The legendary haunted crossing in San Antonio, TX

[luke]

I'm assuming everyone has heard of the legend of a haunted railroad crossing in San Antonio, TX.

If not, heres what happened.
According to the legend, in the 1940s a school bus stalled on the crossing, with a train approaching.

The train broadsided the bus, and 10 passengers & the driver, were killed. (Some versions say everyone was killed.)

It's said that it you drive onto the crossing, and put you vehicle in neutral, the ghosts of the 10 children & th driver will push the vehicle off the crossing.

Well, I don't believe it, as there is apparently no record of a train vs. bus collision during that period.
Why the cars roll off the crossing, however, is intriguing.

The crossing is the focus of a gravity hill, an optical illusion which makes it look it's going uphill heading eastbound, when in fact it's going downhill.




As for the exact location of the crossing, I found it on street view & on the FRA database.

The crossing in question is the Shane Rd grade crossing, in a rural part of San Antonio.
It's owned by Union Pacific, and BNSF may have trackage rights.
It see no more than 10 trains a day, and like in the '40s, it's still passive.

Here is the fabled crossing on street view:

http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll= ... 5,,0,10.13

[Smjh1979]

Yeah. I know about that one. A few years ago, I looked on the FRA's site, and found the entry for that crossing. It gets 8 daily trains for around 2004.

The report of it being haunted is false. The crossing is on a slight decline, and thats why the car rolls off.

[cabman701]

I parked my little Google car in the middle of the crossing and waited... it didn't go anywhere!

[Crossingman18]

looks like its in a spooky enough area to be haunted. Yeesh. Gives me the heebie jeebies. I would thik if you put the car in neutral on the tracks, the ghost of the bus would push you off of it.

[bigphilliestyle2000]

i would hate to wait for the bus way out there!!!

[TrainmanKight]

looks like its in a spooky enough area to be haunted. Yeesh. Gives me the heebie jeebies. I would thik if you put the car in neutral on the tracks, the ghost of the bus would push you off of it.

YAH THAT DOES LOOK SPOOKY
here is a picture of what looks to be a little girl witha teddy bear
http://paranormal.about.com/library/wee ... 31201a.htm
(i wounder if snopes has any info on this)
EDIT HERE IT IS
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/ghosts/handprint.asp
if the story is true the kids failed twice two get a car off of the tracks in 2000 and 1990

[luke]

Yeah. I know about that one. A few years ago, I looked on the FRA's site, and found the entry for that crossing. It gets 8 daily trains for around 2004.

The report of it being haunted is false. The crossing is on a slight decline, and thats why the car rolls off.

Yep.

Like I said, an optical illusion known as a gravity hill makes it look like the car is going uphill, when in fact it is going down.

[luke]

Also, added to some versions of the legend is a passage stating that 5 residential streets just to the northeast of the crossing are named after 5 of the victims:

Laura Lee,
Nancy Carole,
Cindy Sue,
Richey Otis,
& Bobbie Allen.

The truth behind these names is a little stranger, however.

They names 'honor' the grandchildren of the planner who plotted the small neighborhood!


------

The legend seems to have been inspired by a real incident that occurred on the D&RGW in Riverton, UT:
It happened on the morning of December 1, 1938, in weather conditions of fine snow.

A school bus with a driver & 38 students stopped at a crossing, then drove onto it, apparently because no one on the bus could hear the oncoming train, or see it, as the windows were fogged up.

The D&RGW freight went into emergency, but ended up broadsided the bus at 52 M/H.

23 passengers and the driver were killed, the other 15 passengers were injured.

For some reason, a newspaper in San Antonio reported this spectacle in gruesome detail, and over time it was corrupted to say that the accident occurred in San Antonio.

The last paragraph was from Snopes; the info on the Utah collision is below, along with a number of other school bus vs train collisions:

http://www.stnonline.com/stn/data_stati ... _crash.htm

[ColeD]

I hope it was alright to bump this. Just wanted to add it looks like as of the latest Streetview it is now a gated crossing.

Also I remember seeing something about this crossing on a TV show as a kid back in the early 1990s, like 1992 or 1993. I think it was on Inside Edition. They showed putting flour on the trunk of the car and then sitting in neutral. And it would show hand prints in the flour on the trunk lid. Was scary to me back then. Now I realize it was just similar to dusting for fingerprints - the hand prints were just from oils left from your own hands having touched it before.

[chris96]

I hope it was alright to bump this. Just wanted to add it looks like as of the latest Streetview it is now a gated crossing.

Also I remember seeing something about this crossing on a TV show as a kid back in the early 1990s, like 1992 or 1993. I think it was on Inside Edition. They showed putting flour on the trunk of the car and then sitting in neutral. And it would show hand prints in the flour on the trunk lid. Was scary to me back then. Now I realize it was just similar to dusting for fingerprints - the hand prints were just from oils left from your own hands having touched it before.

You can see the new signals at 10:05 and active at 12:44 in this video:


Acting 10/10 BTW