Bostian’s Bridge is a brick and stone railroad trestle about two miles west of Statesville, over Third Creek. It is roughly 260 to 300 feet long and about 60 feet high. On the morning of August 27, 1891, a passenger train went off it. Twenty-two or twenty-three people died. It is one of the worst railroad disasters in North Carolina history, and the ghost story attached to it has a second death on the same date, 119 years later.
Richmond and Danville train No. 9, also called a Western North Carolina Railroad train, left the Statesville depot around 2:26 a.m. It was due at 1:52 and was 34 minutes late. Engineer William West stopped about a minute for passengers and left in a hurry, making up time. The consist was a tender, a baggage car, a second-class car, a first-class coach, a Pullman sleeper, and the superintendent’s private car. Engine numbers in the accounts are 9 and 166. Less than five minutes out, on the bridge, passengers felt a jerk and then the fall. The coroner’s jury later estimated the speed at 35 to 40 miles an hour. Survivors said the train was airborne when it left the rails. It hit Third Creek. The water was high. Some of the injured drowned. All of the roughly 52 passengers were hurt. The dead were laid out in the Farmers’ Tobacco Warehouse. By 5 that evening a temporary track was down and trains were running over the bridge again.
The coroner’s jury found that the rail was loose because spikes and bolts had been taken out by persons unknown, with tools that belonged to the railroad and had been left in an open shed. That is the official finding: sabotage, and negligence in leaving the tools. In 1897 two men already in the state penitentiary were convicted on the strength of confessions they had supposedly made to other inmates. The cause is still argued.
The ghost story is the anniversary. On August 27, people say you can hear the wheels, the screams, and the crash, and that a uniformed railroad man with a gold watch appears. He is identified as baggage master Hugh K. Linster, whose body was found in the wreck with a broken neck. The man with the watch is said to have been seen on the first anniversary. The best-known modern telling is from the 50th, in 1941. A couple from Columbia, South Carolina, were driving to the mountains. The car broke down near the bridge. The wife, waiting while her husband went for help, saw or heard a train go off the trestle, with wreckage in the creek. When they checked in the morning, there had been no wreck. The depot agent told them about the one 50 years earlier, almost to the minute.
On the 119th anniversary, just before 3 a.m. on August 27, 2010, ten to twelve people were on the bridge waiting for the ghost train. A real Norfolk Southern train, three engines, came around the bend. The group ran for the Statesville end. Christopher Kaiser, 29, of Charlotte, was struck and thrown into the ravine. A woman with the group was seriously injured. Witnesses said Kaiser pushed her clear before he was hit. The Iredell County sheriff’s office called it an accident. They were on the tracks, and they should not have been. The bridge is an active line. There is a curve. A train does not have to blow for a crossing that is not there.
What is documented is a 1891 wreck that killed more than twenty people, a coroner’s finding of a loosened rail, and a 2010 death of a man waiting for the story to repeat. The sounds and the man with the gold watch are the legend. The second death is not.
Photographs of the 1891 wreck, taken by W.J. Stimson of Statesville, are in the State Archives of North Carolina and the Iredell County collection. Current photos of the active trestle are scarce in public sources.
Relevant links
- NCpedia: Bostian Bridge train wreck — the 1891 account, the coroner, the 1897 convictions
- NC DNCR: Tragedy at Bostian Bridge — the rescue and the warehouse
- Iredell County Public Library: Bostian Train Wreck — the timeline and the coroner’s wording
- CNN: ghost train hunter killed, 2010 — Christopher Kaiser
- Wikipedia: Railway accident on the Bostian Bridge — the Linster identification and the 1941 account
You can read a more detailed description of this disaster HERE.
Photo from Charlotte Area Paranomal Society Website.