The Pee Dee River Headless Brakeman

Ghosts, Little Mermaids and Princess costumes, plastic pumpkins with handles for trick or treat— as sure as multi-colored leaves along the Blue Ridge Parkway, they’re a sign that Fall has fallen. And that’s just in the supermarkets. Who knows what you’ll find in Wal-Mart, K-Mart or Target, not to mention the costume shops.

Nowadays kids and grown-ups alike have a variety of Halloween garb to choose from. Full-head masks are crafted with all the wrinkles, warts and moles of the latest TV villain or gorgeous hair and luscious lips of the coolest country singer.

We didn’t have many choices in the 1950’s. A few chintzy Superman or Batman or Cinderella costumes appeared in the dime stores with more expensive ones in department stores, but selections were few. Paper grocery sacks with holes cut out to make handles served to haul home the candy loot. It all ate the same, after all.

Scrounging through Mama’s sewing stuff one Halloween I found a long length of black fabric, a shorter length of fire-engine red. I promised not to cut holes in them and she let me fashion my own Halloween statement. A few well-placed safety pins later, I was a cross between Little Red Riding Hood and the Wicked Witch of the West. Black jeans and tee-shirt completed my glamorous or ghoulish style, depending on whether I wore the cape and hood red-side out or black-side out.

Door to door we went, my brother and I, collecting Baby Ruths, Hershey Bars, bubble gum and gum drops, with an occasional pack of salted peanuts. We didn’t go far, just around a couple of blocks in our own neighborhood.

Before we could do more than sample our goodies it was time to make our way to the Fall Festival at church (they frowned on the word Halloween). The Sunday School building had been transformed, each room featuring some fabulous game and prizes. There were even prizes for the best costumes, Bible characters preferred. I didn’t enter.

I couldn’t decide just what Bible character I most closely resembled, other than that “bad guy.” Marshmallows, Hershey Kisses and Life Savers were added to our treasures and we headed home with anticipation. The next morning might mean a stomach-ache from an over-indulgence of sweets, but we didn’t care.

A couple of years later my teenage friends and I decided to seek the Pee Dee River Headless Brakeman for Halloween fun. We drove way out the Marion Highway till we reached a dirt road close to the Pee Dee River Bridge, headed to the stretch of track crossing the river.

The tale had been told to us by an “in-the-know” adult that the ghost of a headless brakeman walked those tracks on Halloween night swinging his lantern back and forth. He was searching for his missing head that had been chopped off in a horrific train accident.

We wanted to see that swinging lamp for ourselves. We arrived at the right spot, parked the car down the road near the bridge and waited, and snuggled, and shivered, and giggled — and then we saw it!

Way up the track, a faint light appeared in the night. It swayed back and forth from one side of the tracks to the other but it never got any closer. Us girls were grateful, the light was enough and we had no desire to see the headless ghost himself! We watched the light for a few more minutes, then cranked up and got out of there. The story was true, we couldn’t wait to get back to town and tell all our friends!

Some of our friends laughed, assuring us that swamp gas on a foggy night always looked like a flashlight shining along the tracks, it wasn’t relegated to Halloween, there was no headless brakeman, no lantern, we were ignoramuses to fall for it, ha, ha, ha. We stubbornly clung to our story. We knew what we’d seen.

I recently discovered that since the late 1800’s Headless Brakemen have swung their lanterns in search of their heads from Paulding, Michigan to Moonville, Ohio to Big Thicket, Texas, even Wilmington, North Carolina.

Well okay, maybe there really isn’t a Pee Dee River Headless Brakeman, but all of those stories can’t be tall tales, can they? The Carolinas are full of ghosts, after all.