The Ghost of Leonard Korn Read online

THE GHOST OF LEONARD KORN

  Jim Davis

  Copyright © 2013 by J. M. Davis

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Table of Contents

  The Ghost of Leonard Korn

  Author’s Note

  The Ghost of Leonard Korn

  In 1923, after manually switching the tracks for the 1:05 A.M. freight train, Leonard Korn tripped and fell across the rails. His head and legs were severed, and from that day on, legend had it the ghost of Leonard Korn walked the tracks with his lantern every Halloween night. Instead of keeping me and my friends away from the tracks, the story did the opposite. If the ghost of Leonard Korn lingered near my home, I was determined to see him.

  For years, several people reported seeing a strange light near the west end of town on Halloween nights along the tracks that divided the town in half. When I questioned my parents about the ghost of Leonard Korn, they admitted he had been killed on the tracks not far from our house, but any notion his ghost walked the tracks that ran no more than 200 feet from our front door was a myth.

  All was well, until I was eleven. I learned not to mention, to any adults, my sighting near the old train bridge. Not wanting to be ridiculed for believing in such nonsense, I kept the story to myself except for my closest neighborhood friends, Peggy, Roy, and Jeff. They agreed to go with me.

  Determined to prove the adults wrong, a little before 12:00 a.m. the following Halloween, Peggy, Roy, Jeff, and I set out down the tracks. It was cool so we wore our coats. I carried the flashlight my Uncle Thomas had given me on my twelfth birthday. None of us had permission to stay out late, but we were determined to search as long as it took to find the ghost.

  Peggy was the oldest at 12 and a half. Jeff was the youngest at 11. Roy and I were not quite as old as Peggy. I led the way down the tracks toward the old train bridge, long closed to train traffic after the end of the passenger train era. The secondary line had not been used since 1958. Not even freighters stopped in our town anymore. A population of less than 4000 folks no longer rated an active train depot.

  Roy stopped walking and grabbed my coat. “Hold up. Did you hear that?” There was anxiety in his voice.

  “No. I didn't hear anything. Let’s go. It’s getting late,” I said, swinging my flashlight back and forth between the black steel rails as we walked between them.

  Jeff pulled his coat tight around him. “It’s getting colder.”

  Peggy laughed. “Getting scared already, Jeff?”

  “I’m not scared. It’s cold. That’s all.”

  Several minutes later, we reached the old train trestle north of town. The tall supporting structure, made from large wooden timbers, spanned Black Bottom Creek. Its slopping sides were braced by horizontal crosspieces, also made of wood. Peggy, Jeff, Roy, and I had seen photos of it on display inside the train depot that served as the town’s only museum. From reading information provided below one of the photos, we knew at its tallest point, the tracks were more than a hundred feet above the water below.

  Before starting across, I aimed the beam of my flashlight over the sides. Thick underbrush and trees had taken over the gentle slope downward toward the water’s edge. From my experience the previous year, I knew the scariest and most dangerous part of the crossing would be out over the middle where nothing but air bordered the narrow edges on both sides of the railroad tracks. If we stumbled or tripped on the crossties, we could plummet to the cold water below.

  “On the far side of this bridge is where I saw him last year.” I pointed the light in the direction we were headed. With a span of 287 feet, even a flashlight powered by four D-size batteries wasn’t strong enough to reach across. There was nothing but darkness at the end of the beam.

  “Wow, that’s a long ways out,” Roy said. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

  “We’ll have to take our time going across,” I said. “A few of the crossties have split and parts of them stick up in places. Don’t get ahead of the light or you might trip on one of them.”

  “I’ll lead the way.” Jeff walked up in front of me. “I’ll prove I’m not scared.” He waved us forward before placing his hands in his coat pockets.

  We were nearly halfway across, when a clanking sound of steel rails locking in place broke the silence.

  We all stopped moving.

  “I sure heard that,” Peggy said, turning toward me.

  I turned around and pointed the beam down the tracks behind us. The old line hadn’t been used since before I was born. I bent down and placed my ear down on top of the steel rail. There was a strong vibration. My heart skipped a beat. Then off in the distance a train whistle blew.

