Beware the Black Ghost of the Bozeman Tunnel (standard:Ghost stories, 3534 words)
Author: G.H. Hadden	Added: Jun 04 2013	Views/Reads: 3663/2048	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
I don’t mean to scare you—honest I don’t, but you best be forewarned Mister. Beware the Black Ghost of the Bozeman tunnel!

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

no cure for it at all Fella. 

And by Jesus, I should know—having been woke up all those late summer
nights as a kid with the distant blare of those freight train horns 
drifting forlornly on the gentle mountain breeze blowin' in my bedroom 
window.  Sounded like the despondent braying of a pack of wolves on the 
hunt, howling at the moon.  It gave me the shivers and set the hairs up 
on the back of my neck sometimes.  I'd hear the whining throbbing 
heartbeat of diesel engines echoing throughout the valley and get all 
goose-bumpy just thinking about all those long strings of 
clickety-clackin' train cars behind those big ol' EMD SD40-2s and GE 
U30Cs cutting the night with their bright white headlight beams, the 
long train slithering along in tow like a glowy-eyed snake through the 
pass on those two thin ribbons of glimmering steel. 

Those night trains fed the imagination of that dreamy country boy I once
was, like Nature's way of speakin' to me in the night, whisperin' to 
me; “hey kid, you're not alone in this great big world, there's a great 
big country out there to see full of bustling cities and more people to 
meet besides farmer boys and ranchers' sons and stockmen's daughters.” 

Those trains carried me away in my dreams and filled my spare waking
moments with excited glee.  I can still see all those boxcars and 
hoppers and tankers in my mind's eye; as individual as you and me—each 
with its own unique number, each with its own rusted and weathered 
personality of use and abuse.  Always the new cars slink by silent as a 
black cat.  Some of the old veterans rumble and thunder past with the 
flat thumping drumbeat of flat steel wheels hammering the rails.  They 
display their exotic alphabet of reporting marks from AA (Ann Arbor) to 
ZTUS (Texaco Chemicals) and every combination in between.  Each tells 
its own unique story in clues.  Grain hoppers from the Midwest are 
dusty, and cement hoppers from the East are crusted with lime scale. 
Tankers from the Chemical Coast have placards to tell what nasty 
flammable goop is sloshing around inside.  Open auto-racks from Detroit 
in a time when Americans bought American gave me a glimpse of what my 
daddy's next Ford or Chevy pickup might look like.  Flatcars with 
trailers on them made a piggyback hotshot look like a circus train.   
Each car told me of another faraway place yet to be seen—like Chicago, 
Burlington and Quincy.  Santa Fe.  Milwaukee.  Delaware and Hudson.   
Bangor and Aroostoock.  Florida East Coast.  So many dots on a map all 
connected by the intricate spider web of our nation's rail system!  
There was always a bright colorful insignia painted on the side of each 
car, from the most enigmatic Penn Central maze to the CN “wet noodle”, 
Chessie the kitten resting so comfortably in her C, and of course, the 
one I was most familiar with at the time—the Cascade green and white of 
our home road, the ubiquitous leaning BN of the Burlington Northern.  
Punctuating the end of every train like a period was the “waycar” as my 
beloved BN used to call them: the caboose—utilitarian office on wheels 
where the conductors watched for wheel bearing smoke from their vantage 
point in the copula. 

So you see? Trains are more than just a hobby—they're an addiction!! 

That's how it is when you get the train bug. You get to know the make
and model of the locomotives you see everyday on the line; gets so you 
can spot them on sight, and know the horsepower rating of each one, the 
where and when they were built, and if they're second hand units, you 
even get to know which railroad sold it to ‘em.  Take it from me; a 
foamer'll always know more about that engine than the engineer driving 
it!  That's how it is.  We know trains like a mechanic knows his cars.  
Blindfolded. 

I'm sure jealous of all that equipment he's got.  All I ever had when I
came up here in my youth to take pictures of the trains was my trusty 
old Kodak 35mm Instamatic I got for my 10th birthday strapped to my 
neck, and the banana seat of my 5-speed goose-necked Schwinn Sting Ray 
under me, with a couple of rolls of film in the pockets of my jean 
shorts saved up for by a week's worth of farm chores to fill up another 
page or two in my growing collection of photo scrapbooks.  I'm jealous 
of his tripd, and his camera has some kinda foreign-spelling name on it 
that looks all Japanesey to me...and he's settin' up there like the 
cameraman on some fancy Hollywood movie shoot. 

But I've forgotten...the Black Ghost!  Man, that's what I came here to
warn him about!  Jeeze, my mind's always all over the place; Mom said 
it, my dad said it, my teacher Mrs. Worth always said so too...everyone 
knew me ‘round here affectionately as Charlie “The Choo-Choo Kid”, that 
strange little boy who loves trains.  I was the youngest card-carrying 
member of the Bozeman Railroad Modelers' Society, and every Show and 
Tell day I'd always bring in one of my favorite HO scale locomotives 
I'd saved up for months to get by mail order. 

OH!  But you don't believe me, do you? —About the Black Ghost I mean. 
No, of course you don't.  No one I see out here ever does.  But you 
just watch and find out!  I'm tellin' ya Fella, there's a 
shape-shifting monster that lurks within the dark depths of that 
tunnel...asleep maybe, dreamin' its black suffocating dreams of eternal 
nothingness until awakened...without warning; suddenly it comes ... 

Wait...what's that hot breeze? ...I feel it!  Don't you too? 

No?  If not, well ...maybe it's ‘cause you don't have the bug in you. 

But see?  He feels it.  I see the excitement light up in his eyes.  I
see my own excitement reflected back. Yep, it's the bug I tell ya, and 
we just can't help ourselves.  We gotta have our FIX!!! 

