CSS EP-17. GHOST TRAINS AROUND THE WORLD

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That gets you a twenty dollars credit if you sign up for a paid plan and help support my show. Thanks everyone. Crazy Strange Days podcast presents Crazy Strange Stories Episode seventeen. Ghost Trains around the World. This is from over at grunge dot com. Legends of ghosts from around the world include a wide variety of spectral phenomena, from ladies in white gowns to phantom hitchhikers, to even the spirits of animals like dogs or pigs or what have you. But whether poultrygeist, a vengeful spirit, or electronic voice phenomenon, most hauntings involve the spirit of a living being, with the exception of things like Japanese suku mogami, which is a whole other kettle of fish. The phenomena of ghost trains, however, is one of where the ghost isn't a person, it's a well, it's a train. In many ghost train stories, the phantom locomotives are echoes of tragic railway accidents or the mysterious engines that carry unsuspecting passengers off into parts unknown, while the term ghost train is used to refer to real life trains that rung along the lines without passengers to keep the track clear. The trains in these stories are thought to be actual literal ghosts, though sometimes are both Here are the stories of a few of the most famous ghost trains, plus some haunted tracks and stations for a bit of variety. Stockholm, swedens the Silver Pillon or the Silver Arrow, and I probably butchered that, so we're moving on. We're called the Silver Arrow. This is America. It is one of the most famous ghost trains in the world and an example where the train of legend absolutely did exist. The Silver Era was one of a handful of experimental, unpainted aluminum trains tested out on Stockholm's metro line in the nineteen sixties to see if these more cheaply produced trains could save the transit system money. The eerie look of its unadorned exterior and its slightly altered design were disagreeable to passengers, and the fact that the Silver Train seemed to turn up at random meant that legends soon grew around it. Before long, the people of Stockholm would tell stories that if you got on the Silver Era, it would never stop and you would be doomed to ride it for eternity, or it only stops once a year and its passengers are the souls of the dead. By the nineteen seventies, the story of the Silver Arrow got combined with ghost stories surrounding an unused train station called Chymiling, where it is said that only the dead got off the train. The station then became the Silver Arrow's home station, where it picked up and dropped off the dead. The Silver Arrow was decommissioned in the nineteen nineties, though a couple of its cars are still in use on some other trains. Nevertheless, stories of sightings of a ghostly Silver Train or still common among the people of Stockholm. Saint Louis Light of Saskatchewan. Perhaps the best known spectral locomotive in Canada is the Saint Louis Ghost Train, also known as the Saint Louis Light, a phenomenon just north of Saint Louis, Saskatchewan that is very familiar to locals. For generations, walking out along the track and watching for ghost lights has been a common pastime for Saint Louis teenagers. Those who claim to have witnessed this phenomena say that a white light appears along the railroad track, sometimes accompanied by a red light that moves and circles around the white barreling through the night air before disappearing when it reaches the bushline. One variant of the legend that has arisen around these eerie lights is that in the nineteen twenties a conductor was inspecting these this stretch of tracks, only wait for it to be decapitated by a passing train. Always happens with these ghost trains. Presumably the operation is some kind of residual energy from that tragic event makes sense. Unfortunately, record keeping doesn't go far back enough to confirm the story of the beheaded conductor, so we may never know how much truth there is to that legend. Additionally, the land where the railroad once ran as now private property, and the tracks are long gone. Despite that, thrill seekers say the light can still be seen where the track used to be. Skeptics say the light is in a phantom train, just car headlights from a nearby road. But for now, the mystery remains up. Next Ghost Train of Viridel County. While many stories of ghost trains arise strictly from the realms of legend and sp spation, the phantom train of Ridel County in North Carolina starts with a real life tragedy. In August of eighteen twenty one, really long time ago, a train just west of the town of Statesville fell into the ravine under Bastion Bridge after derailing from the sixty foot high trestle. The train was pulling six cars, including several passenger cars, and while there were survivors who managed to escape the wreckage at the bottom of the bridge, the train disaster ultimately took the lives of twenty three people, making it one of the deadliest train wrecks in the history of North Carolina. According to legend, fifty years to the day after that fateful crash, a car stalled out in viewing distance of the crash. The driver went to find help, leaving his wife to watch the car. When the clock ticked to the exact time of the wreck, the wife saw ghostly echo of the derailment right before her eyes, including the shrieks of the dying as the train splashed into the creek below. In a tragic echo of this story that is all too real, a ghost hunter lost his life in twenty ten on the disaster's anniversary while trying to see the phantom train. He was hit and killed while saving his girlfriend from a very real oncoming train Madrid's Haunted Metro. It's not only the trains themselves that appear as phantoms