Tag Archives: ghost children

Haunted Train Tracks, San Antonio

Context: My informant (M) grew up in a small town in Texas about an hour outside of San Antonio. This was a local legend she heard growing up about haunted train tracks. She told me every kid in her town knew about the tracks, and it was a common outing for high schoolers to go see the tracks. She told me that if you visit the tracks now, there are police cars and signs telling people not to stop on the tracks because it creates too much traffic. San Antonio plays into the legend and features the train tracks in museums and historical tours.

Main Text:

M: There’s a place in San Antonio where a bus filled with children got stalled out on a railroad track. They weren’t able to move the bus so the train came and it killed all the kids inside. So the legend is that the kids now haunt the train tracks. So if you drive on the train tracks at around midnight-and you can put like baby powder on your bumper or something- but if you stop on the tracks and put your car into neutral, supposedly the kids will push your car just enough for it to get off the tracks. Then, if you get out and look at your bumper, you’ll see little handprints on it from where the ghost kids pushed your car. I guess they do this so you don’t have to experience the tragedy that they did.

Me: Did you ever do it?

M: No I wasn’t allowed to drive to San Antonio at midnight (laughs). But in high school, a lot of kids would do it and then come back to school and say ‘oh you know we did it and it totally worked I saw the handprints and everything.’ And there were all of these “first-hand accounts” that made it really believable at 15, 16 years old.

My thoughts: It seems like a common story around the United States to have a haunted site where kids died and now they push your car. I did some research and I found a similar story from Los Angeles about the ghosts of Gravity Hill, I linked it below. I also included a link to the San Antonio ghost tours website that tells this story with more historical information. 

Los Angeles Gravity Hill: https://www.ranker.com/list/gravity-hill-haunting/erin-mccann

San Antonio’s Ghost Tours Site: https://ghostcitytours.com/san-antonio/haunted-places/haunted-railroad-tracks/

Colorado Springs Haunted Mine

Main Piece
So there is this mine in Colorado springs, and what happened was a school bus full of children was murdered in the mine in the 1950’s, and so the myth is that if you cover your car with baby powder, and then drive in like the middle of the mine, because you can drive through part of it, and then you park and you turn off everything, and you come out, after you turn your lights on and stuff, and there will be handprints where the baby powder was. You hear children laughing too. We’ve done it, and like yeah you see handprints, and so nobody really knows what it is. I mean, it might be like water dripping or something, but its legit so creepy.

Background
The informant grew up in Colorado, and therefore learned many of the area specific stories and traditions. She specifically lived near Colorado Springs, where she claims this mine to be. She did not state the name of the mine, but insisted she had been there from personal experience.

Context
The informant is a 25-year-old women studying law at Loyola in Los Angeles. The information was collected outside my family home in Palm Springs, California on April 20th, 2019.

Analysis
This ‘textbook’ scary story is classic of horror narratives – there is an old murder, and ghosts who still haunt those grounds. I think this story is interesting in particular because the ghosts here are children, which makes it all the more creepy. This doesn’t seem to be a cautionary tale, but one of more intrigue and suggesting of trying it out. I really like that the informant had tried out the tale, and had confirmed it as being true, although she offers her own possible explanation for what causes the marks in the powder on your car. I think it must be really fun and possibly scary for those taking part in the tradition, but they are really keeping the memory of the dead children, if they really existed, alive. Even if the background of the tale is not fully true, the ritual and tradition associated with it continue to keep the mine and its questionable history relevant.