Auntie Sit-by-the-fire..., ...and tell us a story!

[Sekhmet]

Since I have multiple PMs asking about the various and sundry things I've heard/seen/been told over the years as a ghosthunter and a historian, I thought I'd just stick them on a separate thread...this way they can be discussed and if they go off on a tangent...that's ok!

Hm...where to start...aha, got one. Yes, this really happened.


For several years, my reenacting company hosted our "home event", which happened to be the Great Train Raid. Apart from it being a logistical nightmare on our end, we could happily say that it became rather popular for the years we were able to put it on. We had a steam engine with two passenger cars and a couple of flat-cars and cabooses, and both reenactors and the public could ride this train as it went back and forth between two (occasionally three) towns. During the ride, the train would be "attacked", and a tactical battle would ensue. In case anyone's wondering, a tactical is a battle that is unscripted save for a few conditions agreed upon by the commanding officers. In other words, anything goes. We had infantry, artillery and cavalry on both sides, and it was a lot of fun for all involved.

In the evening, we would have dinners hosted in both destination towns, since there were camps set up in both, and in the evening there would be entertainment such as period music, dancing, etc. The train would make runs between the camps so that anyone could get to either destination in the course of the evening, either up or back or both. Since the train couldn't turn around and come back up the track, she would have to be backed to the opposite destination, then driven the normal way on the return trip. On one of the evening trips, she was being backed from point A to point B.

So for this trip, the "front" of the train was the caboose, and there were several reenactors standing on the outside platform of the caboose chatting with the conductor who was stationed there, manning the signal horn and lights. There was another conductor on the train, but he was off talking with some of the civilian reenactors in the passenger car. Since it was getting dark and the atmosphere was just about right, the subject of ghosts naturally came up. They bantered back and forth about whether or not one could see them better with the help of Dr. (Jack) Daniels, and the jokes were good-natured.

The captain of our unit was curiously quiet, and he was always the one who would be at the forefront of cracking jokes at any other time. One of the guys noticed this, and came up beside him, asking if something was wrong. The captain shook his head while staring intently down the tracks, then gave a reassuring grin. Whatever it was, he wasn't upset about it.

The train turned down a bend in the tracks that was heavily wooded on both sides, and the light then caught the form of a man in Civil War period uniform, dangling his musket casually by the strap as he sauntered down the tracks, back to the train. The conductor swore in startlement and blew the horn, yelling for this guy to get off the tracks; they would overtake him in very little time if he didn't move. Apparently oblivious to the danger behind him, the man kept on walking, never so much as glancing over his shoulder. The soldiers on the caboose joined in the yelling and waving of hats, trying to get the other's attention as the conductor called to the engineer to apply the brakes. Even with the brakes on, unless this guy moved, they were bound to hit him.

The calls turned to yells, the yells turned to profanity and screams, but with less than ten feet between the train and this apparently deaf and blind pedestrian, he showed no signs of stepping aside and saving his own skin. Finally at the last second, with seven grown men standing at close range, the unknown soldier looked over his shoulder, expression very startled...and disappeared. According to those there, he didn't hop off the track; indeed he couldn't have in that particular spot because it was sheer rock to either side for that short stretch. He just wasn't there anymore.

The engineer, being too far away to know what was going on and only knowing that someone was on the track, practically stood that train on its nose trying to get it to stop, and after another hundred yards or so it did. The passengers all looked frantically to either side and front and back of the train, the second conductor went so far as to shine lights under it, but there was nothing.

And the captain was grinning again.

Once the train was underway again, with everyone curiously silent and a bit shaken, and the first conductor inside the caboose refusing to look out the windows or speak to anyone for the rest of the trip, the soldiers offered each other nervous looks and half-questions. Everyone knew what they had seen, however, and it was actually many years before two of them actually admitted even being there that night. It was - to use a cliche - a rather unforgettable evening.

[CelticCoalition]

Wow. fun story. I bet the ghost wa a little freaked out himself witha train bearing down on him. Auntie auntie, tell us another one!

