August 27, 1891 the Bostian's Bridge train wreck took the lives of 23 people
and was one of the state's deadliest. Now, a tragedy like this typically fades
into memory and becomes a part of history, but this story lives on due to ghostly
tales surrounding the train wreck, strange occurrences over the years, and a
paranormal hunting team in 2010 that went looking for ghosts, but
instead came upon a real locomotive with deadly
consequences. The Richmond & Danville Railroad had
once been vital, an essential transportation line for the
Confederacy during the Civil War, connecting the capital of Richmond to
the rest of the south. But by 1891, the railroad was failing - just months
from going into receivership, with aging railroad lines receiving
little upkeep. Around 2 30 in the morning, on the 27th,
the Richmond & Danville No. 9 left Statesville pulling six cars,
including a first class coach, a second class coach, a Pullman sleeper,
and the private rail car of the Richmond & Danville superintendent.
They were about a half hour late and Engineer William West
was pushing to make up time. Fewer than five minutes later, the train
plunged off Bostian's Bridge. Estimates were that the train was
traveling at 35 to 40 miles an hour when it caromed off the 60-foot high,
five-span brick structure.
The sleeping car traveled 153 feet through the air before hitting the
ground. The 30 survivors were cared for at the
Bostian family homeplace nearby or taken to Statesville to recover in
private homes. The dead were taken to a nearby tobacco
warehouse for identification. NCPedia says thousands of onlookers
arrived at the scene of the tragedy in the following days,
viewing the wreckage from the bridge or going through the debris below.
So, why did the train go off the bridge? Well, that was a mystery.
A coroner's inquest blamed it on unknown persons removing rail spikes from the
rail ties, causing the rails to shift as the train
approached the bridge. Others said that the rails had just been
neglected for too long by the railroad and Richmond & Danville, being a
struggling railroad, wouldn't be able to afford the lawsuits
if the blame was placed on them.
Railroad detectives swarmed the area, questioning nearby residents.
Some were detained to no avail. It took five years for two men,
already in the state penitentiary, to be convicted based on evidence that they
had spoken of their alleged crimes to other inmates. Then came the reports
of ghostly sightings. Now, as legend has it,
it was exactly 50 years after the original train wreck. A woman was waiting
by her broken down car near Bostian's Bridge. Her husband had
gone to fetch a mechanic. It's said that she heard the sound of a
train going off that bridge, including the blood-curdling screams of
the passengers aboard. When the husband and the mechanic
arrived, they searched the area and found nothing.
Later, the couple arrived in Statesville, and they were told about that train
crash 50 years earlier. It's said that the woman fainted.
A year later, a husband and wife, along with her young nephew,
stopped to see the bridge. The woman got her foot tangled in a rail tie, couldn't
be freed, and fainted as a train approached.
Amazingly, all three laid flat near the edge of the
bridge and escaped injury. A book of ghost stories published in
1970 further established the legend, and ghost hunters began examining the
site. In 2010, a group of a dozen paranormal
researchers, on the 119th anniversary of the crash,
were on the bridge when they thought they heard the ghost train approaching.
Initially, they didn't run. As it turns out, what the group had seen and heard
was an actual Norfolk Southern train. Realizing
their mistake, they ran across the bridge, trying to
make it to the other side. Most made it to safety. One woman narrowly
avoided death. She was pushed by her boyfriend
40 feet off the bridge. She survived. Her boyfriend didn't.
A few years after the 1891 wreck, the Richmond & Danville Railroad was
purchased by the newly formed Southern Railway,
which became part of Norfolk Southern in the 1980s. Trains still travel those
lines and still cross Bostian's Bridge, forever
famous for a tragedy and the legend it left
behind. Continue to learn at home with other
great videos from the North Carolina Transportation Museum
on Facebook, YouTube, and nctrans.org. The North Carolina Transportation Museum
in Spencer is the museum that moves you!