America's Most Famous Ghost Train

 

ALT

On this day in 1865, President Lincoln’s funeral train arrived in New York City. 14 years later, the Rockland County Journal (New York) published the following account of Lincoln’s train making a ghostly reappearance:

“It is said that on that night, every year, all the train men that are on the road at a certain hour…hear and see and feel the spectre train rush by them. It sounds hollow and awful. Its lights are yellow, pale and funeral. Its train hands and passengers are sepulchral figures. … It even carries with it a whirl of wind as fast as trains do, but it is a cold, clammy, grave-like atmosphere, all its own. As it passes another train the shriek of its whistle and clang of its bell strike terror to the hearts of those that hear them.”

Check out my Weird Wednesday blog post for the whole story and some on-track writing prompts, such as:

The never-ending journey. Lincoln’s ghost train is said to have skeletons in military uniforms and a band playing silently. What would it be like to be a passenger on a ghostly funeral train? Perhaps your character might be called forth from their supposedly-eternal rest to take a trip once a year. Or maybe they’re on the train all the time. It’s not a train to Hell, but they’re stuck there all the same, just because they got hired to be in the band after some famous person died.

DannyeChase.com ~ AO3 ~ Linktree ~ Weird Wednesday writing prompts blog ~ Resources for Writers

Image credit