in railway lore. Many large cities have sprawling metro lines that stretch like spiderwebs under the city streets. With that many miles of often dark or poorly lit underground tunnels, tunnels are always creepy. It's only natural that some urban legends would pop up about these train lines in the various stations and stops that dot the transit map. Madrid, for example, has the seventh biggest metro line in the world, and according to Midnight Trains, those one hundred and eighty three miles of track are jam packed with ghosts. One of the most famous is the station at Terrezo del Molina, where people say they can hear the cries and groans of the dead from under the platforms. Allegedly, construction workers undercovered uncovered the bodies of several monks from an old honestary that had stood on the spot, and hastily reburied the bones under the platforms rather than giving them a proper rest. The same station is a setting for a tale where a woman found herself accompanied by three ghostly passengers in the car with her. The Santiago Bernabou station used to be known as Lima station, and legend says the reason is that people were known to get lost in its tunnels and emerge across the globe in Lima, Peru. Say what, But don't worry. There's a phantom train too, which carries the souls of the damned along the city's line five to the Realm of the Dead. Arizona shadow train Folkloris S. E. Schlasser records a legend from Arizona in which an old prospector finds himself lost with no water out in the desert flats while searching for a claim, ultimately passing out from the heat and sun. He then wakes up an amount of time later to the hissing sound of a steam train chugging through the torrid air. The miner is confused, as he is far from any town, but then he remembers hearing stories when he was young of a shadow train that rushes through the desert with no track line, like a black smear across the cloudless sky. As the black train speeds toward where he lies, too weak to move despite the engine's warning whistles, the miner realizes these stories were no legend. The train stops inches from his head. And the conductor and a passenger carry him on board just before he passes out again. Now he reawakens in a sheriff's office in a town he doesn't know, being offered water by a lawman who says he found the miner laying almost dead five miles out of town. When he asks if the train had left him there, excuse me, the confused sheriff tells him that there's no train that runs through that area. To this day, people claim they see the shadow train screaming through the midday sun out in the desert, still running without a track. Republic Ghost Train. Another phantom train inspired by very real historic tragedy is the Republic Ghost Train. In Seneca County, Ohio. In January eighteen eighty seven, a passenger train carrying sixty five people aboard collided in the dark night with a stalled freighter train near the small town of Republic. The train had been traveling at sixty miles per hour, so by the time the engineer saw this stop train on the tracks ahead of them, it was much too late to stop. The engineer jumped from the train, and the two engines smashed into each other with a deafening crash, Several of the passenger cars collapsed into one another, including the smoke car, where a fire started that soon killed at least fifteen people. The overall number of deaths from this crash is really unknown, but it was likely as many as twenty two people. Fortunately, the passengers in the sleeper sleeper car survived because someone managed to uncouple them from the other cars and push them away from the burning wreckage. Since that time, locals have repeated the legend that on some nights you can look down the track and see the ghost train, an echo of the eighteen eighty seven disaster, barreling down the tracks. Its light wolf flash throughout Seneca County when the spectral locomotive passes by the cemetery where the victims of the disaster who were never identified are buried. Ghost Train of Tay rail bar Ridge. The Tay rail Bridge was completed in eighteen seventy seven after six years of construction to cross the Firth of An Estuary in eastern Scotland, where the River Tay empties between the cities of Perth and Dundee. The bridge served to connect the railway between Dundee and Fife in the northeast. Like in many stories of ghost trains, the Tay Bridge is remembered for a deadly railway disaster. Just two years after the completion of the bridge, disaster struck in what became one of the worst train accidents in Scottish history. A train carrying seventy five passengers was crossing the Firth when a storm struck, causing the middle section of the bridge to collapse. The crew and passengers all plunged into the cold winter waters below, leaving no survivors and nearly half the bodies were never found. Now, a second bridge was opened right next to the ruins of the old one a few years later that is still being used to this day. The ruined pillars of the old Lion can still be seen rising out of the water next to the new bridge. Likewise, it is said that on the anniversary of the disaster, a ghost train appears, floating where the old tracks once stood. The ghostly train repeats its disastrous plummet into the waters, with the screaming voices of spirits of the dead passengers audible the whole way down. Next up Virginia's Cohoque Light, King William County in Virginia is home to a mysterious ghost train phenomenon known as the Cohoq Late, so called because because the apparition is generally spotted at the railroad crossing on Mount Olive Cahoke Road. As with other ghost train phenomena, witnesses claim to see in otherwise unexplained light coming down the tracks, swinging back and forth, sometimes obscuring