In ghostlore, a ghost train is a phantom vehicle in the form of a locomotive or train. The ghost train differs from other traditional forms of haunting in that rather than being a static location where ghosts are claimed to be present, "the apparition is the entire train". [1]
Ghost trains are reported in many different parts of the world where trains have at some point been prevalent forms of transportation. Accounts of ghost trains have been reported in Canada, [2] [3] Japan, [4] Sweden, [5] the United Kingdom, [6] and in many states of the United States. [7] [8]
In Japan, the nisekisha (偽汽車) or yūrei-kikansha (幽霊機関車) is a folk tale of a phantom/counterfeit/ghost steam train involving the tanuki. [4] Such tales were widespread by 1910, and folklorist Kizen Sasaki commented in 1926 that "probably everybody has heard this story somewhere at least once". [4] The earliest instance of the tale that he had been able to trace was from some time between 1879 and 1887, but it had spread as the railways, first arriving in Japan only a few years earlier, had themselves spread across the country. [9]
According to Sasaki, the tales of ghost steam trains are rather humorous, unlike the Japanese folk tales of ghost ships which are more mystical in character. [10] The essence of the folk tale is that steam train drivers would hear the noise of a steam train coming towards them along the track, and they would initially stop to avoid a collision; but they would eventually carry on, when no train arrived, later to find a dead tanuki lying across the tracks. [4] The tale would conclude with a humorous observation such as that "of course the tanuki really enjoy imitating things". [9]
According to Michael Dylan Foster, a professor of Japanese at University of California at Davis, [11] there are many allegorical interpretations of the tale, from industry versus the environment to the foreign versus the native. [10] Its continued popularity, he suggests, was due to a widespread ambivalence on the part of the Japanese populace towards the steam era, on the one hand it providing better transportation, and on the other it destroying or (with the construction of the railway lines) physically reshaping the natural environment and homogenizing society and erasing local differences. [9]
Symbolically, Foster also suggests, the tale can be read as the forces of traditional Japanese views taking a stand, through use of deception and tanuki magical powers of old, against the forces of industrial change and modernity, and ultimately, (in Foster's word) tragically, failing. [12] That the tanuki is overpowered and killed by the train symbolizes not just the futility of opposing the advent of steam trains and concomitant industrialization, but indicates the acceptance of that futility, enshrining it in a folk tale. [13]
This schism between the modern and the industrial and the traditional countryside was reflected in a variant ending of the tale told in a Japanese newspaper on 1889-05-03: "What a surprise that such a thing could occur these days, during the Meiji period." [14]
Foster suggests that this can be taken even further, to the view that the folk tale was an expression of support for the modernity of the steam train era, in the minds of its tellers, emphasizing its inevitability. [15]
Folklorists were reporting tales of phantom tanuki trains still circulating in the 1950s. [16] A variant of the tale that instead involved a phantom motor car, the driver of the opposing motor car expecting a collision only to find a dead tanuki in the road, had appeared some time before it was recorded in 1935 by Daniel Crump Buchanan. [17] Like the steam trains when the folklore about them being imitated by tanuki appears, the motor car was at that time still new to Japan, the first motor cars having appeared some 20 years earlier. [18]
A similar tale was told in the animated movie Pom Poko (1994), directed by Isao Takahata, where a group of tanuki use illusions and their other traditional magic skills to stop humans from building a new 1960s suburb over the tanuki's home, but ultimately fail in the effort. [19]
A phantom funeral train is said to run regularly from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, around the time of the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's death, stopping watches and clocks in surrounding areas as it passes. [20]
Louis C. Jones, folklorist and then associate professor of English at New York State College for Teachers, recounted in 1945 a New York tale of the ghost of Lincoln's Funeral Train, which he discovered had been recorded at least a generation earlier by Lloyd Lewis, Chicago newspaperman and author of Myths after Lincoln, recounted in an Albany newspaper. [21] According to the 1945 version of the tale, the ghost train could be seen one day every April travelling up the Harlem Division, with all clocks stopping whilst the train (actually two trains, the first with a ghostly band playing soundless instruments and the second with a flatcar carrying a coffin) passes by. [21] He noted that in the earlier version of the tale, the train travelled on the New York Central Railroad up the Hudson Division, which would have been the correct route. [21]
