Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 2: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with part
Speaker 3: two in our Halloween season series on locomotive horror and
Speaker 3: Trains of Terror. Now. In the last episode, we talked
Speaker 3: about how trains are often used in weird fiction and
Speaker 3: the kinds of themes that they emphasize, including things like
Speaker 3: fate and helplessness, isolation, alienation, and especially in nineteenth century stories,
Speaker 3: the irresistible changes brought by technology brought on by the
Speaker 3: steam era, how it was transforming the landscape, transforming our culture,
Speaker 3: and highlighting maybe the fragility of our minds and bodies.
Speaker 3: We also talked about the various inputs leading to the
Speaker 3: invention the steam locomotive, and finally we got to the
Speaker 3: Victorian panic about railway madness, a belief you'll find at
Speaker 3: tested in a bunch of British newspapers from the eighteen
Speaker 3: sixties through about eighteen eighty, according to which it is
Speaker 3: common for men to be driven instantly, violently insane by
Speaker 3: the vibrations of a railway carriage in transit. So that
Speaker 3: was part one. If you haven't heard that yet, it's
Speaker 3: definitely worth a listen, go back and check that out first.
Speaker 3: But we're here today to talk about more that's right.
Speaker 2: This week, we're going to be getting into the more
Speaker 2: familiar territory of the ghost train. Though even as I
Speaker 2: say that and I start thinking about potential mainstream examples,
Speaker 2: it's really hard for me to think of a straight
Speaker 2: up haunted train in popular media like Polar Express maybe
Speaker 2: comes to minds like the most mainstream example. Yeah, is
Speaker 2: it just me or do we just not actually have
Speaker 2: a lot of stories about ghost train?
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting that you frame it that way, because
Speaker 3: I was thinking about the ghost trained as a concept
Speaker 3: and thinking about how, Yeah, we have the concept of ghosts,
Speaker 3: which are spectral, insubstantial entities that take the form of
Speaker 3: a human I guess sometimes an animal, usually human understood
Speaker 3: to be like the soul or the animate image of
Speaker 3: a person who has died. So these are individual human entities.
Speaker 3: They usually move around and I don't know, they interact
Speaker 3: in some kind of sensory capacity. You can see them,
Speaker 3: they make noise and so forth. But then we also
Speaker 3: have the concept of haunted houses or haunted locations, for example,
Speaker 3: a church or a cemetery or a battlefield. These are
Speaker 3: places where hauntings by individual ghosts happen, most often understood
Speaker 3: to be the location of a tragedy or a death,
Speaker 3: or maybe like a place that the ghost frequented in life.
Speaker 2: The house, the haunted house is usually an actual house.
Speaker 2: I guess. Maybe there are some versions where ooh, there
Speaker 2: was never a house there at all, it was just
Speaker 2: a vacant lot. But for the most part it's like, oh,
Speaker 2: it's the old the old McCormick place there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, exactly so. But trains are like in this
Speaker 3: in between realm where I guess they could sort of
Speaker 3: be both because on one hand, they are moving entities
Speaker 3: like people, and so they can sort of be a
Speaker 3: moving form that could pass in and out of your awareness.
Speaker 3: And at the same time, trains are locations like houses.
Speaker 3: People go inside them, inhabit them. They have rooms and
Speaker 3: corridors and doorways. So a train oddly has the ability
Speaker 3: to be like a wandering ghost itself or like a
Speaker 3: haunted house. And I was trying to think, is there
Speaker 3: any equivalent, I guess like a ship, like a you
Speaker 3: could have a ghost ship or a haunted ship. Though,
Speaker 3: like you were saying, or I think you were alluding
Speaker 3: to this, most of the ghost train lord that I'm
Speaker 3: aware of and that I could turn up and research
Speaker 3: for this episode seems to be about beliefs about a
Speaker 3: spectral train that you believe you see passing as an
Speaker 3: outside observer, not a physical train that you get on
Speaker 3: board and then believed to be haunted like a haunted house.
Speaker 3: The latter is possible in concept, it just seems like
Speaker 3: there's less of that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it is probably an idea that is
Speaker 2: infected by these other concepts, like you said, the haunted house,
Speaker 2: the haunted domicile, and a train is kind of a
Speaker 2: place that you live. It is an environment, but it's
Speaker 2: also a vehicle. And we have a long legacy of
Speaker 2: ghost ship stories. But it's interesting because that doesn't really
Speaker 2: line up one hundred percent because with the idea of
Speaker 2: a ghost train, because with ghost ships you have, of
Speaker 2: course tales of a flying Dutchman and everything from a
Speaker 2: haunted unoccupied vessel maybe it has Dracula on it and
Speaker 2: so forth, or a straight up spectral vessel. But then
Speaker 2: a lot of this is based on the historic reality
Speaker 2: and even contemporary reality of ships that have either been
Speaker 2: damaged or abandoned, or something terrible has happened and they
Speaker 2: are left to be moved around on the water by
Speaker 2: wave and wind, something that isn't really in the cards
Speaker 2: for a train, you know, especially in the modern air,
Speaker 2: but even historically, like if you had an unknown train
Speaker 2: moving around and it was a physical reality, bad things
Speaker 2: would happen pretty quickly. And yes, the idea does tie
Speaker 2: into fears of those things happening, and I think a
Speaker 2: lot of the examples you can look at of ghost
Speaker 2: trains are tied to either memories or anxieties concerning train accidents.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it doesn't really it seems to be influenced
Speaker 2: by all these other concepts, but also it doesn't line
Speaker 2: up one percent with any of them either.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. This is kind of a
Speaker 3: but this also because the train has this potential duality
Speaker 3: that it could be like a haunted house or like
Speaker 3: a like a ghost itself. It was making me think
Speaker 3: about the different moral understandings we have of individual ghostly
Speaker 3: entities versus haunted locations in horror fiction. Because I don't know,
Speaker 3: maybe you have some counter examples to this but I
Speaker 3: was thinking that in most horror stories, individual ghosts, though
Speaker 3: they invoke fright, are usually looked on with pity once
Speaker 3: you know their story. They are usually said to be
Speaker 3: victims in some way, people who suffered, whereas haunted locations
Speaker 3: are often characterized as evil or malicious in themselves. There's
Speaker 3: this idea that like a haunted house is a bad place.
Speaker 3: It's like the Overlook hotel. The hotel is evil.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3: And yet while a train could be a location like
Speaker 3: this haunted house that you often think of as a
Speaker 3: bad place. When I read through all this ghost train lord,
Speaker 3: I don't get that feeling like, oh the ghost train, Ooh,
Speaker 3: that's wicked, it's bad, it's malicious. Instead, it has more
Speaker 3: the character of the individual wandering ghost. It's something that
Speaker 3: may be frightening, but is mainly to be kind of
Speaker 3: pitied to tell a sad story about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's the impression I get as well. So we'll
Speaker 2: keep that in mind as we roll through some of
Speaker 2: the specific examples here and perhaps out there there's a
Speaker 2: wish we'll touch on this again. But there are a
Speaker 2: lot of ghost train stories out there. There's a lot
Speaker 2: of train related urban legend, so we have things that
Speaker 2: have been circulating for a while, and you know, stories
Speaker 2: that are just kicking out. Perhaps, so if you were
Speaker 2: familiar listener with a story of a malicious ghost train,
Speaker 2: or just any ghost train story that we don't mention here,
Speaker 2: or if you have additional thoughts on things we mentioned here,
Speaker 2: obviously write in because we would love to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Please share with us your local ghost train story, especially
Speaker 3: if there's something unusual about it.
Speaker 2: Now, before we get into specific ghost trains and ghost
Speaker 2: train stories, I do want to just kind of an
Speaker 2: overview of what seemed to me to be sort of
Speaker 2: like three definite types of ghost trains to consider. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: So the first type we'll come back to this one
Speaker 2: in some specifics here shortly, is the idea of just
Speaker 2: lights and or sounds of trains on or near the
Speaker 2: tracks that never materialize. The idea that I hear the
Speaker 2: sound or I see the lights of a train that
Speaker 2: should not be here, and then that train never arrives.
