She haunted that damn train all night!

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Please welcome guest author Denise Smith. Smith lives in Rocky Gap, Bland County, VA, as have 11 generations of her ancestors.  She graduated from the school of hard knocks and Emory & Henry College with a BA in history.

She’s worked in the genealogy, historical research, and tourism industries in Appalachia for 20 years. She was the former Museums Program Coordinator for Wolf Creek Indian Village & Museum in Bastian, VA before becoming disabled, diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She is the author of the blog Appalachian Heart wood.

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Railroad workers know a few ghost stories surrounding the rails in Appalachia.  In the 1980’s when my ex-husband worked for Norfolk & Western, he worked with a man named Colonel Dotson who was an engineer. 

Colonel stopped by the house one day on his way home from work, to return a tool he’d borrowed from my husband.  When I answered the door, he spoke as he came in, “I got a story to tell you. You won’t believe this.”  He looked shaken, and this was not a man to shake easily. 

He had been an actual Colonel in the military, worked as a police officer up north somewhere, before meeting his wife Mazey. Following love to Appalachia, he moved here, took a job with the railroad and became an engineer. 

“Did you hear about that old woman they hit and killed on the railroad crossing, down below Lebanon last night?” he asked.  “Didn’t happen on my shift,” he said, “but I got the train to go on into Bluefield.” 

We had heard it on the news the following night that a person had been hit and killed by a train. Trains hitting people happened several times a year. Some are quite tragic, such as children not knowing any better, folks sleeping on the tracks, getting mangled under a train or someone trying to beat a crossing in a car. Some are lucky to get out with their life when they tangle with a train.

Like the story of a drunk hit in Richlands once: the man decided to end his life by train. So he set in the middle of the tracks, in a lawn chair with a case of beer, and waited for the train to hit him. The lawn chair placed him just high enough that the cow catcher hit him and threw him off the tracks. He suffered a few broken bones and bruises but he lived. Not all are that lucky. 

Colonel shook as he spoke and told us the tale, “Well whoever they hit, she haunted that damn train all night! We had to take a railroad taxi to relieve the crew. The engineer that hit her said she didn’t move at all off the tracks when he blew the horn as hard as he could. He put it in emergency as soon as he saw she wasn’t moving, just standing there. 

“Said he saw her face and she just looked angry and was intentionally trying to get hit. But she screamed the loudest blood curdling scream he’d ever heard as they hit her.” The train mangled her body under the wheels before he could stop. 

Colonel said, “I assured him, the world was full of crazy people.” 

As soon as he got on that train, Colonel said, the engineer’s compartment was cold, like an icebox…and here it was mid summer. They radioed him that because the train had been involved in an accident, it was not to stop but move directly to Bluefield yards to be checked out. So it was a straight shot through. 

Colonel told the tale that, “Every road crossing, we would use the train’s warning whistle. Then we would hear what sounded like this blood curdling women’s scream. Make the hair on your neck stand up. The doors to the engineer’s compartment would then shake like someone was trying to get in. A couple of times, they did.

“The doors flew open on their own with a cold icy wind that banged them furiously open and shut. The brakeman who rode with him would have to fight with some unknown force to close and latch them. In between the crossings, the windows frosted up like it was winter, but the control handles to the train would be so hot that I had to use both gloves to put my hand on them.  It went that way ALL night, all the way to Bluefield.  Oh, and we were without radio contact, couldn’t raise anyone, nothing but static, just had to keep pushing through the dark to Bluefield.

“I’ve seen some pretty strange things in my life, but NEVER something like that.”  

When he finally pulled the train into Bluefield, he was so relieved to get off. He just stood looking at that railroad engine, wondering if what they had just experienced was real.

That’s when he noticed—the outside of the train hadn’t been cleaned off before he got on. Some of the old woman’s hair, blood and body parts were still on and under the train.

Getting ready to leave, he put a piece of paper on the table, “Here is the number of that engine, you get it sometime and strange things happen, you will know why!

“I think that one’s going to be haunted a while.” 

More articles on train accidents:

The Dying Mine Brakeman(Opens in a new browser tab)

A road rage incident at the dawn of the automobile(Opens in a new browser tab)

Book Excerpt: ‘Lost at Thaxton’(Opens in a new browser tab)