It's been a while since something was posted here, so I thought I'd post a ghost story from Southern Ohio. Early in the 20th century, the B&O had a branch line that ran from Athens, Ohio to Portsmouth, which connected with the C&O north of Sciotoville and parallel to the N&W down through Portsmouth. Iron ore for the steel mill in New Boston, a town next to Portsmouth, was the main reason for the existance of the branch line, and long trains of ore cars were the norm for the branch clear up into the 1960's. At the time of the story, about 1910, there was an ore train on it's way to Portsmouth, and stalled outside of Slocum Station along State route 140. The rear brakeman was sent back to protect the rear of the train, and stood his ground when he heard the approaching exhaust of an oncoming local passenger train, running ahead of it's regular schedule due to an incorrect watch carried by it's conductor. The brakeman had had time to place torpedos on the rail to warn the engineer of the oncoming locomotive, but didn't get out of the way in time, and was killed as the passenger engine slid past the poor man, just stopping a carlength from the caboose of the stalled ore train. For decades folks around Slocum Station said they could see the light of the brakeman still shining in the cut outside the little town, at the point where the brakemans body was discovered. I have seen that light myself, and have often thought it was the moving reflection from oncoming car headlights reflecting off some shiney object in the cut in the distance, until it was pointed out to me by my elders that this light was seen clear back before WWI, and there were few cars in the area until just before the 1940's, so no lights were around to shine back in that cut. After the B&O abandoned that section of branchline back in the 1970's, I parked my car and walked back into the cut, and have to say, it was one strange area, overgrown with honey suckle and dead undergrowth. To describe the light, or at least what I saw and have heard described by others, was a greenish lantern type light, swung in a slow arc across the rails, way back in the cut, and looked like it was being carried by someone walking through the cut, then disappeared when you approached. I haven't been back through Slocum Station for many many years, but the last time I did drive through, I saw that the roadbed of the railroad had been bulldozed, and a new subdivision been built where the cut and fill used to be. I'm sure the story of the lost brakeman has been long forgotten as the locals have either moved out or died off. The connection is that the brakeman was killed due to the incorrect timepiece of a fellow trainman, and seemed to haunt the cut, attempting to protect his train from the oncoming danger. Regards. Mark Cross

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Mark, thanks for the ghost story. It's a good one. Icertainly would not like to build or live in that subdivision!

Stephanie O'Neil

Thank you. Around my old 'stomping grounds', though, ghost stories are just part of the fabric of the culture. The old folks didn't mind them much. No telling how the 'new crowd' takes to them though. Regards. Mark Cross

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