretches about midway up the piano into the ceiling of the room. Speculation is that this apparition might be the pianist who likes to entertain guests with spooky music.
When the photographer who visited the museum snapped a picture of the couch in the museum, they probably just wanted a shot of the original furnishings to show friends and family. But a group of ghosts seems to have photobombed that picture. Some people say it’s a group of railroad workers on break.
Before the building became a museum, it served as the home of a train conductor. A few people think the ghost of the conductor’s son still haunts the place. A picture does seem to show a transparent image of a young boy staring wistfully back at the camera.
Outside, people have seen—and snapped pictures of—strange, filmy objects near a caboose on display. People familiar with the haunting suggest that if you look at the pictures closely, you can see the image of railroad workers of long ago.
Skeptics discount all the photographic evidence. They say that these photographs have probably been manipulated using double-exposure techniques; however, believers counter that many of these pictures were taken and developed when the double-exposure technique was not a common practice and required technical know-how that was out of the reach of most photographers.
But, for believers, the ghosts of Hawaii’s most haunted railroad museum show them that nothing—not even walls of water—can ever wash away the power and presence of these railroad spirits.
Of History, Heritage, and Hauntings
Brunswick, Maryland
In 1890, Brunswick, Maryland rested on the banks of the Potomac River, just a sleepy village on the Maryland-Virginia border. But the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad had plans to wake up this little community. The company began to construct a railyard in Brunswick, which would attract workers from all over the country. In no time, the town’s population exploded to 5,000 residents.
Along with it, Brunswick residents noted a rapid increase in another demographic: ghosts.
According to longtime Brunswick townspeople and visitors, along with paranormal investigators, who were called in to check out the haunted happenings, the energy generated by bustling railroad activity may explain at least some of the town’s paranormal activity.
One of the current centers of the town’s supernatural phenomena, for example, is the Brunswick Heritage Museum, which is a nod to the town’s railroad past and a structural testament to how that industry’s influence shaped the community’s history. For paranormal researchers who favor the haunted objects theory—that objects of the past can carry, attract, or even stir up paranormal activity—the museum is a treasure trove of investigative possibilities. The museum contains objects from the turn of the twentieth century, an era when the railroad began to dominate the community’s economic and cultural life.
Some of the stories of the haunted activity at the museum include accounts that the spirit of a woman in a white dress can be seen on the second floor. The second floor is dedicated to the railroad’s influence on the town’s heritage, according to museum officials. Some people speculate that if the apparition is seen predominantly on the second floor, it’s likely that the ghost is somehow connected to the railroad exhibit.
But there are other reminders that supernatural powers are at work in the museum. People familiar with the haunting say strange noises and voices are heard throughout the building. They are often heard when the museum is supposed to be closed, too, which might rule out that the noises are from living workers or visitors unexpectedly wandering around the halls and rooms of the building.
This hasn’t gone unnoticed by the area’s paranormal researchers who use the site as a haunted hunting ground. Over the years, and particularly in the last few years as the ghost-hunting rage began to explode, teams have gathered evidence—personal accounts, along with video and audio files—of the spirits that seem to reside in the heritage museum.
According to a Washington, DC–based NBC affiliate’s report, a team of paranormal researchers from the Mason Dixon Paranormal Society conducted an investigation of the museum using an array of audio and video devices that they spread out at various points in the building. When the researchers checked out the video footage that they had gathered, they were disappointed. No spooky images or anomalous activity showed up. But, investigators said the audio recordings turned out to be a treasure trove of evidence that supernatural forces were at work in the heritage museum. In fact, they collected fourteen audio artifacts, or EVPs. One file in particular drew the team’s attention. During the EVP session, a few team members heard a strange noise and began to move objects around, hoping to locate the source of the sound. When they reviewed the tapes from that incident, they heard a voice distinctly say, “That’s mine.” After that, the voice began to laugh.
The investigators also marked some other sections of the recordings as possible EVPs. The team members said when they reviewed the tapes at various points in the investigation they could hear what sounded like human voices, although these instances were not as clear as the “that’s mine” EVP.
Based on their initial results, the society’s members were not ready to conclude that the museum was absolutely haunted. That would require additional follow-ups, paranormal investigator Darryl Keller told the television station.
“There is definitely something going on here,” Keller said. “It might take us two or three more investigations to see or possibly capture something.”
Another group of paranormal investigators from Maryland Paranormal Research reported that they captured weird audio clips and experienced wild electromagnetic spikes in certain displays during a 2013 investigation of the museum. The team added another strange incident that happened during their investigation to the pile of evidence collected that night. They said that the third floor of the building used to be a speakeasy. Before thirsty patrons could enter, they pressed a secret buzzer to gain access to the club. During the investigation, investigators said that buzzer inexplicably activated.
“There was no one on the floor at the time,” the organization’s blog states.