or obscured obscured by the tree line. Historians say that sightings of their light date back to at least the nineteen fifties, which unfortunately works against the legendary claims that the ghost train has its origins in the nineteenth century. There are two main explanations for the appearance of the shining light on the tracks in King William County. The first is very similar to stories of the Saint Louis Light, saying that a railway worker was decapitated in an accident one hundred plus years ago and the light is his lantern, swaying as he searches for his lost head. The second says that it's the lamp of a Confederate train carrying wounded soldiers that never reached its destination because it was ambushed by Union troops. Unfortunately, neither of these stories is supported, and in fact, both are contradicted by the historical record, which only has relatively minor accidents occurring at that crossing, like a derailment with one injury and a single automobile collision. Additionally, any Confederate train carrying wounded soldiers would have been headed in the other direction. The Phantom train of Medicine Hat. Most tales of ghost trains involve individuals on foot or in a car witnessing a spectral locomotive speeding past them or even away from them, but the best known legend of the phantom train of Medicine Hat, Alberta, involves a near collision with another train. According to the story related by workers from the Canadian Pacific Railway in nineteen oh eight, a train headed east rounded a bend only to find itself face to face with an oncoming train heading west. Even though it was too late to break, there was no crash as the oncoming train veered off into an empty air, with ghostly crew members waving to the living crew as they flew in into the ether. What Fearing that this vision was a premonition of his death, Bob to Hay. The engineer went to visit a fortune teller who told him that indeed he was soon to die. Some versions say he learned this before seeing the phantom train, so, hoping to avoid his fate, to Hay refused to drive that same train on that same route again. Another engineer took over the route and also saw the phantom train. On July eighth, nineteen oh eight, that same engineer took that same train on this same route, despite the ghostly warning. This time, when the train rounded that same bend, it encountered an on rushing train. It wasn't a phantom It was a very very real passenger train driven by Bob Toohay. Every man who had seen the phantom train died on impact. Whoa express train to hell? What's this about? Huh? Another story collected by S E's slawser is a haunted train tail set in Newark, New Jersey, at the central station in that city. The tale focuses on the station master, who is trying to calm down what appears to be an old vagabond running about his station and whaling. When the station man master finally gets a chance to talk to him, the old man claims that the express train to Hell is coming for him because he once killed a man who had cheated him at cards. The station master perhaps reasonably assumes the old man is unwell and tries to shake off the troubling sound of his pleas for help. Just before midnight, however, the sound of a steam train chugging through the night error approaches, sounding as if it has no intention of stopping. The station master is confused, as the next train isn't scheduled until after midnight. Despite the loud sound of the engine, the scream of the whistle, and the rushing wind of a passing train, the station master doesn't see anything traveling through the station. As he tries to pull the old man away from the tracks into safety, the old man gives one terrible final wail and vanishes from the station master's grip without a trace. It turns out the Express train to Hell had in fact come from for him, and it came dead on midnight. Here's one I've never heard of, Lincoln's funeral Train. Probably the most famous ghost train of them all is Abraham Lincoln's Funeral Train, sightings of which have been reported many times around the route of the historic funeral train near the anniversary of Lincoln's death in April eighteen sixty five. Following the assassination of the president, his body was taken by rail from Washington, d c. To Lincoln's hometown of Springfield, Illinois, via New York City, so that Americans along the way could mourn him. Ever since honor around the anniversary of that initial rail journey, people have claimed to have witnessed a spectral echo of the funeral train between New York and Springfield. While many ghost trains are described as simple lights or dark smudges, witnesses of Lincoln's funeral train have reported a number of spooky details. Some claim that they can see inside the train, an entire rail crew made up of skeletons, including a band playing silent dirges for the lost president. In the back half of the train is a flatcar that carries Lincoln's coffin. Circled around this coffin are skeletons and Union Army coats. As the train passes, all clocks and watches stop until it has disappeared, usually leaving them six minutes slow. Others say the train pulls along with it darkness, cold, and clouds. The train has been sighted all over New York State, including in Grand Central Station, which hadn't even been built at the time of Lincoln's assassination. I hope you guys enjoyed that one. Always enjoy some train spookery. So that's the show for today. We're going to keep it up during the spooky season here two to three week so stay tuned. As always. You can find information about these stories down in the show notes. There'll be links, five star rate and review. You guys are awesome. I have been mixed strange, I faun and keep it spooky, and I am out. Daddy Day Nobody days Dad, excluding