Speaker 2: But it causes you a lot of anxiety because, oh,
Speaker 2: if there's not supposed to be a train here right now,
Speaker 2: that's a bad thing.
Speaker 3: You know, this ties into you and I were looking
Speaker 3: at an example of a play about a ghost train
Speaker 3: off Mike. We ended up not getting into it in
Speaker 3: our outline really here, but there's a play called The
Speaker 3: Ghost Train by an author named Arnold Ridley, which turns
Speaker 3: out to have a quite bizarre twist where there's like
Speaker 3: a story of a ghost train and then it turns
Speaker 3: out to be like a communist counter espionage thriller. But anyway,
Speaker 3: I think that that story was said to be inspired
Speaker 3: by the author's experience of being stuck at a train
Speaker 3: station at night and hearing what sounded like a train
Speaker 3: approaching and thinking it was coming arriving to pick him up,
Speaker 3: but then it just like seeming to pass without him
Speaker 3: ever seeing it. And the explanation is the train was
Speaker 3: there was a train coming by him, but it was
Speaker 3: being diverted along a different track that was. So he's
Speaker 3: like in the night hearing a train approach and then
Speaker 3: leave but never sees anything.
Speaker 2: You know, the approach of a train is kind of haunting,
Speaker 2: almost supernatural occurrence in some ways, you know, because you're
Speaker 2: standing there and perhaps you hear just like that initial
Speaker 2: hum of the rails, maybe the air is suddenly a
Speaker 2: little bit different. You get to get some of that
Speaker 2: sort of underground air coming out if you're in a
Speaker 2: subway system, all ahead of the actual roar of the train,
Speaker 2: the lights of the train, and so forth, there are
Speaker 2: a lot of subtle hints leading up to the arrival.
Speaker 2: All right. So that's the first, you know, rough categorization
Speaker 2: for ghost trains. The second one I want to highlight
Speaker 2: are just straight up overtly creepy or ghostly trains, straight
Speaker 2: up spectral trains, trains with ghosts on them that are
Speaker 2: sometimes connected to railway disasters but sometimes to other mishaps
Speaker 2: and tragedies and so forth. And then there's this third area,
Speaker 2: and this is empty trains witnessed moving down the tracks.
Speaker 2: And this is the category that is going to include both.
Speaker 2: Just straight up, here's a train. It doesn't look like
Speaker 2: it has people on it, but it is a physical train.
Speaker 2: And also here's a train that is you know, there's
Speaker 2: nothing suspect about it's about who's piloting it. We know
Speaker 2: it's either we can see the human or we know
Speaker 2: that this is an automated rails system, whatever the case.
Speaker 2: But why is there a train with no people on it.
Speaker 2: Why is it stopping and letting no one out and
Speaker 2: then continuing on its way.
Speaker 3: You know, it's funny how this connects to the idea
Speaker 3: of the ghost ship which you were talking about, could
Speaker 3: be inspired by sightings of real ships that were saying
Speaker 3: people have abandoned them. And you see a ship drifting
Speaker 3: in the waves with nobody on it. That's a very
Speaker 3: chilling site. But that would be a real thing people
Speaker 3: would observe in various situations. Obviously, a train is a
Speaker 3: little bit different, because a train isn't going to be
Speaker 3: completely abandoned and drifting on the waves. It needs to
Speaker 3: be moving for some reason, like somebody's got to push
Speaker 3: a button to make it go. But it may in
Speaker 3: fact be empty of passengers, and just like seeing through
Speaker 3: the windows and seeing it empty can be a creepy site.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, you know, thinking about the trains that go
Speaker 2: by directly by my house. There's the Marta Train, the
Speaker 2: public transportation train system here in Atlanta, and sometimes there
Speaker 2: are empty train cars that are going by because you
Speaker 2: know that one's done for the night. And then there's
Speaker 2: the CSX line, and this is freight, not passengers, though
Speaker 2: at least on one occurrence. I did see some empty
Speaker 2: passenger trains on the tracks. I think they were being
Speaker 2: I assume they were being moved somewhere, you know, either
Speaker 2: I don't even remember how nice they looked. Maybe they
Speaker 2: were brand new being moved somewhere to go into service,
Speaker 2: or they were being retired or scrapped or something. But
Speaker 2: you know, there is something potentially creepy about seeing this
Speaker 2: space that is made for people, devoid of people, but
Speaker 2: still in motion, as if it's going somewhere but without people.
Speaker 3: A lot of horror movies used to great effect the
Speaker 3: empty subway train, you know, the subway arrives in the station,
Speaker 3: the doors open, there's nobody inside, nobody on the train.
Speaker 3: It is a creepy feeling.
Speaker 2: Now. I was reading a bit more about this idea
Speaker 2: of ghost trains, and there is this unofficial classification for
Speaker 2: a ghost train, at least in Britain, that has nothing
Speaker 2: to do with hauntings. And these are trains, according to
Speaker 2: Amanda Ruggeri and Why Britain Has Secret Ghost Trains twenty
Speaker 2: fifteen BBC. These are low frequency routes that often entail
Speaker 2: mostly empty, if not entirely empty cars, and this is
Speaker 2: a reality that the author describes as being due to
Speaker 2: a quote bureaucratic hangover.
Speaker 3: Okay, so these are trains that are operating normally. They're
Speaker 3: just like they haven't adjusted to the fact that there
Speaker 3: is little or no demand for travel along the route
Speaker 3: where they're going.
Speaker 2: That's correct. She goes on to write, there is no
Speaker 2: single definition of what constitutes a ghost train, although the
Speaker 2: general consensus is that it's when a service is so
Speaker 2: infrequent the train becomes effectively useless, slippery or not. Though
Speaker 2: the term ghost train seems apt, it implies a service
Speaker 2: that is not exactly whole, something that whispers through towns
Speaker 2: and countryside, leaving barely a dent in its wake. And
Speaker 2: it's really interesting to read about these because a lot
Speaker 2: of people don't, you know, aren't even aware that these exist. Perhaps,
Speaker 2: But there are hobbyists, ghost train hunters, they call themselves,
Speaker 2: who seek these out. They try and find these lines
Speaker 2: or these particular trains, and sometimes they run at strange hours,
Speaker 2: and you know, they're stopping. It stops their way out
Speaker 2: out in the middle of nowhere and so forth. But
Speaker 2: they kind of like pride themselves on hunting them down
Speaker 2: and getting their pictures made on them. Or with them.
Speaker 2: But as the article explains, these trains are often legal
Speaker 2: placeholders to keep a line from being closed. Absolutely the
Speaker 2: sort of lines that are mostly useless currently, but it
Speaker 2: would be controversial to close them. It would be perhaps
Speaker 2: bureaucratically expensive or require a lot of effort to close them.
Speaker 2: And another big fact is, of course, you know, populations
Speaker 2: don't stay the same. You know, what may be a
Speaker 2: ghost station and a ghost train line today could be
Speaker 2: vitally important, say five years from now, ten years from now,
Speaker 2: as population shift and new communities develop and so forth.
Speaker 2: The more official name for these are parliamentary trains, since
Speaker 2: in the past and at any rate, it took an
Speaker 2: act of Parliament to shut down a line, so against
Speaker 2: speaking to the amount of effort that it would go
Speaker 2: you'd have to go to to actually close one of these.
Speaker 2: There of course corresponding parliamentary ghost train stations. Again, these
Speaker 2: are also sought out by hobbyists, and these trains and
Speaker 2: these groups are still very much around, so I would
Speaker 2: love to hear from any ghost train hunters out there.