There are several ghost train folklore in various states. A collection of Louisiana folklore notes of a road in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, "the lights of a ghost train are also said to appear on the old bridge occasionally. Its shrill, lonely whistle has been heard many times around the bridge". [22] In Iredell County, North Carolina, a ghost train was reputed to pass through the area, with local legend holding that a train that had wrecked on the spot in 1891 "plays out that deadly scene again on each anniversary of the wreck", with signs including "grinding metal, screaming passengers and a watchman's light". [23] In August 2010, 29-year-old Christopher Kaiser was struck and killed by a real locomotive while with a group of people waiting in the vicinity of the tracks to hear the ghost train. [23] San Antonio, Texas has tales about a bus accident where the victims were forced to traverse the railway and perished. They are alleged to haunt the railroad tracks. [24] [25]
There are several ghost trains in other countries. The Silver Train of Stockholm (Silverpilen) is a ghost train which features in several Swedish urban legends alleging sightings of a silver colored metro train in the Stockholm Metro. [26] The St. Louis Ghost Train, better known as the St. Louis Light, is visible at night along an old abandoned rail line in between Prince Albert and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. Two local students won an award for investigating and eventually duplicating the phenomenon, which they determined to be caused by the diffraction of distant vehicle lights. [27] A history of the Canadian railways recounts, from a town in Saskatchewan, that "[t]he strange story of a ghost train has been told many times. The site where it occurs is a former railway crossing along a side road around eight kilometres north of the town". [3] Another Canadian story from May 1908 tells of a ghost train with blinding lights that travelled on non-existent tracks. [28]
In folklore, a will-o'-the-wisp, will-o'-wisp, or ignis fatuus, is an atmospheric ghost light seen by travellers at night, especially over bogs, swamps or marshes.
Japanese folktales are an important cultural aspect of Japan. In commonplace usage, they signify a certain set of well-known classic tales, with a vague distinction of whether they fit the rigorous definition of "folktale" or not among various types of folklore. The admixed impostors are literate written pieces, dating back to the Muromachi period or even earlier times in the Middle Ages. These would not normally qualify for the English description "folktales".
Yōkai are a class of supernatural entities and spirits in Japanese folklore. The kanji representation of the word yōkai comprises two characters that both mean "suspicious, doubtful", and while the Japanese name is simply the Japanese transliteration or pronunciation of the Chinese term yaoguai, some Japanese commentators argue that the word yōkai has taken on multiple different meanings particular to a Japanese context, including referring to a large number of uniquely Japanese creatures.
Kunio Yanagita was a Japanese author, scholar, and folklorist. He began his career as a bureaucrat, but developed an interest in rural Japan and its folk traditions. This led to a change in his career. His pursuit of this led to his eventual establishment of Japanese native folkloristics, or minzokugaku, as an academic field in Japan. As a result, he is often considered to be the father of modern Japanese folklore studies.
Mujina is an old Japanese term primarily referring to the Japanese badger, but traditionally to the Japanese raccoon dog (tanuki), causing confusion. Adding to the confusion, it may also refer to the introduced masked palm civet, and in some regions badger-like animals or Japanese raccoon dog are also called mami.
The St. Louis Light, St. Louis Ghost Light, or St. Louis Ghost Train is a supposed paranormal phenomenon seen near St. Louis, Saskatchewan, Canada. It has been described by witnesses as a huge beam of white light, reminiscent of a locomotive headlamp.
The nurikabe is a yōkai, or spirit, from Japanese folklore. Its name translates to "plaster wall", and it is said to manifest as an invisible wall that impedes or misdirects travelers walking at night. Sometimes referred to in English as "The Wall" or "Mr. Wall", this yōkai is described as quite tall, to prevent people from climbing over it, and wide enough to dampen any attempts to go around it. Japanese scholar and folklorist Kunio Yanagita recorded perhaps the most prominent early example of nurikabe and other yōkai in his books. Manga artist Shigeru Mizuki claims to have encountered a nurikabe in New Guinea, inspiring a nurikabe character in his manga Gegege no Kitarō.
