Ghost Trains are what considered to be phantom vehicles in the form of a locomotive or train. These haunted trains would keep going and they are fully operational but without anyone at the helm.
- Silverpilen (Silver Arrow) is a Stockholm Metro train which features in several urban legends alleging sightings of the train's "ghost".
- The St. Louis Ghost Train, better known as the St. Louis Light, is visible at night along an old abandoned rail line in between Prince Albert and St. Louis, Saskatchewan. Two local students won an award for investigating and eventually duplicating the phenomenon, which they determined to be caused by the diffraction of distant vehicle lights.
- A phantom funeral train is said to run regularly from Washington, D.C. to Springfield, Illinois, around the time of the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln's death, stopping watches and clocks in surrounding areas as it passes.
In Popular Culture
Ghost Train is the name of numerous plays, films, TV series and episodes, albums, songs, and other creative works. Notable examples are listed at ghost train (disambiguation).
- In Enid Blyton's 1948 Famous Five book Five Go Off to Camp, mysterious "spook trains" are exposed as a cover used by criminals. The story was subsequently adapted for television and radio.
- The beginning of the 1997 direct-to-video comedy-drama fantasy film Casper: A Spirited Beginning is set on a "death train" bound for Ghost Central Station.
- In the 1996 Hey Arnold! episode "Haunted Train", the protagonists hear of the "legend of the haunted train" and head for the abandoned train station where it is said to appear - and the train that pulls up to the station at midnight matches the description. However the story turns out to be (partially) false, the train in question was a relief worker train for a local steel mill which spawned the unfortunate myth. The conductor insinuates that the story has caused trouble in the past. However at the end of the episode as the kids are being driven home, off in the distance from the car the real ghost train is seen by the audience, with the phantom engineer singing while sitting on the cowcatcher as the train travels down the tracks.
- In the 1989 film Ghostbusters II, Egon, Winston and Ray, while exploring the underground tunnels of New York City, encounter the ghostly apparition of an NYC Central locomotive that derailed in the 1920s, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of people.
- The video game Final Fantasy VI features a ghost train that transports the spirits of the dead to the afterlife.
- A visual novel called Train of Afterlife follows the story of a girl called Wind, who awakes on board a mysterious train that is carrying the dead. With Wind are five passengers whom the player can interact with; one of them, however, is soon revealed to have had something to do with Wind's past. The game was released on January 13, 2012, and produced by Zeiva Inc.