Speaker 2: I also have to note that, especially with subway systems,
Speaker 2: there are various examples of ghost stations that are no
Speaker 2: longer in use, often for logistical reasons or expansion reasons,
Speaker 2: such as the famous City Hall station in New York City,
Speaker 2: noted for its Romanesque Revival architecture. Sometimes stations such as
Speaker 2: this are used on tours, or they're repurposed. And yeah,
Speaker 2: there's something captivating about the idea of such places, stops
Speaker 2: that are on the line but no longer stops, human
Speaker 2: spaces that have literally been carved out of the interior
Speaker 2: of the earth, but are just no longer used by
Speaker 2: human beings. And you know, after I was putting together
Speaker 2: my notes on this section, I was walking back to
Speaker 2: my house from a place that I was working remotely,
Speaker 2: and as luck would have it, I was walking right
Speaker 2: past a ghost tunnel of the Marta rail system here
Speaker 2: in Atalanta. There's about two hundred feet of tunnel, originally
Speaker 2: built for a Tucker North to cabline expansion that was
Speaker 2: never completed, now just a yawning urban cave amidst other
Speaker 2: track structures. And I really don't think i'd noticed this
Speaker 2: until yesterday. I looked up and there's a YouTube page
Speaker 2: called V twelve Productions that does a lot of stuff
Speaker 2: on trains and also some stuff on like urban and
Speaker 2: Atlanta architecture and so forth. They did a nice video
Speaker 2: on it about six years ago. So now I know
Speaker 2: all about this kind of haunting cave, this unnatural human
Speaker 2: made cave in the earth, just you know, a stone's
Speaker 2: throw from where I live.
Speaker 3: Did you take this photo in our outline here?
Speaker 2: I did not. I felt a lot of people have
Speaker 2: sought this out. I think some people were doing a
Speaker 2: little sneaking around to get in there and get closer,
Speaker 2: because there's it's not just the tunnel, there's also a
Speaker 2: length it's like, what do you call it? A trench
Speaker 2: that was constructed too. Like Basically, the situation was they
Speaker 2: were building out the Marta bridgework overhead, and if they
Speaker 2: were going to do this line, they would need to
Speaker 2: make the tunnel now rather than later. It would be
Speaker 2: just so much cheaper to go ahead and build the
Speaker 2: tunnel early than to do it later once everything else
Speaker 2: was built up around it.
Speaker 3: The steep cutting in the earth reminding me of that
Speaker 3: haunting descriptive passage from the signalman. Right, you know, there's
Speaker 3: just the strip of sky and seeing the stone on
Speaker 3: either side the damp walls. But it's one of these
Speaker 3: visions that's both gloomy and beautiful at the same time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, now getting into some more examples of like straight
Speaker 2: up ghost trains, actual spectral trains, haunted trains, trains associated
Speaker 2: with ghosts or supernatural creatures. We're gonna turn briefly here
Speaker 2: once more to Japan. I want to add the caveat
Speaker 2: that again. There's so many ghost train traditions around the world,
Speaker 2: and some of them are rather popular, but we ultimately
Speaker 2: had to focus on ones that maybe had just a
Speaker 2: little more in some cases, a little more scholarship around them,
Speaker 2: or just a few more just interesting things to point out,
Speaker 2: because some of them are just like, hey, there's a
Speaker 2: ghost train, Yeah, rides around. We're not sure it's going
Speaker 2: where it's coming from maybe Hell, we don't know, And
Speaker 2: you know, those are fun and that maybe there's less
Speaker 2: meat to chew on.
Speaker 3: There for us.
Speaker 2: But anyway, there are a few different traditions in Japan,
Speaker 2: one of which concerns the legendary Tanukis of Japan. We've
Speaker 2: discussed these before. You have. These are the okai versions
Speaker 2: of the actual Japanese raccoon dog, which, to be clear,
Speaker 2: are far more closely related to dogs. They are part
Speaker 2: of the kind of day family, so they are there
Speaker 2: essentially dog can. They are not raccoon can, except in
Speaker 2: a very distant since.
Speaker 3: They look like raccoons though they've got that kind of
Speaker 3: head shape and coloration.
Speaker 2: Now, if you've ever watched the excellent nineteen ninety four
Speaker 2: Studio Ghibli film Pom Poko, then you know all about
Speaker 2: these guys, and if you haven't, you should go watch it.
Speaker 2: It's I believe it's on Max in the States, and
Speaker 2: it's excellent, taking viewers into the world of shape shifting
Speaker 2: by way of their testicles. Bake danuki. These are yokai tanuki,
Speaker 2: supernatural tanuki and their struggles alongside a changing, modernizing world.
Speaker 2: And this last bit is a common theme in tanuki lore,
Speaker 2: especially during the Meiji era. The tanuki are a symbol
Speaker 2: of the folkloric wilds of rural life. The traditional tanuki
Speaker 2: statue also entails multiple symbols for good luck, and you'll
Speaker 2: find them in both rural and urban Japanese neighborhoods today,
Speaker 2: in front of homes and so forth, in pandemonium and parade.
Speaker 2: Japanese monsters and the culture of yokai. Michael Dilan Foster
Speaker 2: describes ways in which the tanuki and the locomotive stand
Speaker 2: in stark opposition to each other. So you know, a
Speaker 2: reminder here the first Japanese rail line opened in eighteen
Speaker 2: seventy two and remains an impressive and highly connected form
Speaker 2: of public transportation there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I call reading. And by the way, Michael
Speaker 3: Dylan Foster is a folklorist I've cited on the show before.
Speaker 3: His book of Yokai is great, but I think I've
Speaker 3: seen him write that there was some on record, some
Speaker 3: ambivalence about the edition of the railroad to Japanese life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and that seems to be reflected in these
Speaker 2: tales of the tanuki. They're sort of two main legends
Speaker 2: slash accounts to take into account here concerning the tanuki
Speaker 2: and the train, and they both occur where these two
Speaker 2: worlds meet, you know, the world of the folklore, magical
Speaker 2: wild and this rapidly modernizing world. So you imagine a
Speaker 2: lonely train track running through the wilderness in Japan, and
Speaker 2: if you're aboard one of these trains, or maybe you're
Speaker 2: working on the rail, or maybe you're at some sort
Speaker 2: of like very rural train station, and suddenly you hear
Speaker 2: the sounds or you see the lights of an oncoming train,
Speaker 2: Well that's a cause for alarm for all the reasons
Speaker 2: we've cited so far. So if you're if you're if
Speaker 2: you're on a boarded train, perhaps you slow or stop.
Speaker 2: If you're working, well, then you know, you freak out.
Speaker 2: You try and get in touch with with with the
Speaker 2: folks and let them know that there's some sort of
Speaker 2: unexpected train on the track. But then, as is the
Speaker 2: case with ghost trains, sometimes it never shows up. It
Speaker 2: becomes clear that this was a false alarm. There was
Speaker 2: no train, and in this case, via the supernatural Yokai explanation,
Speaker 2: this was clearly the work of the Tanuki's mimicking the
Speaker 2: sights and sounds of a train to mess with these humans.
Speaker 3: A little trickster is okay. So this, I think is
Speaker 3: a is a slightly more humorous take on the ghost train,
Speaker 3: Like there's a bit of a spirit of pranksteriness about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, where it's like, oh Tanuki's they they got
Speaker 2: us again. But then there's a flip side to it
Speaker 2: and uh, and this is where one sees the side
Speaker 2: of a dead Tanuki, perhaps cut in half by train
Speaker 2: by a roaring train by the side of the tracks,
Speaker 2: and Foster describes it as follows. The confrontation between tanuki
Speaker 2: and steam train, a common trope during this period, gestures
Speaker 2: dramatically to the changing meanings of yokai. The old forms
Speaker 2: of magic, the shape shifting talents of the tanuki still
Speaker 2: had the power to dazzle and deceive, causing the train
Speaker 2: engineers to proceed with caution through the lonely countryside. But
Speaker 2: the instant they stop believing and plowed full speed ahead,
Speaker 2: the iron mechanism of technology could make the magic powerless,
Speaker 2: transforming a supernatural creature into nothing more than an animal
Speaker 2: body lying dead beside the tracks of progress.
Speaker 3: Oh, that's quite poignant.
