A horrifying train wreck in a small Ohio town; a ghostly train runs again. An excerpt from Haunted Ohio IV: Restless Spirits. THE GHOST TRAIN OF REPUBLIC It was January of 1887 and a bad blizzard had blown up, reducing visibility along the train tracks to less than a quarter mile. A freight train carrying barrel hoops was racing to reach the safety of a siding before Chicago Limited Express train No. 5 came through. The freight engine left the station with 30 pounds of steam; it wasn’t enough and the train died on the incline about a mile and a half outside of Republic, in Seneca County. The frantic conductor ran with his lantern to try to head off the Chicago passenger train, but No. 5 collided head-on with the freight train at 50 miles an hour. The wooden cars telescoped, trapping many people in the wreckage. And then the fires broke out. Sixteen people burned to death as rescuers looked on helplessly. Eventually the unclaimed and unidentifiable bodies were buried in a common grave in nearby Farewell Retreat Cemetery. Then the rumors began that at night you could see the passenger train steaming down the tracks to her doom. To Reb* these weren’t just idle rumors. “Between the ages of 12 to 16, I spent a lot of time in the woods east of Republic, behind the cemetery. One summer, my two cousins came up from southern Ohio to stay a couple of weeks. We had our camp set up behind the piney woods. “It was maybe one in the morning. Me and Terry, a buddy of mine, were sitting around the campfire while my cousins were asleep in the tent. Our camp was only about 50 feet from the tracks, close enough to feel the rumble of any passing train. We heard a train whistle. The crossing was only about a mile and a half east of where we were. Usually you’d hear the train whistle at the crossing and the train’d be on top of you in a couple of minutes. But this time it seemed like it took forever. We’d sat there for a half hour and began to wonder why the train didn’t come. “This got us curious and we walked out of the woods and up to the tracks. We saw a light way down at the corner. I swear that damn thing was waiting for us to come out. Then we could see the light coming down the tracks. It wasn’t bright like a regular train light, but white and glowing. It was floating, kind of bobbing up and down in a wave motion. I thought maybe it was coon hunters with their headlights on, walking down the tracks, but the light was up way too high for that. “We got off the tracks and crouched down below in some bushes to avoid getting shot at, if it was hunters. Then it came. We could see it go by. It was noisy and the wind swept by me. I could smell the coal and the smoke. When I first saw it, I thought it was a real train. Maybe a bicentennial thing like when they get old engines out of mothballs sometimes and run them. Then I realized I could see through the damn thing... “I could see the trees on the other side of the track. The cars were lit up, but I don’t remember any people. I remember the curtains with fringes in the windows. Terry also said he could see the trees on the other side too and he could smell the smoke. It seemed like it took forever to pass. We hopped on the tracks afterwards, less than three seconds later. We couldn’t see the train or the light; we couldn’t feel any wind. There was nothing there. “We woke up my cousins; they thought we were nuts. Terry and I stayed up a few more hours, trying to convince ourselves we did see what we saw. No, we weren’t scared—we were teenagers: nothing could kill us! “Me and Terry kept this to ourselves for a long time. Down at Rock Creek, I found two pairs of old wire-rim glasses. There are people in town who have watches and things from the wreck. I’d like to see the train again, maybe try to flag it down. But ride on it? Not possible! There’s only one way you could get on that train....”
Posted on: Sat, 02 Aug 2014 13:50:28 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015