Right up there with the Marfa Mystery Lights, there are ghosts throughout Texas.
My kind hosts in San Antonio were piqued by the thought of the “haunted railroad crossing,” we set out, late Sunday afternoon, to find the crossing.
It’s on Shane – which dead ends into Villamain – down behind the San Jose Mission.
How it works: The story goes, that happened here, carload of kids run over and killed, when the vehicle they were riding in got stuck on the track.
As far as plausibility? Sure, that works. It’s a blind corner on the tracks, coming up from the south, and coming to a stop on tracks themselves would present a serious hazard. Some of the literature includes stories about skeletons found in the vicinity of the railroad crossing.
The deal is, you’re supposed to stop your vehicle about 30 yards from the crossing. Put the car in neutral, turn it off. And that watch. The gets “pushed” across the tracks by unseen hands.
It is, in part, an optical illusion because it looks like the train tracks are uphill. But standing beside the crossing, it’s pretty clear that the other folks around believe.
“Look, look, handprints. Hey, you have that talcum powder, so we can dust our car and do it again? See that one print, looks like a little kid slid off when you stopped.”
“Man, we got this tape at Wal-Mart, ‘great ghost stories and unsolved mysteries,’ and we just had to check this out for ourselves.”