Speaker 2: And if you are a fan of Pompoco, which again
Speaker 2: is an excellent film, there's a sequence towards the end
Speaker 2: of this movie which has quite a serious ecological message
Speaker 2: and gets into this, you know, some of these topics
Speaker 2: we're discussing here, in which some of the tanuki are
Speaker 2: run over by automobiles and trucks, and the impact of
Speaker 2: this scene, at least in my understanding, it seems to
Speaker 2: mirror the traditions here, the idea that you know, they
Speaker 2: lose their power when they are when they go head
Speaker 2: on head with like the violent nature of progress.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that the magic is gone once it once their
Speaker 3: presence fails to convince anyone to slow the giant machine down.
Speaker 2: Now there are other supernatural beings associated with trains. I mean,
Speaker 2: I guess there are other yokai and yuri that may be.
Speaker 2: It may turn up on a train in some tellings,
Speaker 2: but there I read did run across one. There's a
Speaker 2: particular urban legend of a yuri of ghost by the
Speaker 2: name of I think Tiki Tiki. I'm not sure if
Speaker 2: I'm saying this correctly. I think it is. The idea
Speaker 2: here is this is supposed to sound like the sound
Speaker 2: that a half of a woman makes when she crawls
Speaker 2: across the ground, because the ghost is that of someone
Speaker 2: who was cut in half by a train whoa One
Speaker 2: version of this tale recounted on the MPR podcast Code Switch,
Speaker 2: or more specifically, I Think an article referring to one
Speaker 2: of their episodes that I came across. I do listen
Speaker 2: to Code Switch, but I don't think I've heard this
Speaker 2: particular episode The Creepiest ghost and monster stories from around
Speaker 2: the World. They mentioned that This particular ghost is sometimes
Speaker 2: named Kashima Raiko, and sometimes she inhabits a bathroom stall
Speaker 2: and asks children who venture into the bathroom to fetch
Speaker 2: her legs from a neighboring stall. And there are other
Speaker 2: versions of this too, where she just like basically, you know,
Speaker 2: she's going to cut you in half. That's what she's
Speaker 2: going to do if you run a foul of her.
Speaker 2: But interesting too that it ends up connecting to bathrooms
Speaker 2: because there are a lot of you okai and you
Speaker 2: that seem to be associated with the fear of young
Speaker 2: people venturing into perhaps dank or quiet bathroom areas.
Speaker 3: Oh man, have we ever done a Halloween episode on
Speaker 3: scary bathrooms? I feel like that should be a series.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, that would be a good one. There are
Speaker 2: a number of yokai that line up with that.
Speaker 3: Wait, do we have everything planned for this month? Maybe
Speaker 3: we should sub that in. That's a pinch hit.
Speaker 2: Oh, we'll see. We'll have to look at the calendar.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: There's also a railway tunnel said to be haunted Joman Tunnel,
Speaker 2: and Hokkaido said to be haunted by laborers who died
Speaker 2: in its early twentieth century construction laborers who were then
Speaker 2: either buried on site or walled up in the tunnel
Speaker 2: or side shafts. And for this reason it's also it
Speaker 2: also has another name, and that is hito bashira tunnel,
Speaker 2: a term referring to an ancient Japanese form of foundation burial,
Speaker 2: premature burial, and human sacrifice that traces back to ancient
Speaker 2: Chinese practices. The concept here is that such a sacrifice
Speaker 2: is necessary to appease the gods on large scale construction projects,
Speaker 2: to prevent them from failing or you know, falling to
Speaker 2: the elements, natural disease, and so forth later on. According
Speaker 2: to Andrea d Antoni down in a Whole twenty nineteen
Speaker 2: Japan Review, archaeological evidence suggests that the practice was used
Speaker 2: maybe as late as the sixteenth century in Japan now
Speaker 2: standard Caveat anytime we bring up particular historical cultural examples
Speaker 2: of human sacrifice, we have to drive home that you
Speaker 2: can find examples of human sacrifice in all ancient cultures,
Speaker 2: and there are many examples of foundation burial, human or
Speaker 2: otherwise you can find in different cultures around the world.
Speaker 2: But in Japanese usage, the term hitdobashira, meaning human pillar
Speaker 2: itself can also refer to laborers who end up buried
Speaker 2: or dying in one of these construction projects just due
Speaker 2: to bad working conditions, and this seems to be the
Speaker 2: case with Joe Muntunnel. And this leads to various ghost
Speaker 2: stories that invoke actual ritual premature burial. So to read
Speaker 2: more on this, so turned to one of the books
Speaker 2: that Euroko, Yoda and Matt Alt wrote. I reference to
Speaker 2: these a lot. They wrote one on Ninja's, they wrote
Speaker 2: one on Yokai, and they wrote one on Yuri. Well.
Speaker 2: In the Yuri book Uri Attack, they point out that
Speaker 2: officials initially dismissed these accounts. For years, the Joman Tunnel
Speaker 2: was haunted or had humans buried in the walls until
Speaker 2: around nineteen seventy. That's when there were repairs underway following
Speaker 2: a nineteen sixty eight earthquake that it damaged the tunnel,
Speaker 2: and skeletons were discovered in the walls of the tunnel,
Speaker 2: apparently in a standing position, and dozens more were buried
Speaker 2: outside of the tunnel. Some accounts say hundreds of Some
Speaker 2: seemed to point towards a far lesser but still disturbing
Speaker 2: amount of skeletons Now, I don't think any serious historians
Speaker 2: suggest that early twentieth century construction of this tunnel made
Speaker 2: use of ritual human sacrifice, but rather that the skeletal remains,
Speaker 2: as well as some physical evidence and accounts involving the
Speaker 2: construction of the tunnel point out that it was a
Speaker 2: difficult tunnel project with many accidents and that the working
Speaker 2: conditions were dangerous. And Andrea D'Antoni, in the paper I
Speaker 2: cited previously, also discusses the probability that these were forced
Speaker 2: laborers as well, So not a ghost train, but a
Speaker 2: ghost train tunnel.
Speaker 3: Is there any known like modern folklore about this, Like,
Speaker 3: do people believe there are hauntings related to this tunnel?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think the idea is in these have persisted
Speaker 2: for a while that if you trip, you're traveling through
Speaker 2: that tunnel, you might hear strange sounds, maybe see strange sites,
Speaker 2: but it certainly sounds, So there is a tradition of
Speaker 2: it being haunted, and as that paper that I cited
Speaker 2: points out, it's also become sort of a focal point
Speaker 2: for what the author calls dark tourism, where people actually
Speaker 2: seek it out. And we have plenty of examples of
Speaker 2: this obviously in other places around the world, haunted castles,
Speaker 2: haunted cabins, haunted location that have some sort of dark history,
Speaker 2: and they become a target for dark tourism.
Speaker 3: I'm a sucker for a ghost tour, even a cheesy one.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I am glad you mentioned that, because that is
Speaker 2: one of the problems about research and ghost trains is
Speaker 2: that you have actual traditions of ghost trains, and then
Speaker 2: you have plenty of trains, either actual or maybe almost
Speaker 2: trains that do like ghost Halloween related events in rock. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: it kind of messes with your search results sometimes.
Speaker 3: Oh I bet a train could make a really good
Speaker 3: haunted house, though, you know, because it's already like lineary
Speaker 3: moving through it. I don't know. Then again, is the
Speaker 3: is the terrain of the inside of a train varied enough?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think serious professional haunt designers would probably argue
Speaker 2: that you just don't have enough room to move people
Speaker 2: around and have the various distractions and frights. But you know,
Speaker 2: it's like a simple haunted house and as a one
Speaker 2: off gimmick, I'd be down for it. Haunted subway train,
Speaker 2: that's great, let's do it.
Speaker 3: Okay, so we've talked about shape shifting tanuki's pretending to
Speaker 3: be trains. We've talked about haunted train tunnels, but what
Speaker 3: about just like a full on spectral train, a train
Speaker 3: that is like a wandering ghost in itself in that
Speaker 3: people seem to see or hear it passing by them
Speaker 3: along the tracks, and it turns out there's no physical
Speaker 3: train there.
