One of the creepiest ghost tales we have heard here at Spectral Review is the witnessing of the “Lincoln Ghost Train”. The Lincoln funeral train made it’s way from Washington DC to Springfield, Illinois after the President was assassinated.

The story is that a “ghost train” is seen every year at the end of April during the anniversary of the original trip. The “ghost train” travels slowly, makes no noise, but witnesses tell of seeing a flag draped coffin surrounded by many mourners.

It’s personally creepy to your favorite Spectral Review editor because he commutes to the day job on an interstate that parallels the train tracks where Lincoln’s funeral train had traveled in 1865. To compound things the book Civil War Ghosts and Legends tells of a sighting near Albany, NY and quotes from Albany Evening Times which is the area in which your editor lives:

On the right-of-way of the New York Central, sandhouse men, section hands, and track-walkers tell the ghost story of the phantom train. They say it’s Lincoln’s funeral train. The train is pulled by a brand new engine. Put on at New York, The Union pulled the cars across New York State and on to Springfield, Illinois. Railroad men who have seen the train say:

“Late at night, in the last week of the month of April, the air along the track becomes keen - xhill. But on either side it is warm and still. The Union and the eight cars travel noiselessly past. If a real train should go by at the same time and space, the noise of the real train hushes as the phantom train is rolling over it or replacing it in time and space. As the phontom train passes clocks and watches stop.

We have wondered if anyone has tried to investigate the ghost train and some groups from Urbana, Ohio have done just that recently:

On a recent night in Urbana, about 90 people helped set up night-vision cameras in a grassy field to see if they could capture the “Lincoln Ghost Train.”

James Willis is founder The Ghosts of Ohio. He says the group investigated the site but found nothing out of the ordinary.