On March 22, 1899, Railroad Engineer Alexander Logan ran Train No. 5 along the Erie Railroad near the River Styx Bridge, traveling at nearly 80 miles per hour. He would never meet his destination. The engine mysteriously jumped its tracks, turned over and crushed the engineer to death. No one knows what caused the train to derail, but most agree that Logan's heroic decision to stay on the train and steer the engine saved the lives of others on board. Witnesses say that when Logan's body was later recovered, his hand was still clutched to the throttle.
Two weeks before this tragic incident, Logan confided to his colleagues that he believed he would die on that engine.
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Since that fatal accident, strange events have been reported on and near the River Styx bridge. Just a few months after the accident, the November 8th, 1899 edition of the Wooster Republican reported that Wayne County Coroner Dr. William Faber and his friend witnessed a phantom train plunge from bridge. The train was covered in flames and Dr. Faber stated that he heard the screams of people coming from inside. When he and his friend approached the site of the wreckage, the train was gone. |
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The bridge itself is quite massive and imposing, towering high above River Styx road below. Author Chris Woodyard, in a bonus story from Invisible Ink, writes that those foolish enough to walk the trestle were "cut to pieces" from on-coming trains, and that the bridge is the site of some suicides. In addition, a strange fog has been seen to suddenly appear, and there have been a high number of car accidents on River Styx road below the bridge, involving people who claimed to have seen something falling from the bridge. Are all of these strange incidents related to the 1899 train disaster? Or is there something much older and sinister at work here? |
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The town of River Styx has a colorful, weird history. The nearby River Styx cemetery is said to be haunted, and visitors (well, o.k., just us) report being menaced by surly livestock. Some say that the town got its name after settlers irrationally burnt down miles of forest in an effort to destroy a rattlesnake den, wiping out their main food supplies in the process. At around the turn of the century, a few residents supplemented their income by robbing local graves and selling the corpses to medical schools in Cleveland. Grave robbing became such a problem that the folks in River Styx started burying their dead in out-of-town cemeteries. One family even constructed an above-ground stone vault at River Styx cemetery in an effort to thwart would-be thieves.
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