Speaker 2: Well, all aboard for Lincoln's funeral train, the spectral version,
Speaker 2: because there was an actual Lincoln funeral train, because in
Speaker 2: eighteen sixty five, after the assassination of the US President,
Speaker 2: funeral services were held, his body laid in state, and
Speaker 2: then a funeral train transported his body at low speeds
Speaker 2: through seven states to be buried in Springfield, Illinois. A
Speaker 2: pilot train went ahead of the nine car funeral train
Speaker 2: to make sure the tracks were clear. And you know,
Speaker 2: the people you know heard this go by or gathered
Speaker 2: to WI should go by. Included a map for you here, Joe,
Speaker 2: showing all the different cities it hit on the way.
Speaker 3: Right, so it was not a direct route. It went
Speaker 3: up from Washington, d C. Through Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey,
Speaker 3: and New York, and then background upstate New York to
Speaker 3: through like Albany and Buffalo and then down through Ohio,
Speaker 3: Indiana and finally Illinois.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they could. You could really do like a band
Speaker 2: tour t shirt for this. I would be tempted to
Speaker 2: create one if we were more of like a US
Speaker 2: history podcast and not Science and Culture. Now, the ghost
Speaker 2: train story here allegedly dates back to the thirties and forties,
Speaker 2: and it involves a spectral version of this train continuing
Speaker 2: to make this journey once a year in April, and
Speaker 2: stopping clocks and watches on the way. And I think
Speaker 2: a lot of these are also these sightings where are
Speaker 2: located in New York. And in fact, one of the
Speaker 2: main sources on this that everyone points to this a
Speaker 2: nineteen forty five article in New York History by folklorist
Speaker 2: Louis C. Jonas Session titled some Historic Ghosts of New York.
Speaker 3: Okay, let's hear it.
Speaker 2: The author writes, the first train is followed by a second,
Speaker 2: this time with a single flat car draped as is
Speaker 2: the one before it, but on this car is a
Speaker 2: lonely coffin, nothing more neither ghost nor skeleton. As the
Speaker 2: train approaches, a black carpet seems to unroll along the
Speaker 2: track before it, and all sound, even the passing of
Speaker 2: Frates is blanketed. Men know which day in spring the
Speaker 2: ghost train has passed through. For all clocks stop and
Speaker 2: wait five to eight minutes before they begin again.
Speaker 3: Now, this seems to me to be, at least as
Speaker 3: far as I know, a really unusual kind of ghost story,
Speaker 3: because ghost stories are typically very local. You know, it's like,
Speaker 3: here's the local phenomenon. The locals claim to have seen it,
Speaker 3: or maybe people who come to visit, but it's tied
Speaker 3: to a specific location. This is going cross country, it's
Speaker 3: going all over the place, going through New York and
Speaker 3: saying stopping clocks as it goes along.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, that's the story. But then I guess
Speaker 2: we have to keep in mind that the story itself
Speaker 2: could be very local. That's true, and you know, it
Speaker 2: could be isolated to just parts of New York State,
Speaker 2: but then gets passed on as if this is happening everywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, because the actual trains route was so long, it
Speaker 3: gives the impression that it's all along the tracks, but
Speaker 3: it could be. Yeah, like you're saying, just a local story.
Speaker 2: Now, this particular ghost story, it's interesting in a number
Speaker 2: of ways. On one hand, it does seem to kind
Speaker 2: of line up with ancient folkloric traditions of the procession
Speaker 2: of the dead, in which souls proceed along a road
Speaker 2: or path bound for the underworld. And of course this
Speaker 2: matches up nicely with some of the ideas we discussed about,
Speaker 2: like why the train is captivating. You know, the idea
Speaker 2: of it is fate at his point A to point B,
Speaker 2: there's no getting off, and in this case the train
Speaker 2: is bound for the underworld or the afterlife, or the
Speaker 2: great beyond in one form or the other.
Speaker 3: Also tying into the uniqueness of tunnels passing into that
Speaker 3: literally under the earth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you can. You can also line this up
Speaker 2: with traditions of the wild hunt, and you know, in
Speaker 2: another other traditions of the procession of the dead, which
Speaker 2: sometimes are more malicious, you know, it's the dam going
Speaker 2: into hell, and other times it's more solemn. You know.
Speaker 2: It's hard to say exactly how we're supposed to feel
Speaker 2: about Lincoln's ghost train. The author here in the nineteen
Speaker 2: forty five paper is is light on interpretation, but I
Speaker 2: get the impression that it's meant to be somber, kind
Speaker 2: of a folkloric expression of communal shock and grief, aligned
Speaker 2: perhaps to sightings of unidentified trains or strange sites and
Speaker 2: sounds by the tracks and so forth.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. I'm a little curious. I don't know if
Speaker 3: you know what to make of this, but I'm curious
Speaker 3: why the description from Jonah Session mentions that the train
Speaker 3: is moving along and it only has the coffin, and
Speaker 3: it says no skeleton. Would people be expecting to see
Speaker 3: the skeleton?
Speaker 2: I guess they wanted. I guess the author's trying to
Speaker 2: drive home the idea that it's that it's tasteful.
Speaker 3: I don't know, you know, it almost seems like it's
Speaker 3: like a very respectful ghost story, you know, in keeping
Speaker 3: with presidential decorum. It's like, no gory details, no signs
Speaker 3: of decay. You're just seeing the coffin. It's just a box.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's no like ghost Lincoln's gonna get you. Yeah.
Speaker 2: It does seem to be more of this, this expression
Speaker 2: of communal shock and grief. Yeah. Now, As an aside, though,
Speaker 2: it is worth noting that Lincoln's personal ghost, not just
Speaker 2: his train, has long been said to haunt the White House,
Speaker 2: as well as various former residences of Araham Lincoln, and
Speaker 2: offices that the sixteenth US president held or occupied for
Speaker 2: some amount of time. This of course, raises all sorts
Speaker 2: of questions about how many places the ghost of a
Speaker 2: single person can manifest in. But I would if we
Speaker 2: were to believe all these accounts, it would seem like
Speaker 2: a lot.
Speaker 3: It's got to go both ways, right, Like how many
Speaker 3: different places can one ghost be in? And also how
Speaker 3: many different ghosts can be in one house. I would
Speaker 3: guess the White House probably has a lot.
Speaker 2: They do. Now, we know from our media consumption that
Speaker 2: the maximum number of ghosts in a given location is thirteen.
Speaker 2: So I haven't done a full count, So Joe, you're
Speaker 2: gonna have to count them as I proceed here.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'll be your Matthew Lillard.
Speaker 2: According to the White House Historical Society, the White House
Speaker 2: ghosts include the following. In addition to Abraham Lincoln, so
Speaker 2: let's go ahead and count him as one, we also
Speaker 2: have Willie Lincoln, his son who actually died in the
Speaker 2: White House in eighteen sixty two of typhoid fever, Mary Lincoln,
Speaker 2: as well Andrew Jackson, Thomas Jefferson, Dolly Madison, John Tyler,
Speaker 2: William Henry Harrison, first president to die in the White House,
Speaker 2: Abigail Adams, former landowner of the essentially the property there,
Speaker 2: David Burns, Anna Surrett, mother of Lincoln assassination conspirator Mary Sewrett,
Speaker 2: also an unnamed British soldier Jeremiah Smith, and then finally
Speaker 2: the ghost of a fifteen year old boy known only
Speaker 2: as the Thing according to reports around nineteen eleven.
Speaker 3: Wow, I would not have guessed that many. And also like,
Speaker 3: didn't most of these people not actually die in the
Speaker 3: White House?
Speaker 2: Yeah, most of them didn't. So yeah, raises questions like
Speaker 2: do you have to die somewhere to haunt that place
Speaker 2: or you can just have important associations with that place?
Speaker 2: Hard to say, But did we hit thirteen?
Speaker 3: No? I failed in my mission. I forgot to count.
Speaker 3: There's got to be okay, I'll estimate. Yes.
