Haunted waters

Back in college there was an old railroad bridge that spanned the Lehigh River. It was barely fit for a human, let alone a train – but for some reason one spring day I found myself mid river up on its tracks.

The gaps between the creosoted wooden ties were wider than I expected and thought of the river’s shallowness suddenly started bothering me.

Trust me, one hundred feet (or how ever high it was) is considerably higher looking down! (It’s a mathematical fact … although the exact formula eludes me.)


I know what you’re thinking: “Never look down – you’ll freeze!” But I couldn’t help myself – it was a really good view of the river valley, and after all, I was a fledgling hydrologist.

I made it, one step at a time ... and once was enough.


The true horror of the experience wouldn’t hit me until weeks later.

While running along the earthen toe path of the river-side canal, I caught a strange motion out of the corner of my eye, and looked up to see the sight of a real live train, with a line of cargo cars behind, crossing the bridge.



It was fit for a train! And possibly a human too:

But not both at once.

I shook my head at my stupidity and good luck (… and thought once more about the shallows.)



I wish I’d had the chance to do the same back in my The Mudderland, across the waterway that is its epicenter, and across which used to span the tracks and trestle of the Ma and Pa Railroad (see video).

Today those tracks are gone, and so too whatever held them up:

But the stone abutment at its northern bank still remains, a monument which is as much a fixture of the running waters as the natural rocks themselves, which too – to a stone – have remained unchanged since the days of my youth.



The Ma and Pa Railroad lives on through its ghosts: stories of call men still hollering along the line, whistles shrieking in the dead of night, or the rat-tat-tat of the metal wheels running off into the fog at dusk.

While I’ve never seen one of those ghosts myself, a teacher of mine lived in a house along the line, which he and his wife rehabilitated from the foundation up.

His wife ran out screaming from the foundation one day, in hysterics: “J! Come here!”

Certain that it was a ghost; we were greeted instead on the other side of the door by a giant black snake hanging down from the rafters.



I was perfectly content to watch it retract back into the rafters, which it started to do; but Mr. J, himself being petrified of snakes, but quite at ease in giving orders, was insistent on it being caught … by me.

“Bob! Grab that snake. BOB! NOW!”



That was the first snake I ever caught – and truly in that moment I cannot describe pride of my accomplishment. Unsure what to do with the snake, other than take it off his property, I took it to a friends house where the snake proceeded to bite me, right on the knuckle, where to this day, I still have a scar.

It’s faint, and sometimes I can’t find it, but in the right light, it jumps out.


That’s about as close to proof that I have that the Ma and Pa Railroad is haunted.

For me its good enough. I haven’t caught another snake since.


But of course it’s not the railroad (or the snake) that haunts me, it’s the meander of the creek that riffles by the monument of stone that still remains which – when the summer has ended and the fall leaves are at their peak – is usually shallow enough almost to cross by foot.


Those waters run deep to be sure, but I don’t need a bridge to cross them.