"I was standing on the rear platform of the passenger train," he said.  "We were running along pretty slow, as we were nearing the city.  Suddenly, I saw something on one of the tracks to the left of the one we were on, which froze my blood, and made the cold shivers run up my spine.  I had often heard of the ghost, and it was he, sure enough.  The train stopped a little to take on another track, and I had a good look at the phantom.  The night was dark and it was raining a little, but I could see the figure perfectly, on account of the lantern he carried.  It gave out a bluish phosphorescent kind of a gleam that flickered unsteadily.  One minute it would flare up bright, and then pale again, like an arc light does sometimes."

"When I first saw the ghost he was holding the lantern down with his feet, and the upper part of his body was dim.  He was swinging the light backward and forward slowly, as if he was giving the signal to 'back up slow.'  Just then our conductor came back to the rear end of the car, where I was.  I grabbed him by the shoulder and pointed to the ghost.  The light shone bright on his brass buttons, and showed his uniform, but it did not show his face---the head was gone.  There was a gory, dripping part of the neck.  I had to turn away.  The conductor grabbed hold of the iron guard of the platform, and said, in a sort of choking whisper: 'Good God, Jack, that means some kind of warning for us.'  When I turned around the ghost was gone."

"We were pretty badly broken up over what we had seen: all the more so because we had often heard that when the spook was seen something bad always happened.  Tom Spofford, our conductor, was superstitious to begin with, and he was worried nearly to death over it.  He thought he was going to be killed, but the lightning didn't strike him.  The warning was intended for our engineer, for he was killed the day after, between here and Philadelphia, by falling from the side of old No. 697, while he was walking along the side of the boiler.  He was taking his train along at a clipping rate, when he took a notion to go outside and oil the piston 'strike.'  Ike McHenry, the fireman, saw him fall over the side.  When they slowed up and went to hunt for him they found him lying in a ditch along the track with his neck broken.  That's the first and last time I ever saw the headless brakeman, and I hope I may never see him any more."

At this juncture the two men went off duty, but told the reporter about an old engineer, who, they said, could tell all about the ghost.

"Old Jim McManus was running on the road when the brakeman was killed, and he is full of the story.  He knows how the man was killed, what his name was, and everything connected with the business," they said, and from him was learned a story which he vouches for as being strictly true in every particular, and which is corroborated by others.  McManus lives on McHenry street.  He has not been on the road now for several years, as he is so crippled up with rheumatism that he never gets out of the house except on warm, sunshiny days.  At such times it is his delight to visit the depots and other places where engineers and other railroad men congregate, to talk over subjects concerning his former occupation.  He is especially fond of talking of the headless brakeman, and avows that he has seen him on several occasions.  He was acquainted with the man whose spirit the spook is supposed to represent.

"He was a brakeman when he was killed," he said, "and had risen from the place of train boy.  His name was Thomas Murphy, and the boys all called him 'Toper Tom,' for the only fault with him was that sometimes he'd get drunk.  He was a jolly fellow and the boys all liked him.  That's the way he kept his job for so long, for they wouldn't give him away to the superintendent.  If it hadn't been for that he would have been 'dancing on the carpet,' as we call being brought up before the boss, more than once for his fondness for liquor.  He stopped drinking all of a sudden and never touched a drop for over a year.  He was a nice looking fellow.  First he was brakeman on a freight, and then he got promoted to a passenger.  This seemed to get him started again.  He couldn't stand prosperity or something, and he got worse than he'd been before.  All of his friends warned him to stop, but it had no effect on him at all.  When they'd tell him that he'd get killed if he didn't look out, he'd only laugh and tell them if he did his ghost would come back and let 'em know when anything bad was going to happen, so that they could be on the lookout.

"He told the truth, for he was killed not long after, and his ghost certainly did come back.  It happened this way; I had the run with No. 67 Western ex press, and Murphy was brakeman on the same train.  He got some whiskey at Harrisburgh and kept getting drunker and drunker on the run back to Baltimore.  The conductor was a friend of his, and he went to him and told him he'd better turn in and go to sleep, but Tom only laughed, and said he was all right.  He got kind of ugly, too, and stubborn like, so nothing could be done with him.  We were behind and were due in Baltimore about 12:30 at night.  I had instructions to stop at the sidings out at Calverton, as a car had to be left there."

"When we got there nothing would do Tom Murphy, but that he'd got to open the switch and let the car go on the siding.  The conductor didn't want to let him do it, but he appeared to have sobered up a good deal, and was so stubborn about it that he was let do it just to humor him.  The car was put on the siding all right, and we had just started again when the bell rang to stop.  I stuck my head out of the cab window to see what was wrong.  I saw a crowd gathered about midway of the train with lanterns.  I got out and went back.  Everybody was standing about the body of poor Murphy, with the head cut off as clean from the trunk as if it had been done with a razor.  Nobody knew how it happened, but he must have fell down between the bumpers some way."

"It was some months afterward when stories got to floating around that Tom Murphy's ghost was being seen at Calverton about the siding where he got killed.  After a year and a month or so had passed I saw him myself.  We were making the same run from Harrisburgh as the one that Tom had got killed on.  We drew out in the suburbs, runnin' kind of slow.  I was lookin' out of the cab window when I saw him just as plain as day.  He was standing up holding the lantern in his hand, waving it back and forth.  We stopped just opposite where he was standin' to do some shiftin'.  He wasn't more than forty feet away.  At first he was standin' as if his front was to toe train.  I kicked Bill Thompson, my fireman, to look, and when he saw what it was he turned white as a sheet and stood starin' at the thing as if his eyes would come out.  We must have watched it that way for fully a minute, when it walked up the track a little way and disappeared.  The lantern give out a greenish lookin' light that showed up his clothes just as plain as if it had been in the middle of the day.  After he had gone we both spoke to each other about something that struck us as being mighty queer.  The uniform he had on looked as if it had been buried in a damp cellar, or some place where it would become all rusty and worn out."

"I told my fireman not to say anything about what we saw for fear the boys would think we were superstitious, and I didn't want them to kid us about it.  Did anything happen soon afterward?  The same engine with my fireman--I was taking a day off--ran over some farmer and his team out here in Maryland and killed him and his horses deader than doornails. The farmer was drunk, and was going home from some little country town."

"Every time the ghost of poor Tom Murphy has been seen something has happened only a short while after.  Why, last fall when those people were killed out here near Bowie Station one night by being run into--it was their own fault--Tom's headless body was seen only the day before.  Whenever he comes it's a dead sure thing that somethin' goin' to happen, and it ain't goin' to be long before it does happen, either."

Syracuse Sunday Herald, Syracuse, New York - Sunday, July 15, 1894

This story in particular sends chills down my spine because my own great grandfather, Michael J. Carey, a Switchman on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad, was decapitated on the job in 1898 in Syracuse, NY. He was 48 years old and had been employed by the railroad for 20 years. He left a widow and five children.

Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way
To the siding-shed,
And lined the train with faces grimly gay.
Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray
As men's are, dead.

Wilfred Owen, The Send Off