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Trains have been an integral part of civilized society for over 200 years. The railways open up a whole new world for shipping, travel, agriculture and leisure. These beast-like machines are still in large part operated by human beings, and those people have seen some things.
Railroad workers took to Reddit to share stories of the creepiest moments they experienced on the job. There are the inevitable stories of road (or track) kill, and some that will make your skin crawl.
There is something inherently creepy about trains. Long stretches of track completely segregated from the rest of society, often operating in the dead of night? Needless to say, there are plenty of opportunities for strange, sometimes unexplainable events to occur.
Train Conductors Describe the Creepiest Things They've Seen,
Railway engineer finds remnance of suicide during inspection
"I'm a railway engineer in the UK, and the holidays are the worst time for suicides. I'd been track inspecting the clean up of a suicide the night before, and they've missed a few bits. So what appears to be a bit of skull or knee cap can be seen lying about. The worst bit was the smell."
Train runs over corpse that was just hit by a previous train
"I think finding a body that was hit by a previous train might have been the creepiest. I've hit a few cars and people before but I never had to go back and look (that's the conductor's job). The person we found wasn't really identifiable as a human being, just a pile of meat. What gave it away were the scraps of clothing mixed into the pile."
Hobo seeks shelter in an empty train car, only to be smothered to death by grains
"A hobo was found dead in a hooper car (the kind that are open and typically hold grain). They figured, since it was the summer, he wanted more air circulation, and hopped in that one. Well, the car was filled and no one really looks in it while doing so. The body wasn't discovered until the car was unloaded."
Man sees ghost of crash victim walking away from the derailment
"My dad, who is a no nonsense man, came home one night after a derailment and was white as a sheet. He told my mom he met a man walking away from the derailment, which was in the middle of the woods. He didn't think it was too weird, because some people check out wrecks and derailments. Anyway, my dad gets to the derailment. The cause of the derailment was a truck had been hit, and then pushed by the engine. Now, none of this is weird until my dad sees the deceased man in the truck... it looked like a beat up version of the man he saw on the way to the derailment."
Conductor sees mysterious man in trench coat
"Conductor here. One time in the middle of the night in the middle of winter (10 degrees and a foot of snow on the ground) my train went into emergency. I had to walk the length of the train to see what the problem was. The train was right in the middle of a very small town. As I'm walking by one of the houses on the outskirts of this town, I see a guy standing in the driveway about 50 feet from me, wearing a trench coat and a sock hat type thing. The first thing that struck me as odd is that it was way too cold to be wearing just a trench coat. I shine my lantern on the guy, wave, and say 'Hi.' Nothing. The guy doesn't even move.
I continue walking past the guy to the end the train while looking back very often. I get to the end, turn around and head back. I get back to the house where this guy is standing and he is still there in the same place in the same position. I don't even say anything this time. I just speed walk back to the head of the train. The next day I'm taking a train back home during the day. I'm paying special attention to this house as we go by it. There is nothing there. The drive isn't shoveled. Nothing is there that could have been mistaken for a guy in a trench coat. I have since been by this house dozens of times and I have never seen a car parked there, or a light on or anything at all."
This is as creepy, and more explosive
Dog's head mounted on crucifix pops up next to isolated tracks
"Creepiest thing I ever saw was in West Philly. Someone cut a pitbull's head off and stuck it on sticks in the shape of a cross beside the track. They stuffed fruit and flowers in the body where the head was and spread flowers around it. There was an unlit candle at the base of the cross. Looked like some f*cked up voodoo sh*t."
Strung out junkie masturbates on tracks, nearly gets run over
"I work in Houston as an engineer, and we usually putt around town between 10-20 mph. Slow enough for a naked crack head to jump out of a bush by a city park and start pleasuring herself in front of the engine. I guess she really likes trains."
Woman jumps infront of train, recovered body looks like a different person
"I am a freight conductor. We hit a young lady walking between the two main tracks at like five in the morning. That sucks- and dead bodies are creepy on their own, but the craziest part was that I thought we hit two different people. The woman that I saw was white, heavy set, and in her late 40s she was walking toward the train leaning out in front of us. When myself and the brakeman walked back to find the woman, what we found did not match what I had seen. She did not go under the train, so she was mostly in one piece. We found a Latina woman who was very thin. I later found out she was in her early 20s. Now I thought I was crazy, but the brakeman started asking me if we had hit two people, and described the woman in her 40s the same as I had seen her. Needless to say we only hit one person. He and I were convinced that this young girl was possessed by some evil entity. The face I saw before we hit her still pops into my mind occasionally it was evil, twisted and full of pain."
Train hits deer; man in camo shows up to butcher it
"I worked on the signaling for the light rail system in Pittsburgh. We would do all of our testing late at night, after revenue hours. Lots of wildlife around the tracks. As we were moving along at about 50 mph, a whitetail deer jumps out onto the tracks, and we clobber the poor thing. The engineer doesn't hesitate, gets on the radio, and tells central control to call Hannibal Lecter, and gives the milepost. I look at him sideways, but he doesn't explain. We continue our run into the city, turnaround, and head back out the same way. As we come up on the site where we hit the deer there is a guy in full camouflage on the side of the railroad, butchering the carcass, with a big pile of steaming deer guts next to the track (did I mention it was about 15 degrees F and snowing)? Engineer gives a toot on the horn and we continue with our run..."
Train comes in for repairs covered in red mush
"I was working at a BNSF railway in Stockton, CA maintaining the cranes that pull cars off the tracks when a freight engine rolled in with the front end a little caved in, covered in red.
The entire front end was covered in what appeared to be red bloody chunks a paste leftover from rolling through maybe a herd of cattle, or a hoard of zombies... I didn't know what to think. I felt my stomach churn, and my coworker turned green and heaved a bit.
I asked the foreman what happened, he told me some teenager jumped out in front of it. Later, I grew a pair and walked up to it as these folks were cleaning it without any signs of being affected by the sight. Turns out the train hit a stalled fiberglass trailer filled with tomatoes that was headed to the Hunts cannery in Oakdale."