  Something was terribly wrong.

  The tracks had been switched from the main line to the old bridge route we were on. How could that be? Then a light came around the bend not two hundred yards from us.

  “Run!” I screamed. “We have to clear the trestle.”

  The light on the front of the train lit up the tracks a few hundred feet behind us. The train was coming on fast. The bright light chased after our feet as we ran as fast as we could toward the other side of the bridge. When the light flashed upon our backs, the train engineer set down hard on the whistle, never letting up. He applied full brakes from the engine all the way back to the last car.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Sparks spewed from beneath the train’s wheels showering both sides of the track. The sound of steel wheels scraping steel rails drowned out the train’s whistle, but the huge mass of the eighty car freight train continued to bear down on us.

  Bringing up the rear, I realized we wouldn't make it across in time. We were all going to die on a lonely stretch of track, cut to pieces in the middle of the night?

  I glanced over my shoulder once again into the blinding light, praying it wouldn’t be the last thing I ever saw.

  Mixed in with the sound of screeching steel and the train whistle, I heard a voice in my ear.

  “Jump, Jump now!”

  A large adult sized hand shoved me from behind. I stuck my arms out, grabbed for my pals, and took them over the side of the trestle with me.

  Still in the air, our screams could be heard above all else, in what felt like a never ending plummet into darkness as the freight train passed above us. Luckily, we landed on the soft dirt and grass that lined the bank of the creek, but my commanders flashlight hit the ground with a thud and bounced into the water with a splash. It glowed all the way down until it was too deep to see in the murky water of Black Bottom Creek.

  I looked up at the tracks. The engineer had released the brakes and the train continued on its way as if nothing had happened. Seconds later, it was all quiet until we heard twigs breaking.

  “Are you kids hurt?” a husky male voice yelled out from above. Dressed in train-employee coveralls, a tall bearded man, carrying a lantern, made his way down the steep embankment toward us.

  When he got close, I said, “I’m not, but I don’t know about the others.” I placed my hand on Peggy’s shoulder.

  “Peggy, are you all right?”

  “I think so," she replied, standing to dust herself off.

  Jeff moaned before removing a small rock from beneath him. “My butt feels like it's broke, but I think I can make it home.”

  The man, with huge hands, shoved his lantern toward Roy.

  “What about you, son?”

  Roy stared up at him. “Where did you come from?”

  “If you kids hadn’t jumped, when I yelled, you’d all be dead now.”

  “Thanks," I said. "You saved our lives, miste
r.”

  “I'm glad you’re all right,” he said, moving his lantern closer to my face for a few seconds. “I’ve seen you down here before.”

  The fumes from the oil burning lantern gave the surrounding air an unusual whiff.

  “Yes, sir,” I said.

  “Well, I’ve got to get back to my business. Maybe I’ll see you again sometime, but best stay off the tracks. It’s a dangerous place for kids."

  "We will," I said, “I promise.”

  He walked away swinging his lantern back and forth. When both he and his lantern faded into a mist, not twenty feet from me, I knew he was the ghost I’d seen the previous Halloween.

  Until I turned eighteen and had to leave home for college, I went back out to the old train trestle many times, in hopes of seeing the ghost of Leonard Korn. I had so many questions I wanted to ask him, but after that night he told me to jump, he never showed himself again to me, or to anyone else, from what I’ve been able to gather. I’d like to think saving our lives allowed my great-grandfather’s spirit to finally move on.

  # # #

  Author’s note: I grew up in a house located across the street from railroad tracks. This story is dedicated to my childhood friends, Dorothy, Debbie, Danny, Ronny, and my younger brother, Jean, who walked the tracks with me in search of treasures. In those days, we placed pennies on the rails. We would then get down on our bellies beside the tracks to keep watch over them, our heads only inches from the steel wheels which smashed them into quarter sized tokens.

  We made many trips to the third trestle from our home. One evening Ronny and I set two hooks out in the creek, and camped beneath the trestle. We caught two fish.

  I’m thankful my children didn’t grow up near train tracks. It’s a miracle we survived.

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