For those of you that are interested and since it's Halloween here's a ghost story article for you.I'm sure some of you have heard or read about the Jan.4 ,1887 Republic,Ohio B&O train wreck where a westbound express train crashed into a eastbound freight train on a curve 1 mile west of Republic,Ohio.I had heard of this wreck before and while at the library doing research for other material in the microfilm i read the articles on the wreck in wich 23 people perished.While doing further reading i came upon this rather strange article a few months later on March 3,1887 published in Tiffin,Ohio titled Ghost Stopping Trains and RR employees excited over danger signals being displayed near the late accident site.My first thoughts were "oh boy,heres another one of those ghost stories where somebody had to much to drink!".

Anyhow apparently some apparition or something appeared on 3 occasions and excited trainmen on trains.Attached is the article below for your enjoyment or should i say disbelief.Kinda makes one wonder what they did see though!

Here's something else that goes along with the Republic,Ohio wreck for those that never saw a photo of it before of the locked engines.This is a old cabinet card photo put out after the wreck by the Imperial Photo House of Attica,Ohio.This is rather graphic and ghastly if you ask me and i can't imagine something like this being sold back in 1887! and i apolagize if this offends anyone.It's not the wrecked engines or photo's of some of the deceased and there belongings found afterwards,but the bottom lefthand corner photo of the charred remains! I don't think anything of this nature of the Ashtabula,Ohio wreck from Dec.29th 1876 was ever photographed as i have all the stereoviews of that wreck and a few other photo's.

Since the subject came up and it is Halloween (didn't get a single kid knocking on my door for candy, which is odd because this is a neighborhood that has gotten plenty in the past), I thought I'd post this here.
First off, I am a skeptic's skeptic. I don't believe in ghosts AT ALL. That being said, I'd think it was neat if there were ghosts. Still, I have heard two stories that were very odd.
A guy I served with in the Army swore to me that he saw a ghost train along the Rhine river in Germany when he was stationed there in the mid 90s. He said he was stopped at a level crossing and saw a train blast through with a large steam engine on point and dozens of box cars trailing. All of them had barbed wire in the windows and arms were clawing their way through. It made no noise at all, he even rolled down the car windows and heard nothing. Normally, I'd think that was BS, but this guy was a rock and not prone to making stuff up.
I heard a disturbing story on the radio three years ago (on NPR if I recall) about a siding that used to be a main line somewhere in the Midwest. Sometime in the 70s, dozens of folks living along the siding one night called the police saying a steam engine had just roared by and that it was going way too fast to be able to stop at the end of the track. The police went out expecting to respond to a wreck, but didn't find anything. It was at night and nobody saw it but lots of folks heard it. The police even checked with anyone who might have a running steam engine, they supposedly even called the Southern to see if one of their excursion engines was in the area but nothing was ever found. It never happened again. One thing that I thought it might have been was someone with some kind of vehicle on flanged wheels and a audio tape of a train. The fact that lots of folks called it in does seem really odd. I wish I'd caught more of the details but I didn't get where or exactly what year this was. Maybe someone here knows about this. If they do, please sound off...

Hmm, no kids knocking on our door for treats either....

Wonder if it had anything to do with the yellow "Police Line - Do not Cross" tape around our driveway, and the child sized chalk outlines (complete with trick-or-treat bags) drawn on the driveway... Just kidding, of course, I really did want to do that but was shot down by the wife (party-pooper)

Trick-or-treating seems to be another tradition from our childhoods that is either being re-worked to "safer" means, or worst case, vanishing all together. A neighbor a couple of doors down with two younger trick-or-treat aged kids said that they were taking the kids to a local community sponsored event at a local church. Even with parents riding shotgun, they're just too worried about kids in costumes in the dark (traffic), perverts/sex offenders, and the pyschos putting God only knows what into the treats. I'm "only" 49, how the heck did things get this bad in just 40 years ?
Another sign of the times I guess.

Less than 2 dozen kids last night. There aren't many kids living on our block any more. But one block over, they were packed in. Guess they're just too lazy to walk the block to get more candy. I gave up on the spooky sound effects and costumes years ago. Even threw George (our scarecrow) out a few years ago. I had his arm hooked up with fishing line so that when I opened the storm door to give out candy, his arm would raise.

Later!
Mr. Ed

Loved the ghost story and the lovely holiday card posted beneath it! No, seriously, it makes for good historical and sociological reference.

Regarding kids and trick or treating, when I was a child in the 1950's and early sixties, we wandered from neighborhood to neighborhood, never worrying about the people or what we were given to eat. Towards the end of the sixties, that all began to change as the drug culture and shock value took root in American culture. In the eighties, I would escort my kids to friends homes only. Today, I doubt I'd let them go to anything other than organized civic events. It's a sad commentary on our lives, that there is a dearth of safe, candied and taffyed apples.

Re: Halloween traffic

A lot of kids are sick this year. Some parents may have kept them home for isolation. My kids came down with the flu yesterday (but managed to trick/treat Saturday), and I have many students out sick from my classes at the university. Don't count this year's traffic as a trend. It is an outlier.

p.s. my kids are 11 and 12 years old, and they treated unsupervised with classmates this year. Their first year alone. They can carry cell phones now and that gives us an added comfort level. Note many communities enforce fixed hours for treating, this limits the volume. When I was a kid we stayed out to 9, 10 pm, and sometimes started at 5pm. Today our town limits activity to 6-8pm.