"Ladies and gentlemen, please take your seats. The train leaves in a few minutes. All the
seers-off, please exit the car. You may wave to your loved ones from the platform.
We hope you’ll enjoy your trip. Drinks and snacks will be served soon. Get ready to travel
through time; our next stop is a medieval monastery in Modena!"
Imagine traveling on a train that is actually a time machine that would never bring you
back. The 106 passengers and crew of the Zanetti train probably would’ve thought twice before
they embarked on their adventure, had they known that. Just like the passengers of the
“Titanic,” which set off for its first and last cruise almost a year later, they
never reached their destination. The difference, though, is that no one knows what happened
to the train…
On July 14, 1911 the rail company “Zanetti” offered well-off Italians a free trial ride
on their new train. The passengers were enjoying their ride watching scenic views along the
way, making small talk, and enjoying their refreshments. One of the sites they were looking
forward to was a new tunnel that went through a mountain. It was one of the longest ever
built at the time.
And that’s where the mystery begins. The train entered the half mile-long (1 km) tunnel
in Lombardy Mountain and never came out! Just, disappeared! After the incident, the railway
workers and police searched every square foot of it, but found no trace of the train. The
tunnel itself was just a long tube. There was nowhere to go but to the other side, yet
there was neither a train nor any signs of a crash there.
However, there were two passengers found who’d jumped off the train just before it vanished
into the tunnel. Later, when they came to, they were able to tell the story of their
eerie trip.
As the train approached the tunnel, black smoke came out of nowhere as well as a dense
white fog. The train slowed down as it was nearing the entrance, and the fog began to
envelop it. The men panicked and jumped to the ground before the train was gone.
One of the survivors told an Italian newspaper about the incident: “I heard an unclear
humming sound. Beyond the black smoke, I could see a milky-white fog creeping from the tunnel
– it literally swallowed the train like a wave. And with it the first car of our ill-fated
train split open. It became so horrifying. The train was barely moving so I jumped from
the car and my eyes caught another passenger who jumped at the same time. We both hit the
ground hard, and that is the last thing I remember.”
The injured men suffered from sleeping troubles and other stress disorders for a while. As
for the train, it was never seen again. Word spread about the tunnel, and officials thought
it best to close it. Then, the notorious tunnel happened to get bombed during World War II,
closing it off forever…
No one could come up with a sound explanation for this strange disappearance: dozens had
witnessed the train leaving the station in Rome and entering the tunnel, but nobody saw
it come out.
But that’s not the last time we’d hear about the mysterious train. There are records
of medieval monks from Modena who saw a three-car train with people in it. How could they conceive
a huge iron machine puffing clouds of black smoke? A horse was the fastest means of transport
at the time. Railroads hadn’t been invented yet. Well, they thought it, along with the
passengers who they described were clean-shaven and dressed in black, all must be the work
of some evil forces…
You can say that medieval monks made it up, but here’s the thing: their report was kept
in the records of Casta Solea, stored by the Sadjino family. And one of the survivors of
the train had the name Sadjino.
Then, in the 1840s, there's a report that the Zanetti passengers were seen in Mexico.
A psychiatrist in a local hospital left notes saying that a group of 104 Italians were admitted
all in a hysterical state. They were all dressed in strange clothes obviously from a different
place, and claimed they were travelling from Rome by a Zanetti train. One of the passengers
actually had a cigarette box with a future date “1907”on it. They say it is still
kept in a Mexican museum.
The psychiatrist concluded that it was a case of mass insanity, but he failed to come up
with any explanation for it. There are no records left of the patients after that.
Many years later, the train appeared again in Europe. On October 29, 1955 a three-car
old-fashioned train appeared not far from Zavalichi, a small village in Ukraine. The
signalman, Pyotr Ustimenko, saw it moving soundlessly.
He reported that he’d been on duty that night and suddenly saw a train that wasn’t
on the schedule. The train was heading without tracks to Gasfort Mountain. He thought he
was seeing things and rubbed his eyes, but there it was – with shut curtains, open
doors, and an empty driver’s cabin. Ustimenko had never seen a train like that before, but
he knew it was old, definitely a pre-war model. The description he gave was the same as that
of the Zanetti. It’s unlikely a signalman from a remote town in the USSR would know
anything about an Italian train lost at the beginning of the 20th century.
Another interesting note about this sighting is that at the end of the 19th century, there
was an Italian cemetery built on Gasfort Mountain near Sevastopol. About 2,000 Italian soldiers
who died during the Crimean War were buried there. Later, a railroad from Balaklava was
constructed over the former cemetery, but then was destroyed after the revolution of
1917 because it was no longer used. Was the ghost train riding on ghost tracks to meet
its Italian brethren? I guess we’ll never know…
And, again, this wasn’t the last account of the train appearing.
As crazy as all this sounds, could there be a scientific explanation of the ghost train
adventures?
Some believe all the railroads in the world form a sort of connected web that has its
own magnetic field. The trains serve as electric conductors between the earth’s natural magnetic
field and the artificial one. The conflict between the two forces creates fractures in
time with endless holes. This explanation is based on Einstein’s theory of relativity
and Minkowski’s definition of distance.
These fractures are called “chronal holes.” Sometime before the Zanetti train left the
station, there had been an earthquake where the tracks were. It’s believed the crust
fracture, which appeared under Lombardy Mountain, created a time anomaly at the entrance to
the tunnel. The train became the link necessary to dig through time and space, and it fell
from its time vector where it belonged and could move to other times. So, in layman’s
terms, it was traveling through time!
In case you’re already getting goosebumps and swearing off trains forever, rest assured
that this isn’t something you have to worry about happening to you because it’s just
an urban legend. It got so popular that some paranormal enthusiasts devoted years to finding
proof of the Zanetti train’s existence. As time went on, more names and details were
added to the legend. However, if you try to look-up the rail company Zanetti, Casta Solea,
the Sadjino family, or a signalman named Pyotr Ustimenko, you’ll only find links to different
versions of this legend.
Ghosts and trains make for great stories, but there has yet to be any evidence of a
ghost train ever existing. But I don’t think that’ll stop people from looking for them
or telling more stories about them! If you have the time, you can find dozens
of stories about ghost trains to keep you entertained. One of the most popular stories
is a play written by Arnold Ridley in 1923, “The Ghost Train,” that was inspired by
a creepy night he spent at a remote railway station. Hmm, sounds like a pretty good read!
Do you know any other urban legends? Let me know down in the comments! If you learned
something new today, then give this video a like and share it with a friend.
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