Speaker 2: Nixon's ghost, by the way, was not listed, though Nixon's ghost,
Speaker 2: of course, has appeared on The Simpsons. Yes, so I
Speaker 2: was not familiar with Lincoln's ghost trained before. I don't
Speaker 2: know if this, don't know to what extent this is
Speaker 2: still an active bit of a folklore. If this is
Speaker 2: active ghost story, an active ghost story at all. I
Speaker 2: don't know when the most recent alleged sighting of Lincoln's
Speaker 2: ghost train occurred. So this is definitely a case where
Speaker 2: I'd love to hear from anyone out there. Were you
Speaker 2: aware with the tradition of Lincoln's ghost train? Were you
Speaker 2: aware of it like organically like and have you ever
Speaker 2: seen it? I definitely want to hear from anyone who
Speaker 2: has seen Lincoln's ghost train as it proceeds spectrally stopping clocks,
Speaker 2: you know, along the train line or anywhere. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's that's another question, like does it have to if
Speaker 2: this is a ghost train, does it have to adhere
Speaker 2: to the previous itinerary? Or can it just pop up anywhere?
Speaker 2: Can it pop up in the New York Subway? I
Speaker 2: don't know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, if ghosts of human bodies can walk through walls,
Speaker 3: which regular human bodies cannot do, can ghost trains leave
Speaker 3: the tracks which regular trains cannot do?
Speaker 2: Maybe? So? I mean the Polar Express pulls out in
Speaker 2: front of the Boy's house, right, So yeah, it shows
Speaker 2: that anything is possible.
Speaker 3: All right. Next, I wanted to talk about some connections
Speaker 3: between railroad lore and so called ghost lights. There are
Speaker 3: a number of connections of this kind in stories from
Speaker 3: all throughout the United States, and I believe some other
Speaker 3: countries as well. But there really are a lot of
Speaker 3: these that I'm aware of in US traditions. You can
Speaker 3: find them in you know, little local legends from places
Speaker 3: all around the country. And in reading about them, I
Speaker 3: came to notice that in a lot of these stories,
Speaker 3: the so called ghost light is not actually said to
Speaker 3: come from a train itself. In a few cases it is,
Speaker 3: but in a lot of cases there's another source. So
Speaker 3: here's one example I wanted to talk about. That is
Speaker 3: the Mayco ghost Light. So there's a famous railway ghost
Speaker 3: light associated with a small community in southeastern North Carolina
Speaker 3: called Maco, which is just outside of the city of Wilmington.
Speaker 3: And to establish the alleged origin of this story, I
Speaker 3: want to turn into a book by a scholar named
Speaker 3: Richard Wallzer. This was This book is called North Carolina Legends,
Speaker 3: published by the North Carolina Division of Archives in history
Speaker 3: in the year nineteen eighty. And here's what Wallser says.
Speaker 3: At a small Brunswick County station of Maco, fifteen miles
Speaker 3: west of Wilmington, a slow freight train was puffing down
Speaker 3: the track. In the caboose was Joe Baldwin, a flagman.
Speaker 3: A jerking noise startled him, and he was aware that
Speaker 3: his caboose had become uncoupled from the rest of the train,
Speaker 3: which went heedlessly on its way. As the caboose slackened speed,
Speaker 3: Joe looked up and saw the beaming light of a
Speaker 3: fast passenger train bearing down upon him. Grabbing his lantern,
Speaker 3: he waved it frantically to warn the oncoming engineer of
Speaker 3: the imminent danger. It was too late. At a trestle
Speaker 3: over the swamp, the passenger train plowed into the caboose.
Speaker 3: Joe was decapitated. His head flew into the swamp on
Speaker 3: one side of the track, his lantern on the other.
Speaker 3: It was days before the destruction caused by the wreck
Speaker 3: was cleared away, and when Joe's head could not be found,
Speaker 3: his body was buried without it. But the story does
Speaker 3: not end there because Wallser says that thereafter, I say,
Speaker 3: on misty nights, people would see a light in the
Speaker 3: darkness that was attributed to the ghost of Joe Baldwin,
Speaker 3: the headless ghost wandering around in the swamp or along
Speaker 3: the train tracks looking for his head. Now, some versions
Speaker 3: of the story say that there's like a single light
Speaker 3: that swings back and forth like lantern, moving through the country,
Speaker 3: and as it gets closer and closer to the observer,
Speaker 3: it gets brighter and brighter until it kind of like
Speaker 3: flares up and turns into this big brilliance and then
Speaker 3: just poofs disappears. There are other versions of the story
Speaker 3: that say that you might see like two lights maybe
Speaker 3: going toward one another, as if you know, one is
Speaker 3: the light from the caboo swinging to worn and then
Speaker 3: the other is the light of the approaching train, and
Speaker 3: then eventually they cross because I guess they're both ghosts
Speaker 3: in this case, so railroad ghost lore and a ghost light.
Speaker 3: But in most cases the ghost light is not thought
Speaker 3: to be the train itself. Rather it's the lantern of
Speaker 3: this man who was killed in a terrible train accident. Now,
Speaker 3: a claim famously repeated all over in many sources is
Speaker 3: that here we come back to US presidential history. That
Speaker 3: US President Grover Cleveland, who was famously present the only
Speaker 3: president to have two non consecutive terms. So he was
Speaker 3: president from eighteen eighty five to eighteen eighty nine, and
Speaker 3: then again from eighteen ninety three eight to ninety seven
Speaker 3: that Cleveland personally witnessed the Maco Ghost Light, and I
Speaker 3: thought that was kind of interesting. He allegedly enjoyed the
Speaker 3: story and talked about the Makeo Ghost Light in some
Speaker 3: of his speeches. But I was reading some follow up
Speaker 3: about this in an article for the Wilmington Star News
Speaker 3: by Ben Steelman. The article was titled did Grover Cleveland
Speaker 3: ever see the Maco Light? And despite the number of
Speaker 3: sources that spread this claim, especially in more recent decades,
Speaker 3: investigation of older sources reveals actually something quite different. So
Speaker 3: Steelman mentions a feature in the Sunday Star News from
Speaker 3: March twenty eighth, nineteen forty eight, which says that, according
Speaker 3: to records, Cleveland was traveling on the Wilmington, Manchester and
Speaker 3: Augusta Railroad sometimes I think this was sometime between his
Speaker 3: two non consecutive presidential terms when the train stopped somewhere
Speaker 3: to refill its water reserves, and according to this article,
Speaker 3: Cleveland got out of the train during the stop to
Speaker 3: take a walk, during which he noticed the conductor was
Speaker 3: waving two different lights, one green and one white, and
Speaker 3: so he asked the question, why are you waving two
Speaker 3: lanterns instead of one. And someone explained to the president
Speaker 3: the story of Joe Baldwin and said that because Baldwin was,
Speaker 3: you know, always out here looking for his head with
Speaker 3: one light, railway workers had to use two lights on
Speaker 3: this stretch, two different colored lights to signal other trains.
Speaker 3: So if you're a train, you know, passing through this
Speaker 3: stretch of tracks, you see two different colored lights ahead, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's an actual signal to the approaching trains that we
Speaker 3: need to stop. There's an obstruction on the tracks. But
Speaker 3: if you just see one light, that's just a ghost. Ignore,
Speaker 3: plow on ahead. Seems almost to have some similarities to
Speaker 3: the Tanuki magic thing. It's like, you know, oh, one light, yeah,
Speaker 3: don't worry about it, just a ghost to go on.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And then also an example of like some of
Speaker 2: the haunt loses its power in the face of like
Speaker 2: modernity and logic, where it's like, oh, yeah, there's a
Speaker 2: ghost light out there yet, but it's not. It's not
Speaker 2: the appropriate color, it's not the right code, so it's
Speaker 2: no big deal. Just ignore it.
Speaker 3: But I have doubts about this. I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: somebody with North Carolina railroad knowledge could set me straight.