[stoirmeil]

Not only a great story, but really well told! I can so easily visualize the terrain and the train. Poor ghost. I agree it must have spooked him, if he became aware of all you live 'uns only at the last split second.

Yes, tell another!

[Sekhmet]

I'm spinning another tale...I didn't forget about you guys!

[CelticCoalition]

Woo hoo!

[stoirmeil]

*sucks thumb, bounces up and down*
Sto-reee! stoooo-reeeeeee!!!

[Sekhmet]

LOL I tried to write all bloody day today. Soon as my butt hit the chair, the kids would have something that needed attended to. Or the phone rang, or someone was at the door...you name it. I finally got a LITTLE done and then the power blinked and obliterated even that. The um...profanity got creative.

[stoirmeil]

Ohhhh- tayyyyy, 'ekhmet. We c'n wait to get skeered.
*continues sucking thumb, but quietly*

OOH! I know a small one that happened to me.


When I was in college years ago, there was a gal who lived downstairs from me who was also a student in my classes, and she had a two year old who was fey and a tad bit unsettled (and unsettling). (She was the child of a mad, torrid affair with a Rumanian juggler who was part gypsy, so there you go.) Her name was Sonia, an unnaturally intense child. When she was unhappy, her heart was shattering audibly, and when she was angry she was frightening. She could also pick your brains. One time, I was talking to her mum over a cuppa, and I thought (but did not say): "Gotta get cat food." Sonia was playing on the floor with some little wooden toys, apparently oblivious to us. But then she looked straight up at me with her huge, pale blue eyes and asked "Is the kitty hungry?" I told Polly, her mum, and she said "oh yeah, Sonia does that to me all the time."

Well, I was upstairs in my own apartment one morning, and could not find my glasses. Since I am helpless without them, this was not trivial. My honey was there with me, and he could not find them either. We looked all over the house; he picked up my 'cello, which was lying on its side on the bedroom carpet, and looked under it and all around it, and even shook it to see whether they fell inside it (highly unlikely), then put it down carefully on its side. We left the bedroom and then he said "I know they must be in there -- one more look around." He stopped dead in the bedroom doorway then and called me, sounding a bit spooked. I looked -- there were the glasses, lying in the side curve of the cello that he had just picked up and shaken. What clinched it for me that something very strange was going on was that they were spotlessly clean, which they never are.

We stopped by to pick up Polly to go to class, and told her what had happened. She just sighed and said "It's Sonia again. She was so mad at me today! I just cleared the fog out of her bedroom" (Sonia threw up clouds of mist when she was disturbed), ". . . and she just tipped my favorite mug off the table and broke it from across the room."

I cannot imagine living with a kid like that! She did grow out of it after a few years. It used to get worse when her father would visit and then leave again. He
remained in touch with Polly and brought weird toys from Rumania for the child. I think maybe she was just hungry for a daddy -- she loved my honey David, and he could calm her down like nobody else. If you told me the glasses reappeared (clean) because he was the one looking for them, I would believe it.

[Sekhmet]

LMAO I love you guys...

[WizardofOwls]

Hmm... stoirmeil, I'm worried about you....

[stoirmeil]

I remembered a story and put it in there in that thumbsucking post. But it's not as good as hers!

At least I took my thumb out of my mouth to do it!

[Sekhmet]

What ya mean, not as good as hers? It was good! Least somebody got a story out of today...you wanna put yours down here, do it!

..and don't mind Wizard. He's just as nutty, but he won't admit it.

[CelticCoalition]

Wow, interesting kid. Did she continue to have these abilities as she grew up and just used them less, or did they fade away?

[stoirmeil]

By the time she went into kindergarten, she had pretty much settled out, and it seems she wasn't doing any more of that. I would guess if anything remained, it would be that uncanny ability to read people, and that would be useful if she was not too obvious about it. I am not sure the other stuff was anything she could have controlled or used, like a "superpower", anyway. Polly had a very chaotic time the first few years after Sonia was born, and the child, well . . . manifested both their anxiety, let's say.

[CelticCoalition]

Very interesting. And yes, reading people would be a useful skill. I myself have some small skill in this area...but nothing like actually reading thoughts people have. It's more empathic than telepathic.