The Fairfield Railroad Phantom

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Posted by U slash Noise and Kisses TU on january twenty sixth, twenty seventeen. Title An Experience I Never Thought I'd Have Hey, longtime lurker here. TBH most of the stories in this subreddit read as fake AF, so if this isn't the right place for an actual true ghost story, mods can delete. This is the kind of thing I never thought would happen to me. I live in Fairfield, Iowa. It's a big little town. Population is close to 10K. Look up pictures and you'll get the vibe.

I was driving on North D Street to pick up my girlfriend. That street is right on the edge of town and there's a railroad crossing that's just trees on both sides in both directions. I always slow down so I don't accidentally get smeared by some train I couldn't see coming. The gates were up that night, so I could have assumed no train was coming, but I slowed down anyway like I always do. Once I saw with my own eyes that there wasn't a train, I started crossing and

The tracks are really bumpy there, which is another reason I go slow across them. I usually just let the car cross at its own pace. You know how it moves forward a little bit in drive without any gas? Anyway, I'm bumping across the tracks and I see something move out of the corner of my eye. Just at a glance, I could tell it was a man. Not just a person. A man. I don't even know how I could tell, because he was standing in the middle of the tracks like a hundred feet away in pitch darkness.

I could just kinda see his outline walking toward me. He was seriously darker than the night, but I'd say he looked like a shadow, but he was darker than a shadow. There was moonlight reflecting off of everything except for him. Because I'm an idiot, I hit the brakes and rolled my window down to see clearer and to listen. He kept walking toward me, but I realized I couldn't hear his footsteps. There was no sound at all, except for my engine idling.

I was about to turn my engine off to listen, but I thought about every horror movie where somebody's car won't start and they end up getting slashed because of it. I still wasn't thinking a ghost at this point. I decided just to let the guy be and drove off the tracks. A second later, the gates started dinging and flashing and the bars went down. I pulled over and waited for the train to pass, thinking, Man, I hope that guy got out of the way.

I thought I might have just seen somebody's last moments on Earth. I jumped out of my car when the train was gone and started running to the tracks, but I only took a few steps before I saw him again. That pitch black figure walked into my view like nothing happened. I stopped running and he looked up at me. I could see the whites of his eyes, so I knew he looked directly at me. I ran back to my car and drove as fast as possible to my girlfriend's house. She told me I should post this here.

Anybody else in the Fairfield area? I'm curious if anyone else has seen the railroad phantom by the D Street crossing.

Comment from U slash Iowa is haunted 29. Dude, I live in Fairfield too. We probably know each other LOL. Won't make you dox yourself here though. Anyway, I had a super similar experience at the North B Street crossing. I was driving and my boyfriend was in the passenger seat. The sun was super low in the sky and was blinding me through my window. I had to squint to see it all.

All of a sudden my boyfriend screamed, Hey, watch out, and I slammed on the brakes because I legit could not see what he was screaming about at all. We stopped like two feet away from the tracks. I asked my boyfriend what he thought we were going to hit, and he said, I swore there was a guy standing in the middle of the tracks right there.

He pointed to the spot right in front of us. Then we both went quiet. We both noticed it at the same time. A bunch of cottonwood pollen had clustered in the shape of a head and shoulders. That's when I realized the road behind the man shape looks shimmery, kind of like when the road's really hot and looks liquid in the distance. My boyfriend told me to drive. I think he thought he was just seeing things.

I said hell no and backed up. We went over to the North Second Street underpass instead. Just thought I'd share because maybe there really is a Fairfield railroad phantom. All these little towns have ghosts if you look hard enough. What you just heard is one of the items I collected from the internet about the Fairfield Railroad Phantom. I'd never heard of it, which is crazy to think since I live in Mount Pleasant, barely twenty five miles away.

I only learned about the Fairfield Railroad Phantom because I was looking for my big brother. His name is Sammy Parton. And if you're wondering wait, I remember that name. Did they ever find that kid? Then you must be from one of the neighbouring towns around here. I am James Parton. You probably didn't hear much about me back in twenty sixteen when Sammy disappeared. I was only thirteen, but You wanna know something crazy? Sammy and I have the same birthday.

Last year, on what was my seventeenth birthday, the same age Sammy was when he vanished, it hit me how young he was, and how much life he still had ahead of him. If he was still alive out there somewhere, he'd have finally been old enough to drink. I guarantee he would have let me have a drink with him every once in a while. I don't think he would have straight up bought me booze, but he was always okay with bending the rules a little, as long as nobody got hurt.

When I was his little brother, he'd always seemed so much older to me. Once I caught up to his age and my final memories of him, I realized he was still just a kid when he vanished. It made me angrier at everyone for giving up the search for him. My parents still kept tabs on the investigation, but the investigation was going nowhere, which meant they were doing nothing.

