Goblin Bites: Scary Stories 1

To my knowledge, this story is true... although there will be some who doubt its validity.

In the rural Southern town of Grantville, Georgia, long ago, there lived a young woman. She was betrothed to a strapping young man, although he was very poor. In order to raise money to buy a wedding ring for his beloved, the young man took a job with the railroad company. He was gone for many, many weeks at a time, but the young woman's love never faltered. Every time he came back home at the end of the month, he found her waiting for him at the railyard. He knew it was her even at a distance, because she would always bring a lantern with her. Seeing the lantern swinging from afar would fill his heart with joy, knowing that his love was waiting to welcome him home. In response, he would blow the train whistle three times in a row, to let her know he saw her.

After a few months of working for the railroad company, the South was put in an uproar with talk of war. Word was they were breaking from the Union, and forming their own country. Some seemed excited at the prospect of forming their own Confederacy, but others - like the young pair of lovers - were frightened to go to war with the Yankees. The Yankee army was much bigger than that of the South, and had better training and weapons. Eventually, the young man was drafted by the new government to fight, as the Yankees had already claimed several railroads across the South in an effort to cut off supply routes to the Confederate Army. Months turned into years, but the young woman still came to the railyard the same day every month, swinging her lantern in the hopes that her beau would be arriving on the next incoming train.

One chilly October day, she recieved a letter from the front lines. A sob choked in her breast as she read the devastating news: her beloved husband-to-be had been killed on the battlefield. Blinded by her grief and unable to accept word of his death, she took up her lantern and headed for the railyard that same hour. She stood out there all day and into the night, swinging her lantern at every train that approached... but her beloved never arrived. With a broken heart, she collapsed from exhaustion onto the tracks around midnight. When the next train approached, she paid it no heed.

No one knows for sure what she was thinking. Perhaps she simply couldn't bear the thought of going on without the man she loved. Perhaps she was simply too tired to move. Others say she did try to move out of the train's path, but the hem of her skirt caught on the track and she hadn't the strength to free it. Some have said that the conductor blew the whistle three times to warn her, and she mistook the sound for that of her lover coming home. Whatever the case, that night was her last on this Earth.

That railyard has long since been abandoned, lost to time and reclaimed by Nature in the years since the Civil War. To this day, however, on Halloween Night when the moon is full, the people of Grantville who live around the tracks say they can hear a woman crying. Some claim they've seen a lantern, swinging in the darkness over the tracks in the distance. The Old Folks believe it is the same young woman, looking for her lost love to return to her. I'm told if you see the lantern on the tracks while crossing over them, you should stop and listen very closely. If you do, far off into the distance from the North you just might be able to hear three hollow, lonesome blasts from a train whistle.