Speaker 3: But I just kind of doubt that if an engine
Speaker 3: driver saw one light, they'd be like, ah, it's fine,
Speaker 3: just keep going. Anyway, there's this difference in where the
Speaker 3: Grover Cleveland story lands. Older sources do not say that
Speaker 3: Cleveland actually saw the light, just that somebody told him
Speaker 3: the story, And apparently this got garbled in subsequent published
Speaker 3: retellings beginning in the nineteen forties, and then ended up
Speaker 3: with the legend that a former president had seen the
Speaker 3: ghost himself. However, here things get kind of interesting. Steelman
Speaker 3: also explains the work of a local historian named James Burke,
Speaker 3: not that James Burke a different one who had written
Speaker 3: books on the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad, so sort of
Speaker 3: local railroad historian. And this guy looked into the origins
Speaker 3: of the Joe Baldwin Railroad decapitation story and could not
Speaker 3: find any evidence that the original story ever took place either.
Speaker 3: In fact, he couldn't find any evidence of a person
Speaker 3: named Joe or Joseph Baldwin living around Wilmington at that time.
Speaker 3: Now there is something that may have gotten distorted here.
Speaker 3: The Star News article says, quote Burke did find accounts, however,
Speaker 3: of an accident on the Wilmington, Manchester and Augusta in
Speaker 3: January eighteen fifty six along a curvy stretch outside Wilmington
Speaker 3: known as the Rabbit Snake Grade near Hoods Creek, in
Speaker 3: which a conductor named Charles Baldwin was fatally injured. Burke
Speaker 3: thinks the details of this incident were garbled in the
Speaker 3: oral tradition of the story. However, even this, so, this
Speaker 3: accident could not have taken place at anything called the
Speaker 3: Mako Station because Maco didn't exist in eighteen fifty six,
Speaker 3: so at the time the station had a different name.
Speaker 3: So we've got several different transformations of the original story
Speaker 3: on our hands. Who was injured, how when and where,
Speaker 3: and who allegedly witnessed the ghost. All of these got
Speaker 3: changed in the retelling, which makes me think back to
Speaker 3: our episodes on the Telephone Game, you know, the empirical
Speaker 3: research about how details of stories get changed in retellings.
Speaker 3: The kind of just unavoidable process of the transformation of
Speaker 3: a story, including all of these types of key details
Speaker 3: as it gets repeated and repeated. Yeah, finally, the Wilmington
Speaker 3: Star News article says, quote the light was unseen after
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy seven when the CSX line pulled up the
Speaker 3: railroad tracks in the Maco vicinity. More recently, paranormal investigations
Speaker 3: claim to have caught evidence of the Makeo light on
Speaker 3: camera and I looked it up and yeah, it does
Speaker 3: seem recently people have been like looking for it out there,
Speaker 3: trying to get it.
Speaker 2: So, just to be clear, does the Maco light or
Speaker 2: the Maco lights do they have the presidential seal of
Speaker 2: approval here? Do we really know one way or another?
Speaker 3: I think we do not know. Okay, the administration has
Speaker 3: been ambiguous on this, but note that you know this
Speaker 3: is part of a broader phenomenon of ghost lights, which
Speaker 3: don't always necessarily connect to trains. A lot of times
Speaker 3: they're just disconnected. People in a certain vantage point claim
Speaker 3: to see, or in some cases definitely do see lights
Speaker 3: that don't have of very easy to explain origin. We've
Speaker 3: talked about this on the show before. We've gotten into
Speaker 3: some of the main scientific or skeptical explanations where these
Speaker 3: mysterious lights come from. There are a number of different possibilities,
Speaker 3: but very often they're just like reflected lights from normal
Speaker 3: sources that are being seen from farther away than you
Speaker 3: would imagine. They could be seen a lot of times,
Speaker 3: they're like headlights from a highway. So, for example, there
Speaker 3: is another train associated ghost light in northern Michigan known
Speaker 3: as the Paulding Light. This is in the Upper Peninsula,
Speaker 3: and I was reading about this. Apparently there was some
Speaker 3: investigation into this light, and finally it turned out that
Speaker 3: it's car headlights. It's car headlights just appearing in a
Speaker 3: place where you wouldn't expect to see them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, growing up, there was some sort of ghost story
Speaker 2: about a local train track light, and I never saw it.
Speaker 2: I never sought it out. But I think you encounter
Speaker 2: things like this in a lot of places. And there's
Speaker 2: again some likely spillover between these stories and stories of
Speaker 2: will of the Wisps and other strange lights in the night.
Speaker 2: We've always had these stories. A lot of it comes
Speaker 2: down to a mix of actual phenomena and just our
Speaker 2: desire to dive into different stories and supernatural explanations of
Speaker 2: what we've seen.
Speaker 3: All right, Rob, if you don't mind, I want to
Speaker 3: cap our discussion today with a little interesting little invention.
Speaker 3: Note I came across semantically related to ghost trends. So
Speaker 3: back in twenty seventeen, there were some press releases about
Speaker 3: a new invention in development by an employee of Fermi Lab,
Speaker 3: and the invention was called the ghost train generator. Now,
Speaker 3: for those not familiar, Fermi Lab is formally called the
Speaker 3: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. It is a particle physics lab
Speaker 3: high energy particle physics that's housed in Batavia, Illinois, which
Speaker 3: operates under the US Department of Energy. One of my
Speaker 3: main sources here is a Fermi Lab press release by
Speaker 3: Daniel Garristo. So, what on earth would be the purpose
Speaker 3: of something called a ghost train generator? Well, this takes
Speaker 3: us back to the territory of railway obstructions and collisions, specifically,
Speaker 3: what happens when a wheeled vehicle like a car or truck,
Speaker 3: gets stuck while crossing railroad tracks and then is hit
Speaker 3: by a train. At the time of this Fermi Lab
Speaker 3: press release, about seven years ago, the Federal Railroad Administration
Speaker 3: stats revealed that this was happening hundreds of times a year,
Speaker 3: which was shocking to me. I had no idea that
Speaker 3: it was this common to have a collision between a
Speaker 3: train and a wheeled vehicle. I went to check on
Speaker 3: updated numbers and found that, at least according to preliminary
Speaker 3: statistics from the Federal Railroad Administration, in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 3: there were two one hundred and ninety two vehicle train
Speaker 3: collisions at railroad crossings in the United States, and that
Speaker 3: there were two hundred and forty seven fatalities and seven
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty six injuries. I found these stats reported
Speaker 3: by the way on the website of a rail safety
Speaker 3: organization called Operation Life Saver. So I don't know. To me,
Speaker 3: that is just like way more vehicles and people getting
Speaker 3: hit by trains at highway crossings than I would have guessed.
Speaker 3: And despite what you might assume based on those numbers,
Speaker 3: this is not a problem that has recently gotten worse.
Speaker 3: The number of crossing accidents used to be astronomically higher
Speaker 3: decades ago. According to that same safety org there were
Speaker 3: something like twelve thousand of these incidents in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: and that's at a time when the US population was
Speaker 3: only like two thirds of what it is now. So
Speaker 3: now we're down to like twenty two hundred a year now,
Speaker 3: so it's much better than it used to be. But
Speaker 3: still at least that's just way more common than I
Speaker 3: would have guessed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, this always reminds me. There's a great Mystery
Speaker 2: Science Theater three thousand short riffing on a nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: nine educational short film from Union Specific Railroad titled Last
Speaker 2: Clear Chance about the dangers of railway crossings, and it's
Speaker 2: a fun riff. Off the top of my head, I
Speaker 2: can't remember which movie this is attached to, if it
Speaker 2: has the line and why don't they look? And I've
Speaker 2: seen this short so many times over the years. But
Speaker 2: it's also like, it's a really serious message, and I
Speaker 2: feel like, even though there are lots of laughs watching
Speaker 2: the riff version of it, the message still kind of
Speaker 2: drives home for you and you realize, no, yeah, trains
Speaker 2: are dangerous and that they're holy, blameless creatures as well
Speaker 2: as they riff on it in the short. You know,
Speaker 2: it's like, trains are dangerous, can be dangerous, especially if
Speaker 2: you're not being careful around them and you're not listening,
Speaker 2: you're not obeying like basic train related safety tips.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's not the train's fault that these
Speaker 3: collisions happen. The train cannot stop quickly it is not
Speaker 3: able to you know, it might take it a mile
Speaker 3: to stop. So yeah, you know those those safety the
Speaker 3: bars come down and the lights go up. For a reason,
Speaker 3: it is not worth it trying to get across the tracks,
Speaker 3: as you know, before the train comes, you can wait
Speaker 3: a few minutes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially if you're dealing with a train that's moving
Speaker 2: at a considerable speed. I think sometimes it's easy to
Speaker 2: take this for granted if you're more familiar with trains
Speaker 2: passing through urban settings, like you're in Atlanta, where by
Speaker 2: the time the train is coming through town, it's usually
Speaker 2: not going it may or at least it doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to be going that fast. Now you can also get
Speaker 2: into a serious discussion about how fast that train is
Speaker 2: really going if it needs to stop suddenly because your
Speaker 2: car is on the tracks when it shouldn't.