I went to the police station and asked if Detective Franks, the detective assigned to Sammy's case, could hire me as an assistant. I told him I had some ideas about the investigation and that my fresh eyes might catch something if I could have access to everything the police had. Franks told me to go home and he'd call me. He called my parents instead, and I got an earful about how everyone was already doing all they could.

The night he disappeared, Sammy was out with friends. They were all going into their senior year, so it was their last real summer vacation. When the police interviewed Sammy's friends, they admitted to developing a new harmless but illegal hobby that summer. They started exploring abandoned buildings. They're all over rural Iowa if you know how to look.

That's what they were up to that night. The police already knew this, though, because Sammy and his friends tripped a silent alarm in an abandoned feed mill they were exploring. From one of the high windows in the elevator, Sammy spotted two police cars driving toward the building with their lights off. He warned his friends and they all started hurrying down.

Adding to the pressure, they'd hidden their car on the opposite side of the train tracks that ran behind the old mill, and they could hear the distant rumbling of an incoming train. If that train arrived before they crossed the tracks, they would be sitting ducks for the cops.

They used a fire escape that barely hung onto the back of the mill to make sure they weren't spotted by the cops. Everybody got all the way down except Sammy. He stayed by a window to keep watch as the cops entered the mill. Only when everybody else got down and crossed the railroad tracks did Sammy make his descent. According to a friend of Sammy's I talked to, the fire escape broke just as Sammy was about to jump off it.

The part he was standing on gave out and he fell about six feet. Apparently he was okay, but it took him a second to get up and the sound alerted the cops to where he was. His friends wanted to go help him, but the train showed up right at that moment, cutting them off from Sammy. Thinking if Sammy was caught they all might as well be, his friends stayed until the train passed. When it was gone, the police were ready. They crossed the tracks and arrested everyone. Everyone except Sammy.

They wouldn't have even known about him if his friends hadn't kept asking what they'd done with him. Everyone first assumed Sammy had run around the building and hidden back inside it or somewhere nearby. The police got so frustrated they offered to release them all with warnings if they could get Sammy to come out of hiding, but no one could get a hold of him.

Then they found his phone near the tracks, and the picture of what happened grew a little clearer. The westbound train had been moving slowly enough that a spry teenager could have grabbed on to one of the cars. Everybody assumed Sammy would make his way home eventually, so the police gave up the search pretty quickly that night. Sammy wasn't declared a missing person for another forty eight hours.

During those two days, my parents and I went looking for him out by the mill and along the railroad tracks, but found no trace. Sammy's disappearance became big news in our small community for a couple of weeks, but besides a few close friends, nobody really did anything to help with the search. Detective Franks told us Sammy wasn't what many considered to be a sympathetic victim. If he'd been younger, or female, he said the media would be blasting Sammy's name and face all over the airwaves.

Unfortunately, a young man vanishing in the performance of a crime didn't garner much concern for those who didn't know who he really was. Oh please, not that music. That music gives me nightmares from my childhood. Could we- Get something a little bit lighter, some lighter music here. Are you a fan of true crime TV shows? And what about Unsolved Mysteries, the show that jumpstarted all of our love of true crime? I'm Ellen Marsh. And I'm Joey Taranto.

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Amen. Police were called to the North 2nd Street Railroad Bridge after 9 p.m. last night by a train operator who claimed a man was standing on the tracks over the bridge. The operator claimed the man did not appear to move out of the way. He believed he struck the man and stopped his train as quickly as possible. Police responded in under three minutes but found no evidence of a collision with a pedestrian. No pedestrians were found in the immediate area.

Fairfield Police Chief Steve Jordan says, this is not an isolated incident. We've taken reports from multiple people concerned about somebody walking on the railroad tracks in the past few days. The police would like to remind Fairfield residents that with the exception of crossing at marked crossings, walking on railroad tracks is trespassing. Anyone caught doing so could be charged with a misdemeanor.

Due to the immediate risk of harm, anyone who witnesses someone trespassing on the railroad tracks is encouraged to call 911 and report it immediately. Police urge you not to approach the tracks yourself.

A few weeks ago I started my own investigation by plotting all the towns along the tracks west of the old mill. Fairfield was one of those towns. As I did with all the towns, I looked up whether any unidentified remains had been found in or around Fairfield, and that's how I indirectly discovered the stuff about the Fairfield Railroad Phantom. I had no reason to believe the Phantom had any connection to my brother, but it was the closest thing I'd found to a lead.

If nothing else, it was an exciting distraction. Not everyone who saw the phantom saw him at night. Those who spotted him in the day could barely make him out. Most people did see him after dark, and to a person they described an unnaturally dark figure whose features they could never make out walking along the track. I wanted to arrange the best chance to see him, so I set out for Fairfield around 9 p.m.

