“Stop! Dwayne—stop!” Rita shouted, but her husband never heard her. Her cry was lost in the clatter of train wheels. The engine burst out of the darkness, striking the car with a horrendous crash. Rita heard the tearing of metal and, finally, screeching brakes. Somewhere up the tracks, the train shuddered and jerked to an emergency stop.
At the side of the tracks, a stunned-looking couple stood hugging each other. They had abandoned the car just in time. But where was Dwayne?
In the fast-falling snow, Rita couldn’t see him, nor could she see the man who had been vainly trying to push the car off the tracks. Then she tripped over something. It was the crumpled body of a man. She bent down and saw the snow covered overcoat. Oh, God! she thought, it’s Dwayne! He’s dead.
“Dwayne! Dwayne!” she began screaming. The figure on the ground struggled to his knees, almost fell, then tried again and managed to rise to his feet. It was her husband. Hugging him around his neck, Rita burst into tears.
“I’m OK. Calm down, honey. Where’s the man who was trying to push the car?”
“I haven’t seen him.”
Dwayne, the assistant manager from the inn, and several guests organized a search. The sound of the screeching train brakes had brought everyone out of the inn. The trainmen who had run back to the crossing helped them comb each side of the tracks, thinking that the man had been dragged along by the train. The inn sent a thermos of coffee out to the trainmen. They continued searching, but whoever had been trying to push the car off the tracks was nowhere to be found. The train went on.
By now the snow was fluttering lazily down in great flakes, the fierceness of the wind had abated, and visibility was greatly improved. But no body—alive or dead—could be found. Finally, with wet, snow-encrusted shoes and clothing, the Doughtrys and the other guests who had helped search went back in the inn and sat around the fire.
When the assistant manager of the inn joined them, Dwayne was saying, “I thought I could push him off the track and save him. Should we look more?”
“There is no need to,” said the assistant manager, his eyes dark and strange.
“But he could be dying out there somewhere,” persisted Rita.
“I don’t think so,” he said. “Do you remember my mentioning on the tour that our former manager, John DuBois, was killed a few years ago in front of the inn?”
“Yes,” said Dwayne. “But what does a badly injured man lying out there somewhere in the snow have to do with . . .”
“With John DuBois? Well, there was a late March snowstorm much like this one. John was trying to push a stalled car off the tracks when the train struck him.”
“When you left the inn tonight . . . ,” the assistant manager seemed reluctant to continue.
“Yes . . . what about it?”
“I think that what you saw was the ghost of John DuBois out there on the tracks.”
“His ghost! Good Lord! Now I understand. Part of his face was gone!” Dwayne shuddered.
“Yes, we found him that way.”
“Seeing his face was such a shock that I threw myself back from the tracks. That’s why the train didn’t hit me.”
His eyes were filled with awe. The man whose life he had been trying to save was already dead!
John Stone’s Inn (now Stone’s Public House) is located at 179 Main Street in Ashland, Massachusetts. For reservations, visit www.stonespublichouse.com/ or call (508) 881-1778.
WHERE HISTORY COMES ALIVE
THE OLD MANSE, CONCORD, MASSACHUSETTS
This famed literary haven is teeming with history—not to mention, some say, more than a few ghosts.
The steep, narrow stairs object with startling creaks and ear-splitting whines to the intruders disturbing their relative slumber. Flashlight beams cut through the dusty darkness. Bouncing, darting, and sweeping along cracked and cobwebbed wooden walls and floors, the erratic flashes reveal glimpses of unknown surroundings.
The group of night-time visitors, whose members claim to possess a variety of sensitivities to the world beyond our own, slowly enters the attic—a cramped warren of brick passages and alcoves.
At the landing, they split up; four head one way, four the other. The latter group moves to the end of the alley, their lights grazing up, down and around, beams catching shifting shadows and flecks of dust. They pass one alcove filled with chamber pots; in another tiny room, flowered wallpaper is unfurling itself in large sections from the wall at the behest of time and gravity.
All the way at the end and to the left is another small room; this is where the second group is headed. They enter, gather in a circle, and spread out an array of tools for investigating the paranormal. As they all douse their flashlights, these tools cast an ethereal red glow.
Scantly furnished with just a bed, the tiny chamber in The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, was once a lodging room for aspiring ministers. “Holy men,” as one-time resident Nathaniel Hawthorne explained in his 1854 memoir of the property, “in their youth, had slept, and studied, and prayed there.” Hawthorne aptly described the garret, outfitted with just the necessities of a bed pan, a clothes rack, two mirrors and a small fireplace, as “wild and uncivilized.”
On this summer evening, the room is stiflingly hot and musty, the bodies cramped together contributing to that air of claustrophobia.
The leader of the investigation team asks for a volunteer. Reluctantly, one comes forward; his duty is to stand inside the room’s only closet—door latched closed—while the researchers attempt to coax out one of the “shy” spirits that are believed to spend their afterlife within these walls.
“Are there any ministers here?” one group member asks of their unseen guests.
Members of the group are equipped with an infrared camera; temperature gauges and electromagnetic field (EMF) readers (which are used to read fluctuations that could indicate a spectral presence); a
