Headless Woman Spooked Crews at Trestle
Trestle over Potomac at Twenty-first Bridge Road, Rawlings, looking toward West Virginia. Too many ghost stories in old newspapers are vague on where, exactly, something took place. Refreshingly pinpointed, however, is this account from 1898, which I quote in full. My only change was to break up the long paragraphs, for online readability: Trainmen on the Baltimore and Ohio and West Virginia Central railroads employed near Cumberland, Md., were recently frightened by the shape of a headless woman that makes her appearance at Greenwade’s siding, near Twenty-first bridge, between Cumberland and Keyser, W.Va. Freight trains are side tracked there, and when the trainmen are waiting a headless woman emerges from an old culvert or bridge and walks up and down the track. Whenever any of the men attempt to follow her, she disappears. One railroad man was so badly frightened that he left the service of the road. Others say that if the headless woman keeps up her antics they, too, wi...