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Surprise! A short ghost story excerpted from Louis Jones' classic tale. I hope you enjoy it.
In which two boys, Joe and Pete, and a friendly ghost named George, learn all about Hudson Valley ghosts in their search for Captain Kidd's treasure . . . here is the "Ghost Train" story.
I don't think I'm superstitious, but I'll tell you about a sight I saw when I was a boy.
"We had cousins who lived down in Columbia County, and when spring vacation came along I'd go down and visit them for a week or so. The Harlem Division of the New York Central runs right through their farm and us kids used to go down to the back pasture to watch the freights go by. This one afternoon we were sitting there on a rail fence counting freight cars when it began to rain, one of those soft April rains. There was a long freight running south on the far track and we didn't realize this other train was coming north till all of a sudden there was lightning in the sky and a sorta black carpet rolled along the northbound track and we couldn't hear the southbound freight any more.
Then, behind the carpet and over it came the first of two engines. It was an old fashioned bigstacker, the kind they used during the Civil War. It was draped with black crepe from headlight to coal car and yet there was no fireman and no engineer in the cab. There was only one car, a flatcar. That was draped in black, too. This had a band playing on it, only the men who played were all skeletons. But you could hear their music, because the train made no noise at all. Then come the second engine all decorated like the first. This one didn't have anyone in the cab, either. Like the other, this engine pulled a single flatcar, but on it was a coffin, with an American flag over it and crepe all around. After it went by it got dark and I remember the thunder and lightning.
"That night at supper everyone was talking about it and my uncle noticed that the clock was eight minutes slow. He said that always happened. It was Abraham Lincoln's funeral train and almost every April it came up the Harlem Valley, and all the trains would be late that day because every watch and clock on the line would stop for eight minutes."
Mother's voice was firm when she asked, "Daddy, are you telling us that you actually saw those trains with your own two eyes?"
"Why, I guess I've never thought to doubt it, my dear," he told her. This impressed Joe and Pete, for from the beginning of their experience with George they had felt that this was something of which grownups would not approve, nor understand. And here was Joe's own father who said he had seen this ghost train when he was a boy. Joe was solemn when he said, "I believe you saw it, Dad." And Pete echoed, "Me, too."
"Spooks of the Valley" by Louis Jones, with 20 b&w illus by Erwin Austin. 111pp P $11.95
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