The Maco Light was a supposedly anomalous light, or "ghost light", occasionally seen between the late 19th century and 1977 along a section of railroad track near the unincorporated community of Maco Station in Brunswick County, North Carolina. Said to resemble the glow from a railroad lantern, the light was associated with a folk tale describing a fatal accident, which may have inspired tales of a similar type around the country.
In the folklore of Cambridgeshire, the Shug Monkey is a creature that shares features of a dog and monkey, which reportedly haunted Slough Hill Lane. The creature, believed to have the body of a jet-black shaggy sheepdog and the face of a monkey with staring eyes, was believed to be a supernatural ghost or demon. Local writer and broadcaster James Wentworth Day, who first related stories of the Shug Monkey in Here Are Ghosts and Witches (1954), described it as a curious variation of Black Shuck, while local folklorist Polly Howat suggests that both share common origins in Norse mythology.
The black dog is a supernatural, spectral, or demonic hellhound originating from English folklore, and also present in folklore throughout Europe and the Americas. It is usually unnaturally large with glowing red or yellow eyes, is often connected with the Devil, and is sometimes an omen of death. It is sometimes associated with electrical storms, and also with crossroads, barrows, places of execution and ancient pathways.
Ghosts are an important and integral part of the folklore of the socio-cultural fabric of the geographical and ethno-linguistic region of Bengal which presently consists of Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Tripura. Bengali folktales and Bengali cultural identity are intertwined in such a way that ghosts depicted reflect the culture it sets in. Fairy tales, both old and new, often use the concept of ghosts. References to ghosts are often found in modern-day Bengali literature, cinema, radio and television media. There are also alleged haunted sites in the region. The common word for ghosts in Bengali is bhoot or bhut. This word has an alternative meaning: 'past' in Bengali. Also, the word Pret is used in Bengali to mean ghost. In Bengal, ghosts are believed to be the unsatisfied spirits of human beings who cannot find peace after death or the souls of people who died in unnatural or abnormal circumstances like murders, suicides or accidents. Non-human animals can also turn into ghosts after their death. But they are often associated with good luck and wealth in Bangladesh.
Tales of ghosts from the American Civil War have been popularly shared since its end. Among the locales that have become known for Civil War ghost stories are the Sharpsburg battlefield near Sharpsburg, Maryland; the Chickamauga battlefield in Georgia; Harper's Ferry, West Virginia; Buras, Louisiana; and Warren, Arkansas.
A Japanese urban legend is a story in Japanese folklore which is circulated as true. These urban legends are characterized by originating in or being popularized throughout the country of Japan. These urban legends commonly involve paranormal entities or creatures who encounter and attack humans, but the term can also encompass widespread, non-supernatural rumors in popular culture. Urban legends in the former category rarely include the folklore yōkai, instead of being primarily based on contemporary examples of yūrei. Modern Japanese urban legends tend to occur in schools or urban settings, and some can be considered cautionary tales.
Hanako-san, or Toire no Hanako-san, is a Japanese urban legend about the spirit of a young girl named Hanako who haunts lavatories. Like many urban legends, the details of the origins of the legend vary depending on the account; different versions of the story include that Hanako-san is the ghost of a World War II–era girl who was killed while playing hide-and-seek during an air raid, that she was murdered by a parent or stranger, or that she committed suicide in a school toilet due to bullying.
Bluenose Ghosts is a book which presents a series of Nova Scotia ghost stories collected by Canadian folklorist Helen Creighton over a period of 28 years, first published in 1957.
In Canadian ghostlore, the Ghost Ship of Northumberland Strait is a ghost ship said to sail ablaze within the Northumberland Strait, the body of water that separates Prince Edward Island from Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in eastern Canada.
Ghostlore is an intricate web of traditional beliefs and folklore surrounding ghosts and hauntings. Ghostlore has ingrained itself in the cultural fabric of societies worldwide. Defined by narratives often featuring apparitions of the deceased, ghostlore stands as a universal phenomenon, with roots extending deeply into human history.
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