Re: Spooky Halloween Stories on the Narrow Gauge

First off, I am a skeptic's skeptic. I don't believe in ghosts AT ALL. That being said, I'd think it was neat if there were ghosts.
Still, I have heard two stories that were very odd.
A guy I served with in the Army swore to me that he saw a ghost train along the Rhine river in Germany when he was stationed there in the mid 90s. He said he was stopped at a level crossing and saw a train blast through with a large steam engine on point and dozens of box cars trailing. All of them had barbed wire in the windows and arms were clawing their way through. It made no noise at all, he even rolled down the car windows and heard nothing. Normally, I'd think that was BS, but this guy was a rock and not prone to making stuff up.
I heard a disturbing story on the radio three years ago (on NPR if I recall) about a siding that used to be a main line somewhere in the Midwest. Sometime in the 70s, dozens of folks living along the siding one night called the police saying a steam engine had just roared by and that it was going way too fast to be able to stop at the end of the track. The police went out expecting to respond to a wreck, but didn't find anything. It was at night and nobody saw it but lots of folks heard it. The police even checked with anyone who might have a running steam engine, they supposedly even called the Southern to see if one of their excursion engines was in the area but nothing was ever found. It never happened again. One thing that I thought it might have been was someone with some kind of vehicle on flanged wheels and a audio tape of a train. The fact that lots of folks called it in does seem really odd. I wish I'd caught more of the details but I didn't get where or exactly what year this was.
Maybe someone here knows about this. If they do, please sound off...

-Lee

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