Speaker 3: Be exactly, And of course it's quite clear that it
Speaker 3: is dangerous for the vehicle in the train's path, but
Speaker 3: in some cases it's not that common. But in some
Speaker 3: cases it can even derail a train, so it's a
Speaker 3: bad thing. Yeah, but I used to have this question.
Speaker 3: This is sort of a tangent, but this reading about
Speaker 3: this answered this question for me. I used to have
Speaker 3: this question, how does it happen at all that trucks
Speaker 3: or buses get stuck on the railroad tracks? Because I
Speaker 3: would see I would read about this, and I would think,
Speaker 3: just like, what are the odds that your vehicle breaks
Speaker 3: down or stalls out right there? Like how often could
Speaker 3: that actually happen? But apparently there is at least one reason,
Speaker 3: especially large vehicles get stuck on railroad tracks. And I
Speaker 3: was thinking about it wrong. It's not usually that they
Speaker 3: happen to like break down because of an engine malfunction
Speaker 3: right there. Rather, it's that they bottom out. Railroad tracks
Speaker 3: tend to be elevated for drainage reasons. You can imagine
Speaker 3: the problem if you know, water were covering the rails,
Speaker 3: so they tend to be raised up a little bit
Speaker 3: so water drains away. And at intersections with highways, the
Speaker 3: tracks often form a hump in the road. When a
Speaker 3: vehicle with low ground clearance, like say a bus or
Speaker 3: certain types of truck and trailer combinations, goes over the hump,
Speaker 3: they can get hung up on the hump.
Speaker 2: That makes sense. I had not thought about this before,
Speaker 2: but yeah, and.
Speaker 3: So obviously that's a big problem. Anyway, this brings us
Speaker 3: back to the ghost train generator. So there is a
Speaker 3: proposed solution to this problem. That was the idea of
Speaker 3: a FERMI lab specialist named Derek Plant. Plant came up
Speaker 3: with the idea of a device that could take advantage
Speaker 3: of the railroad's automated signaling system by faking the presence
Speaker 3: of another train on the tracks, Hence the ghost train generator,
Speaker 3: and the way it works is this so. Modern railroads
Speaker 3: are broken up into segments called signal blocks that have
Speaker 3: stretches of tracks that are at least a mile long,
Speaker 3: sometimes several miles, in which an electrical signaling system is
Speaker 3: hooked up to each of the two separate rails. And
Speaker 3: so when a train is present on the tracks within
Speaker 3: a signal block, the trains wheels and axles create a
Speaker 3: connection between the two rails, They complete the electrical circuit,
Speaker 3: and the signal block activates lights all down the line
Speaker 3: that indicate to oncoming trains there is a train on
Speaker 3: the block up ahead, maybe something is stalled out or
Speaker 3: behind schedule, and this gives the approaching train time to
Speaker 3: slow down and stop. The ghost train generator would be
Speaker 3: a small portable device that could be stored inside any
Speaker 3: truck or bus along with other emergency equipment, you know,
Speaker 3: like a fire extinguisher or jumper cables or whatever. And
Speaker 3: the device would be made from two magnets with a
Speaker 3: special conducting wire, so it would be equipment essentially to
Speaker 3: connect to the two rails. So if your vehicle gets
Speaker 3: stuck on the tracks, you would quickly get out and
Speaker 3: attach one magnet to one rail, the other magnet to
Speaker 3: the other rail, and the circuit is complete. So the
Speaker 3: signaling block thinks a phantom train is obstructing the line.
Speaker 3: This sends a signal up the path to any approaching train,
Speaker 3: so it has plenty of time to stop so that
Speaker 3: you can get your car out of the way. So
Speaker 3: the last I've seen of this is talk about a
Speaker 3: conference presentation and patent application from several years back now,
Speaker 3: so I don't know if this ever went into production anywhere.
Speaker 3: Maybe there was something that's not actually viable about it.
Speaker 3: I don't know, or maybe they are out there. I
Speaker 3: don't know exactly where this idea went, but assuming it works,
Speaker 3: I think it's a really cool idea. I love the
Speaker 3: idea of summoning spectral trains to prevent destruction and potentially
Speaker 3: save lives.
Speaker 2: Maybe there was a religious objection to it just based
Speaker 2: on the title. It's like, we don't need more ghost trains,
Speaker 2: pass funded ghost trains on our rail systems, no, sir.
Speaker 3: You know, I think about how many horror stories there
Speaker 3: are where there's a ghost that at first is scary,
Speaker 3: but then the twist at the end. This is really common,
Speaker 3: I think, is that the ghost is actually trying to
Speaker 3: be helpful and warning or trying to help the protagonist
Speaker 3: against a really threatening human villain. And so I wonder
Speaker 3: could we get a story where there's a ghost train
Speaker 3: of that kind, Like it's scary at first, but the
Speaker 3: train is really just trying to help.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'd be down for that.
Speaker 3: I don't know what information it would provide. It goes
Speaker 3: by somebody's yelling at you, like, don't go in.
Speaker 2: There, man. But seriously, I would love to hear from
Speaker 2: everyone out there if you have some great ghost train
Speaker 2: stories you want to share with us, be it something
Speaker 2: that's just completely fanciful or something that seems to connect
Speaker 2: with reality on some level or another. There was one
Speaker 2: that we were looking into a little bit, the Silver
Speaker 2: Train of Stockholm, that we didn't get into here. But
Speaker 2: I did find it interesting that one possible explanation for
Speaker 2: this one was that, well, there was like maybe like
Speaker 2: one silver colored train car that was being used that
Speaker 2: was like a prototype or something, and just stories began
Speaker 2: to generate about it because it stood out and it
Speaker 2: looked different, And yeah, I kind of I kind of
Speaker 2: like that. You know, as a as someone who you know,
Speaker 2: used to ride the train a lot to work and back,
Speaker 2: you were always on the on the lookout for different trains,
Speaker 2: and I would actually have recurring dreams about catching a
Speaker 2: different train that had like a different design to it.
Speaker 2: So there is something kind of attractive about that. You
Speaker 2: look for for something you know that stands out, and
Speaker 2: then I don't know, the mind or supernatural tendencies create
Speaker 2: the rest around it.
Speaker 3: Well, do we think does that do it for Trains
Speaker 3: of Terror?
Speaker 2: I believe it does. We're gonna go ahead and cap
Speaker 2: it here, but yes, right in, we'd love to hear
Speaker 2: from you, And if you were a fan of our
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema episodes, tune in tomorrow because we'll be
Speaker 2: talking about the nineteen seventy two train based horror film
Speaker 2: Horror Express. That one should be a lot of fun
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 3: That movie has some twists. It's got some good ones.
Speaker 2: Yes, and some science. We'll have some things to say
Speaker 2: about the science of horror.
Speaker 3: Express extremely sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, just reminded. Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, weird house cinemas on Fridays. That's
Speaker 2: when we set aside most serious concerns, would just talk
Speaker 2: about a weird film. Not all of our episodes are
Speaker 2: normally horror themed, but it is October, so we are
Speaker 2: leaning into the season.
Speaker 3: That's right. Huge, Thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 3: producer JJ Posway. If you would like to get in
Speaker 3: touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.
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