Christmas Carols in the Woods

The old man had retired from the Baltimore and Ohio rail line. The engineer had been known for his love of the Christmas season. Every December he’d buy sacks of candy to toss to the children who lived in the houses along the tracks, like a rolling Santa Claus. And he would bellow Christmas carols as he worked, filling the railroad cars with cheerful song.

His retirement package had allowed him to buy a phonograph and start a collection of records. Most of them, predictably, were of Christmas music. The old man got a few visitors during the Christmas season, even with his house tucked away in the woods. Any time a friend or family member stopped by, the old man would cheerfully invite them in to sip coffee and enjoy his small collection of records.

When the old man passed away, his relatives came to clean out his tiny house. They took his records and his cherished phonograph, and the house was left empty. In 1968, the old B&O tracks that ran past the house were taken up and not replaced. The old man’s house fell to the wrecking ball as well. No sense in leaving it, if no one lived there and the tracks were gone. All that was left was the old trackbed. Hunters found it a useful trail into the deep woods.

Years after the old man died, not long after his house was demolished, a hunter was in that part of the woods. It was two days before Christmas. The hunter was driving carefully down the trackbed, mindful of the noises of the forest around him, when he heard a sound that had no place in that part of the woods any more.

It was the sound of a Christmas carol coming from a well-worn and well-loved record—pops, scratches, hisses and all as the needle coaxed the tune from the aging vinyl.

The hunter stopped his car and turned off the engine to make sure his imagination wasn’t playing tricks on him. All around him, the music rose, threading through the trees. The hunter shook his head at the weirdness of it, and turned the key in the ignition.

His car wouldn’t start.

Frantically, he stomped on the gas and twisted the key again. The motor just wouldn’t turn over.

Then the hunter saw movement ahead of him. An old man was crossing the trackbed. The man walked slowly up to the front porch of a house that had shimmered into view next to the phantom train tracks. A candle guttered in a window, and the strains of music drifted cheerfully in the air. The hunter watched the man open the front door of the tiny house, as the music got fainter and fainter.

The house, the old man, and the last strains of music all faded away together.

This time, the engine caught, and the hunter wrenched the steering wheel around and slewed through the woods to get out. On his return to town, he stammered out his tale.

He was astounded to find that some of his audience, the older folks, actually believed him. They remembered the old engineer who lived in the house in the woods, and loved the Christmas season so much, and who invited visitors in to listen to his favorite records.

The next night, Christmas Eve, thirteen boys set out for the woods in three cars. They wanted their own experience in the dark of the forest. They drove on the trackbed out to where the old engineer’s house had once stood. They parked, shut off their cars, and waited.

The boys’ experience was just a little different than what the hunter had reported. They didn’t see the phantom house, and they didn’t see the old man crossing the tracks to get to the house. But they heard the music, rising among the trees, sounding just like an old Victrola cranked up to wheezy full volume.

And their cars would not start until the music faded away.

The boys went back out for a few nights after Christmas, but nothing happened on those visits. Legend has it that the music can only be heard in the days leading up to Christmas. After Christmas Day, the old phonograph falls quiet, and silence returns to the woods along the tracks—until the next Christmas season comes around.