Going Deeper
Despite all the great evidence collected at the museum, experts suggest it’s hard to say who is haunting the building and hard to determine the role of the railroad on the spooky activity there. In fact, there’s at least one other legend that indicates trains and railroad men have nothing to do with the museum’s paranormal activity. The source of the haunting may lie even deeper in the region’s history, well before the days that marked the railroad era.
The museum allegedly is built on Native American burial ground, which is causing the weird activity, theorists state. And, according the Maryland Paranormal blog, the museum is headquartered in what was once an early twentieth-century building that housed a drinking society called the Improved Order of Red Men, which couldn’t have gone over very well with the spirits of Native Americans. The EMF spikes that the Maryland Paranormal Research group recorded, by the way, occurred at the Improved Order of Red Men display.
Railroad Ghosts or Not?
The debate on who, or what, is haunting the Brunswick Heritage Museum will likely continue. It’s basically divided into three camps. Some say Brunswick’s railroad history has inspired the building’s ghostlore. Others back the idea that the ghosts come from well before the railroad and white settlers ever arrived in Maryland. Another group has a more expansive theory: it’s all of the above. Like every good educational institution, the Brunswick Heritage Museum has an open door policy for spirits. Ghosts of railroad workers, Native Americans, and townspeople who have passed on are welcome to come in and connect with other visitors and staff. Isn’t that what heritage is all about?
National Railroad Museum
Features a Five-Star Haunting
Green Bay, Wisconsin
In 1956, a group of concerned citizens dedicated to preserving the memory of the country’s railroad past got together to create a national railroad museum.
It took a couple of years and a joint resolution of Congress, but the group finally got their wish. The result of their creativity, hard work, and political string-pulling is the National Railroad Museum, a Green Bay tourist attraction that introduces more than 100,000 visitors a year to the fascinating history of the railroad in the United States. According to numerous eyewitness accounts and stacks of reports from paranormal investigators, the museum introduces visitors to more than just how the railroad shaped American history. It introduces many of them to America’s railroad ghosts.
One of the more prestigious ghosts in haunted railroad history may march through the halls of this museum. Reports from staff members, visitors, and even paranormal investigators suggest that the spirit of former President of the United States and five-star General Dwight D. Eisenhower haunts the building.
The haunting appears to be connected to one display in particular. In a real coup for the museum officials, an engine and two train cars—called Bayonet and Bayonet II—that once served as Eisenhower’s mobile headquarters-on-rails were moved to the National Railroad Museum. The train played a role in some of Ike’s most emotionally intense moments of the war. As the architect for D-Day, the seaborne invasion of France, Eisenhower rode the train throughout England so that he could visit the troops that would, at his command, fight and die on the beaches of Normandy. He also used the train for meetings with commanders and political leaders.
It’s that emotional intensity that may have initiated the supernatural activity. This power became etched into the very fibers of Eisenhower’s railroad war room and manifests in paranormal activity, witnesses say.
In one story, a volunteer was cleaning Bayonet II right before lunchtime. He decided he could finish vacuuming the rest of the car after lunch; he turned the sweeper off but didn’t unplug it, and locked the car up. When the worker came back from lunch, he noticed that someone had not only unplugged the sweeper but had carefully coiled the cord back up. Weirder still, the vacuum was moved down the car, far from where he had last used it. He also noticed that if someone had pushed the vacuum, they made sure it didn’t leave any track marks. Allegedly, Eisenhower detested the sight of vacuum cleaner track marks on the carpet. He would hand brush the track marks out!
Of course, the worker assumed another volunteer had helped him with the chore, but he polled everyone on the crew and no one had even entered the car, let alone cleaned it. And certainly no one had hand brushed the track marks from the carpet. The volunteer later found out that he had the only key to the car, and he was sure he had locked it before leaving for lunch.
Lots of volunteers believe the helper was none other than the spirit of General Eisenhower, who apparently has retained some quirky neat-nick tendencies left over from his days at West Point and in the army.
The display, of course, has become one of the must-investigate places in the museum for paranormal research teams. One group, the Midwestern Paranormal Investigative Network, added some of the video and audio evidence they collected to YouTube.
During an EVP session, the phrase “in the water,” came up several times, which could be a reference to the D-Day invasion.
A ghost hunter for Fox Valley Ghost Hunters, who explored the museum in 2015, reported that their investigation also encountered some of these phenomena on board the Eisenhower display. One investigator claimed an unseen force pushed the team member aside in an aisle of the car. Footsteps could then be heard traveling down the aisle. Investigators also claimed to hear screams that seemed to echo from the distance.
Locked In
Staff members and volunteers also report encounters that are more terrifying than phantom janitors. Some workers told investigators from the Midwestern Paranormal Investigative Network that while going about their duties, some unexplained force locked them in cars that are on display in the museum. Imagine the fear they felt when they entered the car, thinking they were just going about routine business, and then hearing the door slam and the loud click of the lock as it slipped into place.
