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A website devoted to the study of the human condition |
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A website devoted to the study of the human condition |
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A car or bus full of children. An oncoming semi-truck or train. A tragedy...that will never happen again because the spirits of these children protect anyone who finds themselves in peril at the location of their fatal accident. See the story below as told by someone who recently experienced a mysterious phenomenon at a "haunted" railroad crossing in Mission San Juan, Texas:
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"…When we finally found the tracks, we stopped the car, parking it right on the railroad tracks. We were both a little nervous, and scared, and waited for something to happen. Just when we were about to leave, the car started rolling. We were both too freaked out to do any more than grab each other and gasp, eyes wide, mouths open. After what seemed like an eternity, (but was actually less than 5 minutes tops) the car stopped rolling. We looked around, and we were off the railroad tracks. Now, that may not seem spooky, but what we saw next scared us enough to jump back in the car and make the 6 hour trip home THAT NIGHT. Both of us got out of the car and walked around to the back. After the first 6 hour drive, our car had accumulated quite a bit of dust on it. That's not scary, but imagine our shock when we saw little sets of handprints all over the back of the car, all the size of children's hands. "
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| This particular tale and others like it have been around for decades and are usually associated with locations aptly called "gravity hills." Most "gravity hills" offer nothing more than the cheap thrill of appearing to roll up-hill. But others, like the one in Mission San Juan and another outside of New Paris, PA offer us a supernatural explanation. In Mission San Juan, we are told of a story by locals of a tragic accident that occurred in 1950. A school bus full of children stalled on the tracks at the intersection of Shane and Villamain. The train was unable to stop in time. All of the occupants, 10 children and the bus driver, died on impact. To his day, if you stop your car on the tracks and place it in neutral, the spirits of the children will push your car to safety. This phenomenon of rolling up what appears to be a slight incline, is nothing more than a measurable physical phenomenon. The area around the railroad tracks provides us the illusion of an upward incline, when in fact the incline is slightly downward. A professional land surveyor can quickly determine the slope of this stretch of road...for a small fee. Or if your budget is tight like mine, try rolling a bowling ball "down" the road and see what happens. In the face of such modest evidence, some would still argue about the alleged handprints that mysteriously appear on car bumpers and trunks. The "appearance" of these handprints works in much the same way that fingerprints appear after a police officer has dusted a crime scene. You can try this yourself. Take some talcum powder to a dirty car with no visible handprints, sprinkle it around the door handle, or any other place that you might expect to find handprints and voila' ! You may be asking yourself that if this phenomenon is so easily explained, why do people believe such stories? The answer is simple: Because they want to. -The Folklorist
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| Links: For a list of other "gravity hills" click here.
http://popmail.med.nyu.edu/~strone01/gravity3.htm |
