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