For the sake of discretion, I chose the North D Street crossing for my stakeout. I parked in a nearby neighborhood and walked to the tracks. I followed them east until I couldn't see any houses through the trees lining either side. Then I sat against one of the trees and waited. I imagined Sammy riding past me on the side of a train car. Amen. It seemed illogical that he would have held on all the way to Fairfield. I guess he couldn't find an opportunity to jump off without hurting himself?

I heard small rocks tumbling east of me and scanned along the tracks. A rabbit hopped over one rail, then noticed me. I caught one of its eyes reflecting moonlight. Then I caught something else further up the tracks, shuffling toward me. I could redundantly describe the phantom as a shadowy figure, but he looked more like a man-shaped void. The moonlight died against his silhouette. I slid behind the tree, suddenly out of breath.

I heard rocks again, but they were just debris from the rabbit bounding back to where it came from. Amen. The Phantom moved with complete silence. I spared a peek at him, unsure if he could see me. Amen. If he could, he gave no indication. A much brighter light suddenly banished the phantom. I felt the ground beneath my tingling toes rumble as the air began to growl. Amen.

The light grew quickly after its first appearance. I ducked out of sight completely until the engine passed, then I snuck back out and watched the train speed by. Its wheels grinded and groaned like wailing banshees. I couldn't imagine holding on for dear life with that pummeling force beneath me. I contemplated what I would do if I started losing my grip.

I glanced at every ladder that flashed by. I thought about what it would feel like near the top of one the rush of wind, the force of the air. The train decelerated, probably when the engine neared the heart of town. The gaps between cars stretched. Shadowy trees started appearing between them. The train almost slowed to where a person could hop off. They'd definitely get banged up, possibly bad enough to need a hospital, but they would likely survive.

The idea made even my invincible 17-year-old self shudder. But, if I considered how exhausted and scared I would have been if I had ridden a train 30 miles from home, I thought maybe I just might have made the leap. A series of inverted trapezoid shaped cars passed by. all black with open tops. I wondered, could someone ride safely in one of those? The end of the train surprised me. Suddenly the brief horizon went still, and I was looking at dark, towering trees.

The Phantom now stood directly on the tracks in front of me, still walking west. He turned his head when I noticed him. His face lacked any features, except a pair of cold blue eyes. their whites formed nearly perfect rings, as if I had scared him. He turned completely to face me and squinted. his head slowly jutted forward and down. Then he stood straight again and turned westward before resuming his slow walk. I tried to say Sammy's name, but the S hissed out and fizzled into nothing.

The ghost did not seem to notice. I gathered up my courage and called to him, Sammy? The Phantom paused again. It was hard to tell, but he appeared to be shaking. I stood, ready to run. The phantom pivoted toward me with a sudden jerk. His eyes rolled upward until they were almost completely white. His head snapped back, and black smoke poured from his mouth as he screamed words that failed to break through the astral barrier between us.

The Phantom exploded in a cloud of black dust that lingered in the air before eventually scattering over the tracks. All went still. All went silent, but I remained vigilant for the reappearance of what I was now fully convinced was Sammy's ghost as I walked back to my car. I wanted to stay and wait, but there was no guarantee he would emerge again, and I had work to do. Nothing I'd seen gave me concrete answers, but I'd learned new questions, and those, often, can be even more useful.

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Transcript from a nine hundred one call placed at nine oh seven PM on october fourteenth, twenty nineteen. Caller's name redacted for privacy. Dispatcher nine hundred one one, what is the location of your emergency? Caller. I'm at the North B Street train tracks and there's a guy walking on the tracks and I think he's coming toward me. Dispatcher. Okay, is he threatening you? Caller. Uh not really. He's just walking really slowly in my direction, and I think he's looking at me.

Dispatcher. You said walking on the train tracks? Caller. Yeah, right in the middle. I'm in the parking lot of the Fairfield Market. I just closed up the store and noticed this guy after I got in my car. Dispatcher. Are you in your car now, sir? Caller. Yeah. Dispatcher. Okay. I am sending somebody out. Stay in your car and keep the doors and windows locked, and stay on the line so you can tell me if anything changes. Can you give me a description of the man?

Caller. Uh, kinda. It's getting pretty dark out here and he's Oh man, I hope you don't think I'm crazy. He's really shadowy. I don't really know how to describe it. It's like he's covered from head to toe in soot, I guess. Dispatcher. Can you describe his clothes at all? Caller. Uh I can't really tell if he's Oh, uh hey, is that officer gonna be here soon? Note. A railroad crossing gate can be heard dinging in the background of the call. Dispatcher. Is that a train coming?

Collar. I can't see it yet, but the gates are down and Oh, yep. I just heard it blow its whistle. Dispatcher. Is the man moving off the tracks? Caller. No, he's still walking right down the middle. What should I do? I Dispatcher. Sir? Caller. I don't want to watch this guy get hit. Amen. Dispatcher. Sir, stay calm and stay in your vehicle. We have officers on the way. Caller. No. No. Dispatcher. Officers are on the way. Caller. What are they gonna do?

Dispatcher. They're trains to handle collar. Come on, man, he's basically right in front of me. Dispatcher. They'll be there in a few seconds. Just sit tight. Caller. Man, don't make me live with this. Not when I can still grab him. The train's getting close. I don't have Dispatcher. Sir, please remain calm and Coller. I'm going. End of call. Transcript from a nine one one call placed at nine ten p.m. on october fourteenth, twenty nineteen by the same phone number as the nine oh seven p.m. call.

Dispatcher. nine one one. Caller. Thank you. He's gone, man. That guy's just gone. Dispatcher. Officers are almost there. Has he been injured or killed? Caller. Uh I don't think either. He straight up disappeared, man. Like gone. Dispatcher. So you don't have sight of him now? caller. No no, I couldn't beat the train and I was a few feet away when it when it got to the guy and I dunno

I don't know why I watched and didn't look away, but right when he got hit he just disappeared. Dispatcher. Okay, do you see the caller? Yeah, the cops are here. I'm gonna go tell them what happened. End of call.

Excerpt from the River County News Headline Unidentified Human Remains Discovered at Nebraska City Power Plant, june twenty second, twenty sixteen. Late Wednesday afternoon, two workers at the Nebraska City Power Plant reported the discovery of a deceased male buried under a large pile of coal. The roughly twenty year old male has yet to be identified.

The deceased male did not have a wallet or phone with him. Police say it is too early to rule out foul play. If you have any information that might aid the investigation, please call the non-emergency tip line number printed below. It was Sammy. I knew it was Sammy they'd found out there in Nebraska as soon as I found that article. I called the number printed in the paper and asked if they'd ever identified the body found at the power plant in 2016.

The man I spoke to rattled off his name and rang so fast I couldn't catch it, and he told me they'd never made a positive ID. I told him I thought that body belonged to my brother Sammy Parton and asked him to send everything he had to the Mount Pleasant police. He asked if I could have the Mount Pleasant police contact him first, and I told him I'd check.

Here's the email I sent Detective Franks. Detective, I need you to get in touch with somebody, sorry, not sure who, at the Odo County, Nebraska Sheriff's Office. Ask them about a body found at the Nebraska City Power Station, see news articles linked below. It's an unidentified male about twenty years old. Please let me know if you hear back. I think the body might be Sammy's. Thank you, James Parton. Here's what I got back.

James, happy to call out there. Just need to know why you think this body is Sammy's. So I replied, said Detective, I saw a train the other night and I was thinking about what Sammy might have done if he couldn't jump off. I saw train cars with open tops I now know are called hoppers. They're used for transporting things like gravel and coal. I tried searching for dead bodies found in coal and this unidentified male in Nebraska City popped up immediately.

I checked, and sometimes coal does run through Iowa from places like West Virginia. There could have been coal on Sammy's train headed for Nebraska City. Hope that makes sense. James. It took longer for us to exchange those emails than it took to confirm the dental records from the unidentified male in Nebraska matched my brother's. And at long last, we brought him home.

I've been back to Fairfield two or three times to see if I can catch Sammy's ghost, but I never caught another sighting of him. From what I can tell, nobody else has seen him either. Sammy's ghost hadn't given me much, but he'd given me enough to start me down the right path. Just like Sammy did in life. He may have taught me more about what not to do than what I should, but they're lessons I hold dear anyway.

Now that he's buried, I feel like I can begin my own life. I'll be eighteen soon. I'll have lived one year beyond my brother. What I spent that year doing mostly revolved around him, but from this point on, I'll let him rest in peace. Amen. Detective Franks is encouraging me to go study criminal justice and work my way to being a detective. He was pretty impressed with how I put hunches and clues together to find Sammy.

I can't tell him the full story of how I made the connection because of the Fairfield Railroad Phantom. But maybe I could do okay without any ghosts too. I'm not sure. I suppose I have plenty of time to figure it out. You made it out. Congratulations. If you enjoyed the story, please rate, like, review, or subscribe. For early ad-free episodes and behind the scenes episodes called Into the Woods, become a patron at patreon.com slash the warningwoods.

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Heading home, going to And for myself and for Grace who created me, that is a sword that hangs above our heads. He sees fit. Who do you look to? Things are at their darkest. From the creators of Park Del Haunt comes wooden Are coming. Season two around.