Fortunately, help was close by, but for a few harrowing moments, they had no idea how long it would be until they would be able to leave the car—or if they would leave at all!
In other cases, workers described the activity as more benign, but no less creepy. A few staff members stepped forward and said that, at times, they felt they were gripped by invisible hands. At least one visitor reported that she felt something, like a feather, or a few strands of hair, had touched her face.
In most cases, these phenomena have been verified by the paranormal investigators brought in to document the haunting. They experienced a lot of similar activity that the staff members had encountered—unexplained sensations and sounds—but the investigators are trained to debunk the supernatural events. However, despite efforts to explain the activity away, many ghost hunters have come to the conclusion that the place is haunted.
In an online report prepared by the Midwestern Paranormal Investigative Network, the team puts it obviously and succinctly: “From the evidence gathered during this investigation, it is of the opinion of the Midwestern Paranormal Investigative Network that the National Railroad Museum is highly active in paranormal activity.”
Georgia State Railroad Museum
Savannah, Georgia
Now a tourist attraction in the peaceful city of Savannah, Georgia, the Georgia State Railroad Museum has historically been the hub of attention—although, for most of its history, that attention was of the unwelcomed sort. Conflict and death continually swirled around the site where the museum now rests.
During the American Revolution, long before any building stood on what is now called Tricentennial Park, this section of the city became the focus of opposing forces during the Battle of Savannah, one of the Revolution’s bloodiest battles. An unorganized attack by French and American troops on a well-entrenched group of British soldiers led to a veritable slaughter of the attacking troops. About 800 American and French troops were wounded or killed, far more than the fifty-five British listed as casualties.
In the American Civil War, waves of Union troops rushed to Savannah as part of Sherman’s March to the Sea. The soldiers burned buildings, tore up railroad tracks, and destroyed railroad factories and facilities. The complex of buildings that now make up the museum and National Historical site would have made a perfect target for the invading troops. Curiously, like a calm eddy in a violently swirling sea, the site was spared.
The railroad turntable at the Georgia State Railroad Museum, circa 2017.
But the museum wasn’t spared, paranormally speaking.
With its history soaked in revolutionary violence, along with the everyday danger and excitement of railroad work and travel, paranormal experts consider the buildings that once made up the nerve center of the proud Central of Georgia shops and terminal facilities to be one of the most haunted sites in one of the South’s most haunted cities.
There are about five buildings left standing of the thirteen or so original railroad buildings, most of which are haunted by either spirits of the complex’s railroad past, or by ghosts tied to the violence that once seem attached to the place like train wheels on a steel track.
Red Coat
Over the years, tales have spread of encounters with a most unlikely host at a railroad museum. According to these tales, while strolling around the grounds, witnesses see a man dressed in a British military uniform of the Revolutionary War, or a “Red Coat,” as they are typically called. The witnesses wonder: “Why would a Revolutionary War reenactor be on the grounds of a train museum? Shouldn’t he be dressed like an engineer, or a conductor, or even like one of the factory workers who labored in the plant?”
Then they see the figure slowly fade away, or completely disappear, and know that they did not stumble on a living-history participant dressed up like a British soldier; they saw the ghost of one of the soldiers who fought during the Battle of Savannah, hundreds of years in the past.
Paranormal Check
Another haunted hub in the Georgia State Railroad Museum is the Tender Frame Shop and Master Mechanics’ Office. Workers once built the frames for steam engines there and the office section of the shop served as the business headquarters for the operation. While there are no published accounts of anyone seeing an apparition there, witnesses have recorded strange activity, like the one about the appearing—and disappearing—check. A staff member told one paranormal blogger that the chief financial officer of the museum saw a peculiar slip of paper on his desk. It was a check dated from the 1950s. CFOs are not known for their carelessness with checks and cash, so he immediately ducked out of his office to find out who had placed the check on his desk. No one confessed and, when he brought people in to see the check just a few seconds later, the check had disappeared.
Blacksmith Shop Haunts
One of the popular spots for visitors in the museum complex is the Blacksmith Shop. The display includes machinery and tools like the ones used by the workers who built and fixed locomotives on the site. More than a few staff members and guests suggest those workers still may be on the job. The growls and roars of machinery are sometimes heard issuing from behind the closed doors of the Blacksmith Shop. Voices—like workers barking out orders and updates—have also been reported. When people go in to check, the sounds and the voices instantly stop. Other witnesses claim to have seen an apparition of a black man in work clothes in the shop.
Print Shop
One final haunted hot spot in the complex is the Print Shop. It used to be the place where workers would print the forms that the administrators needed to run the complex enterprise. They also printed the company newsletter in the shop. The humming sounds of printing presses and other types of machinery are often heard coming from the shop. But, there’s no one in the room—and there’s certainly nobody using the facility to print documents.
