ghost trains | American Ghost Stories

I. Ghost Town: The Haunting Past of San Antonio

Nestled within the sprawling landscape of the Lone Star State, we find the bustling city of San Antonio, the crowned jewel of southern Texas. Hosting a multitude of vibrant cultures, famed sites and historic landmarks, it is undoubtedly a tapestry woven with the threads of both joyous celebration and somber remembrance.

However, amid the Alamo City’s alluring attractions, exists a chilling anecdote of a phantom past, a tale so wicked yet melancholic, its shadowed depths still shudder upon the city’s present day existence. Proclaimed as the petrifying narrative of the “Ghost Tracks,” this spectral saga is one to be told and heard with equal parts grim fascination and respectful acknowledgement of its dark roots.

II. When Morning Turned Melancholic: An Unveiled Tragedy

The twisted tale takes us back to a time that the San Antonio calendar would rather erase. It was a morning draped in innocent tranquility, serenaded by the tunes of splendor that often accompany the dawn. A time when children, naive and full of dreams, were trucked merrily off to school, their shrills of laughter fading into the air that held much promise for the day. Little did they, or anyone hazard the guess that it was the maw of damnation they were heading towards.

As horrifying as it is, the narrative casts its grim cloak upon an innocent school bus bustling with vibrant lives, its journey interrupted at a set of train tracks. The tracks, that were, and still are sneered upon as portals of doom, witnessed the bus coming to an abrupt stall, as if life decided to hold its breath abruptly.

Despite the conductor’s desperations and frantic efforts, the resuscitation of the bus’s operation proved futile. A formidable chug of the distant oncoming train echoed ominously. Time froze, a premonition of the impending catastrophe rippled through each heartbeat present.

Tragically, escape eluded the clutches of every terrified soul as the train, in an unstoppable charade of brutal momentum, collided brazenly with the school bus. The echo of that calamitous impact still lingers among San Antonio’s whispering winds, reverberating a tale of stunned horror and inescapable doom.

III. The Ghostly Aftermath: Ushering a Lore of Eerie Redemption

Following that fateful day, an eerie echo of redemption has taken its ghostly grip on the railway tracks. A mysterious phenomenon has been whispered and cautiously observed, drifting subtly between the realms of reality and the supernatural.

Voyagers daring enough to park their vehicles at the critical spot, where the miserable accident occurred, and shift it to neutral, have reported an inexplicable motion – a gentle but consistent push that seemingly moves the cars away from the imminent danger of the train tracks.

According to the hushed whispers of the city’s residents and the gloomy tales spun by the local folks, this forceful nudge is believed to be the ethereal efforts of the deceased children of the school bus. They are thought to be inhabiting the realm beyond our mortal grasp, stuck in an eternal endeavor to rescue others from the calamitous fate they succumbed to.

IV. Tales of the Unseen: Handprints of the Lost

Locals and adventurers alike, who dare to flirt with the uncanny, have often reported a chilling pattern emerging on their vehicles’ skin – traces of childlike handprints smeared upon the dusty backdrop of their bumpers after the car has found its way across the tracks.

It’s as if the spectral children are leaving behind a tiny imprint – a silent proof of their ghostly deed, validating their persisting existence that lurks between layers of the known and the unknown.

Although skeptics view these handprints as mere coincidences or practical jokes, many believe them to be a tangible piece of San Antonio’s spectral folklore, a poignant emblem of childhood lost too soon, and the uncanny way the deceased try to reach out to the world they once inhabited, in their quest of perpetual salvation.

V. An Echoing Legacy: Veiled Calls of the Ghost Tracks

The legend of the Ghost Tracks remains etched into the city’s folklore, sparking curiosity in the hearts of many, haunting the dreams of some, and inspiring a few to seek the uncanny.

And so, as the tracks continue to echo their grievous tale under the Texan sun, the spectral children stand on their eternal vigil, their unseen hands awaiting the next opportunity to push someone to safety, their untold story eternally whispering amongst the rustling leaves and the quiet hum of San Antonio.

Each returned visitor or curious soul thus becomes a cog in the relentless clockwork of remembrance, ensuring the Ghost Tracks legend lives on, a mournful whisper embedded within the pulsating heart of San Antonio, ever haunting, ever vigilant.

There are many ghosts roaming our world from the old pioneer days and the northern state of Alaska is no exception to this. Alaska is littered with countless abandoned Russian settlements, these deserted sites are scattered with the artifacts of doomed explorations into the cold and mysterious tundra. Old spirits are said to be trapped within the animals roaming the cold white northern land. Legends say that the animals are carrying the spirits of those crossed over from this realm and into the next.

Alaskan Miners - Copper Mines — Alaskan Miners – Copper Mines

The lore of many spirits and haunts wondering the forest, haunting the old cabins, sliding through the mountain passes and dwelling around old broken ships is quite abundant, however there is only one story that claims to have scared away the Alaskan state government.

It is no surprise that the majority of ghost stories in Alaska’s vast land have been reported near the site of the world’s richest copper and gold mines. The old railroad that once serviced the Kennecott copper mines in the Valdez and Chitina mining districts is said to be so haunted, so scary, that to this day (73 years later, since it’s last production) the phantom spirits plague repetitive attempts by even Alaskan government to re-develop the area.

The old railroad is an abandoned, 200 mile long stretch of railroad tracks winding from Kennicott Glacier south to Cordova on Prince William Sound. Copper was shipped south to smelters in Tacoma, Washington after being processed there. The railroad, built by the J.P. Morgan-financed Kennecott Copper Corp. around 1909, completed in 1911, was built over many unstable areas. One of those areas included a massive glacier, which required that the tracks had to be moved continuously, as the glacier shifted around , day by day. The track bridged gaping canyons and clung to rugged rock walls above the wild Copper River. While the railroad was being constructed, thousands of laborers had to dig through the deep snow and even avalanches. Others had to blast their way through miles of rock. With these horrendous conditions it is not a surprise that many of the workers were reported to have met their maker during construction of the railroad.

The rail line was no cheap endeavor and ended up costing Kennecott Corp. around $20 million to build. That would be comparable to around .5 billion dollars in our time. The investment did ultimately pay off and eventually produced millions of tons of copper ore that passed south over the Chitina River Bridge, and many other unstable bridges. The acronym for the CR & NW railroad came to mean something different for the workers, their claim is that it humorously mean’t “Can’t Run and Never Will.”

Chitina is where most Alasakan ghost stories came from, and many spread through out the large area where the railway ran. For many years, tourists and passer-bys have claimed they’ve seen tombstones just off the old dirt path where in places it parallels with the tracks of the Old Copper Railroad.

The same travelers have consistently reported that the grave markers disappear, virtually vanish into thin air when they look for them on their way back.

Near end of the twentieth century, the state of Alaska began developing government housing along the once marked ‘CR & NW’ trail. During the housing’s construction, many workers regularly saw phantom visions and heard disembodied voices of both children and adults along the “Old Copper Railroad” which made continuing the work there completely impossible.

Abandoned Railways of Copper River and Northwest Rails

Things became even worse after that.

Construction workers had already seen the grave stones and often heard the wailing of dead miners from earlier times. The spooked construction workers started losing their tools, sometimes right off of their belts and boxes. The stories and sitings were enough to scare away even the bravest public servants. The whole construction project is rumored to have been canceled due to the ghosts of the mines.

If you’re looking to venture out to see the old ghost mines, getting out to the abandoned track will not be easy, as most any other place in Alaska. There are very few haunted places that have as many spirits deterring resettlement as the abandoned ghost towns and railways of the Kennecott Copper Mines.

Video featuring the ghost mines: