Paranormal...or a Warning? by Elizabeth Clements

 

Ross Creek Coulee is a wide, picturesque, windswept valley that winds around the high bluffs guarding the south-eastern sector of the bustling town of Medicine Hat, Alberta. Cattle graze contentedly, indifferent to the Iron Horse puffing by. Guiding the passenger train along the single track, Engineer Bob Twohey enjoys the bovine scene on this fine June day in 1908 while fireman, Gus Day, stokes the boiler. Shouting above the rumble of the engine, they chug around a bend from downtown, heading east toward Dunmore, their next stop. (Medicine Hat Museum Archives of early train)

Suddenly a train appears out of nowhere, racing toward them at breakneck speed. Thinking it a mirage created by the heat, Bob Twohey blinks and rubs his eyes. It’s not a mirage. We’re going to hit head on!

Frantic to brake his train, Bob yells a warning to Gus. The approaching train shows no sign of slowing. Too late and too horrified to stop the inevitable, the two trainmen cross them selves and brace for death. But there’s something odd about this train breathing down on them through a misty gray shroud. At the last second, the train swerves off the track and whips by them while its crew grins and waves at them in the tradition of C.P.R. trainmen exchanging greetings. The locomotive, with all the coach windows lit, careens around a bend and vanishes.

 Bob and Gus gape at each other. A ghost train? Shaken, but unable to fathom what they’d seen, they shrug it off as a mirage and continue down the track toward Dunmore.

Lightning is said to strike twice, but can a phantom train appear twice in the same spot? Several nights, later S.E. Schlosser and engineer, J. Nicholson, encountered the same unexplainable eerie sight of a locomotive barreling toward them on the track. Again, the spectral cab crew waved as they whizzed by with all the coach windows lit up. Schlosser thought he was losing it. Luckily for him, he was working with a different crew member. The engineer, J. Nicholson, had seen the same apparition as Schlosser had and was equally baffled.

    

“On July 8, later that summer, the same engineer, Nicholson, was heading east toward Dunmore. At the same spot in the Ross Creek coulee Nicholson was horrified by the sight of another train heading straight for him, but this time it was for real.” 

Some people dismissed this phantom train story as a tall tale that wound its way into a whimsical part of Alberta folklore—but there’s no denying the fact that on July 8, 1908 a total of seven people were killed in a head-on collision of two locomotives, derailing one and destroying a baggage car. According to this news item, it appears more than seven people died. “In the ensuing crash, both engineers, Twohey and Nicholson, died on impact. A fireman named Gray and a conductor named Mallet, both crewmembers of the inbound passenger train, along with seven of the passengers, were also killed in the crash.”

The dispute, therefore, hinges on the existence of the phantom train itself, not the collision. In my research I came across two conflicting but interesting accounts of who rode with Twohey during the first encounter with the phantom train. Was Gus Day on board with Twohey in the first incident with the train…or was it S.E. Schlosser? After pondering over the accounts, I’m of the opinion that S.E. Schlosser was involved with both encounters. In one version, retired crewman, Andrew Staysko related the event to a journalist in 1966 that it was Gus who first witnessed the ghost train.  Then there is train fireman S.E. Schlosser who claims to have been working with Twohey when they saw the train. He said Twohey was so shaken up by the encounter that he elected to not operate a train but instead work in the railyard for a while. Apparently Twohey was so superstitious that he even consulted a fortune teller who said he was going to die soon.  However, a few weeks later, he did return to his engineering duties on a different locomotive.

According to his own account, Schlosser was so spooked by this (second) encounter that he took up yard work for several weeks before he once again ventured out as a fireman on another train.  Gus Day, who was usually the fireman on that locomotive (that crashed), had been assigned to yard service and his life was spared.

 Here’s Schlosser’s version of that fateful day: “I was firing up an engine in the yard one evening in early July when the report of an accident came in. The Spokane Flyer and a Lethbridge passenger train had a head-on collision in the single track three kilometers outside of Medicine Hat, on the exact spot where the Ghost Train had appeared. The Lethbridge locomotive had derailed and its baggage car was destroyed. Seven people were killed in the accident, including the two engineers. One was my buddy Twohey, and the other was Nicholson.”

            In my humble opinion, I’m inclined to lean toward Mr. Schlosser’s account that he was the fireman onboard who witnessed both phantom encounters and was so spooked by the second one that he opted to work in the railyard. It’s ironic that Twohey had finally returned to his engineer duties only to die in a train wreck he’d envisioned a few weeks earlier. And J. Nicholson, too, had seen the omen of his death.

             Over the years, the story of Medicine Hat’s phantom train has appeared in various publications: newspaper articles, True West Magazine, and Barbara Smith’s “Ghost  Stories of Alberta”.  I first read about this tragedy back in the 80s when I bought Senator F.W. Gershaw’s excellent little book, “Saamis: The Medicine Hat”.

If you click on this link you can get a good visual of a train traveling along the track through Ross Creek Coulee together with one version of who was on board that fateful day. 

The Real Ghost Train of Medicine Hat - YouTube

 Picturesque Ross Creek Coulee is just a stone’s throw from my home. I’ve walked the path all along that long coulee many times where cows still graze and the stream still wends its way through the prairie grass. I’ve waved at the train many times as it rolled in either direction on its single track. But I never saw that Phantom Train. There are many more stories of ghostly encounters in Medicine Hat, but I’ll leave those for another day.

                                                                          Photo by Nicholas Clements Photography

 

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