Skeptics and Believers
About 40,000 people visit this railroad historical site each year, skeptics and believers alike. Skeptics have more than a few explanations for the ghostly sights and sounds. First, it’s an old place and creaky floorboards and squeaky doors can play tricks on the imagination. Along with that, they add that the stories of violence can prime the mind for so-called paranormal encounters. These explanations, however, are not likely to dissuade the dozens of people who say they encountered real—not imagined—supernatural phenomena at the Georgia State Railroad Museum.
Restless Spirits in the Sleeping Quarters
Port Moody, British Columbia, Canada
A century ago the building that now serves as the Port Moody Station Museum rattled with the percussive footsteps of train travelers coming from and going to destinations all around Canada. People say you can still hear echoes of those footsteps from long ago—and maybe even see the spirits of those travelers.
In 1908, the Canadian Pacific Railroad built Port Moody Station as one of two stations for its passengers. The station also contained quarters for the station master, who both worked and lived there.
As the needs of railroad changed, the station moved and eventually closed. The Port Moody Heritage Society bought, moved, and restored the building so it could live on as a museum that explores the rich history—especially railroad history—of the region.
History, though, has a way of showing up in unexpected ways.
Reports come in from staff and visitors—and, eventually, paranormal investigators—that the station is filled with ghosts. The interior of the museum isn’t the only haunted spot on the property. It turns out that the sleeper car on display next to the museum is, ironically, very restless.
Several witnesses have heard the thud of footsteps echoing down the halls and in the rooms of the building. Others have heard the whispers of an unseen entity. The voice whispers numbers, like “2655,” or the word “tickets.” Obviously, the ghostly whispers seem related to the museum’s railroad past.
Photographs appear to capture some of the spooky activity too. Weird lights and orbs pop up in pictures, even though the photographers swear no lights were on when they snapped the pictures.
Some people have even more hair-raising encounters with the unknown at the museum, but these run-ins don’t happen in the building; they occur in a sleeper car, the genuine piece of the railroad past that sits next to the building. In the 1920s, no mode of transportation could beat a ride on the Canadian Pacific Railroad sleeping car called the Venosta. Museum officials, with help from the West Coast Railway Association, restored the Venosta with its two sleeping quarters and a ladies’ powder room. The restoration crew took great pains to outfit the powder room and the sleeping car with genuine accessories from the 1920s.
One of those accessories, apparently, is the spirit of a woman who remains attached to the Venosta. Although details are scant, people say that the ghost of the woman has been seen in the car.
The sheer number of experiences and rumors of experiences that spread about the Port Moody Station Museum caused several paranormal investigation groups to request a chance to prove that either the museum is haunted, or that it’s completely ghost-free.
Executive Director Jim Millar took the challenge. He had his own brushes with possible supernatural activity while working at the museum that made him honestly wonder about the supernatural status of the property.
“I’ve had a few experiences with noises and things,” Millar told a reporter from CBC News. “So I thought, why not have it checked out?”
One team—Northern Paranormal Investigations—jumped at the chance to investigate. The team has almost a decade of experience researching the unknown in a range of spaces and properties, including homes, places of business, historical and military businesses, and cemeteries. They spent a few nights using the latest technology—including devices meant to capture changes in temperature and variations in light-wave intensity—to document any instances of unexplained phenomena.
Of course, they really wanted a run-in with the ghost that allegedly haunted the sleeper car.
On the latter quest, the group said they came up short, but told reporters other evidence suggests something weird is definitely going on in the museum, and they wonder if this weirdness isn’t some way related to the ghostly female presence seen on several occasions. When the team checked out the sleeping car, for example, they reported that their flashlights and cameras malfunctioned, turning on and off at random times. Could this be a sign that the ghost of a woman was trying to communicate with them?
The recording devices also picked up the sound of voices, but not the female spirit. In fact, the investigators concluded that the ghost of a man named “Peter” was trying to reach out.
There’s another question that consumes this team of paranormal investigators, as well as others: Why is the museum haunted at all?
A few theories have surfaced. One of the best explanations is that the building itself isn’t haunted, but some of the objects on display there might be. For example, a bell stored at the museum has a deadly history. Rescuers snatched the bell from a train that crashed in a lumber yard in 1913, killing five workers. The spirits may be attached to the bell, according to paranormal theorists.
On the other hand, ghosts that haunt the museum may be related to either the live-in station masters or their family members.
Of course, this doesn’t have to be an either/or situation; there might be something to all these reasons. It could be that the one-time station house combines the residual power of the thousands of souls who visited the station with the active power of a haunted family home and equally haunted objects.
It’s a combination that makes Port Moody an uber-haunted piece of railroad past and a window into the paranormal present.