Republic Ghost Train
The Republic Ghost Train is seen along the old Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. Around the town of Republic is the area for one of Ohio’s first documented hauntings. A ghost train is often seen going the route it once did, while a guardian spirit warns of a disaster that occurred over 100 years ago. However, this message comes too late to the conductor.
On the night of January 10th, 1887, a passenger train was traveling west at about 60 miles an hour. On the opposite side of the track was a freight train that miscalculated the time they were to arrive at the station, and as the passenger train rounded the bend, it collided with the freight train. The force of the crash was so great that both engines crumpled one another. There was one report of an engineer being impaled by steel beams and dying a slow death that took about three hours. A fire broke out and consumed over all the sleep cars that were holding around 15 people. Most of these people were killed or burned so horribly that it was hard to recognize who they were.
It is still unsure of how many people were killed in total. Among the dead were three members of a family of five. The father and his two sons were burned to death in one car while the wife and daughter survived. They had been moving after just selling their farm for everything they had. Human remains that were found consisted of only burnt fragments. Reports of seeing the ghost train have come ever since this disaster, as a glow in the night as it goes along the tracks. This event happens as if it is reenacting the events that happened on that cold January night so long ago.
(Source: Belanger, Jeff. Encyclopedia of Haunted Places. 2005.)