A train...A train's comin' through the tunnel!!! 

At first it's a rush of hot air compressed into that narrow black
passageway.  Air pushed ahead by the onrushing train, like a piston; 
until out the other side it comes like a whisper of wind.  Not even the 
hint of a rumble yet, but more a vibe you can feel in your shoes and a 
gentle warm caress against your cheek.  If you have the bug then you 
know your ears are the last to pick up on it. Sometimes the rails 
foretell what's to come with a low A cappella voice of singing steel.  
Such a hint of complaint serves to build excitement and anticipation.  
The tunnel's warm diesel breath throws that familiar chanting hum of 
power ever louder out its mouth like a ventriloquist might throw his 
voice in a dark room to spellbind his audience into a hushed awestruck 
mood. 

You gotta understand Fella, the tunnel puts on a compelling good show. 

And it's coming!  I can SMELL IT.... The hot oily breath of the Black
Ghost!!! 

YES...yes...I'm SURE!  Sniff for yourself. 

“HEY MISTER, GET OUT OF THERE...HE'S COMMIN' FOR YOU!!!” 

(He?— C'mon now, Help me, PLEASE!!!  Can't you see I'm trying my best to
get his attention here?  Quit your smilin' and laughing!  This ain't 
funny!   You think I'm Jumpin' up and down like a Slinky spring, 
shouting “Hey, Mister!” as loud as I can just for the good of my 
health?  C'mon Fella, help me out.  DO SOMETHING!!! 

DAMN IT!!!  He doesn't see us.  He's in the groove now, much too busy
checking his camera equipment one more time.  He wants that “perfect 
shot”. 

—Not he ...Not She...IT is formless and shapeless.  It has no definable
substance and no set gender...It's born in the blackness of the 
tunnel...and dies upon the wisp of the wind—its still-born soul borne 
away in silence to the big sky above.) 

There's no mistaking the mewling whine of a multiple unit lash-up now,
like the groaning yawn of the banshee that lurks in its wake.  Its 
stink betrays it.  It's burning greasy stink.  All rotten eggs an' 
horse farts, I tell ya. 

White light fills that tunnel, and as the lead unit nears, that light
gradually blurs apart into three...A bright headlight in the middle, 
and two lesser ditch lights about my height that make the rails shine.  
In the confined space of that black tunnel the churning sound of 
throbbing V16 turbocharged 3000HP engines grows to a dull roar, and 
then suddenly shadow is gone, and light falls upon the dark blue and 
white-stripped snout of a rebuilt EMD SD40 as it growls fourth from the 
tunnel portal like a sleepy momma bear emerging from her den in spring. 


Montana Rail Link owns this stretch of track now, but all three head end
units look to be ex-Burlington Northern.  There's SD40 number 204, 
followed by another similar unit, number 254 running backwards, long 
porch first, and then...rare joy today!...an F45!...number 392, a cowl 
unit from EMD first delivered in 1967 to the Great Northern.  I first 
saw them in their Big Sky Blue paint scheme with a wide white stripe 
along the side and that circled goat insignia, intended for passenger 
service just before the advent of red white and blue Amtrak in 1971.  
Later these units were painted over in the Cascade green and grimy 
grey-black that was the Burlington Northern standard—the paint scheme 
of my youth.  Today this unit is dark blue, proudly wearing the MRL 
white stripes and lion head of the Washington Group of Companies 
emblazoned on its side.  Classy till the end, her retirement will come 
soon enough, but she sure is a real beauty, huh? 

Oh, GOD NO!!!... I've done it again—forgotten the black beast until now
that his (its) choking black fume is practically upon us!!! 

Smell it now, don't ya?  Ya, wafting from the tunnel in a thick
billowing cloud of carbon dust and diesel exhaust.  Better get in your 
truck.  This is a coal drag, a slow moving unit train of open top 
hopper cars loaded down to capacity with coal.  It'll be a hundred cars 
or more; three miles long! 

Those first swirling tendrils probe the daylight; hanging on the dead
breeze just I saw one lazy summer's day in August 1978.  Hot like this 
too.  Not a cloud in the sky before the beast reared its ugly shapeless 
head to puff up its black lungs and savor a deep breath of blue heaven. 
 And just like that, the clattering train rolls by as blue sky turns to 
gray and a dark heavy shadow falls over the gully. 

Only now does that stranger behind the camera lens see his folly. 

“RUN, RUN—MISTER!!! ... BEFORE THE GULLY FILLS WITH SMOKE!!!” 

Ya, NOW he's payin' attention to me! 

Grey soon turned to black, and that pall so quickly fell upon that
narrow gully that I at once felt smothered by it.  I took a deep 
breath...the last of the fresh air, and ran for it.  My cheeks puffed 
out like a squirrel.  At first my eyes watered, and then they began to 
burn.  I squelched them shut and kept time with the train.  Couldn't 
see a thing...but that train!  That terrible clickety-clack roar of the 
clattering train!  I didn't care about anything anymore.  I tossed 
aside my burden: that prized Instamatic camera strapped upon my neck, 
bouncing and bobbing like so much dead weight against my chest.  No 
good!  My lungs are starving!!! 

Surely I think I can find a foothold on the bluff!  I tried climbing,
but couldn't get anymore than a few feet up that slippery-slidey slope. 
 In truth, I was ascared to climb up with that train going by so close, 
so loud.  Loose rocks came down under my feet. The plants I'd used to 
pull myself up came out in my hands.  I could never get more than a few 
feet before sliding back.  I was ascared of loosing my grip and falling 
down into the moving train.  I pictured the worst: falling down between 
the coupled coal cars, and I clearly remember wondering if I'd feel 
anything before those heavy, heavy, wheels cut my flailing arms off, or 
maybe even severed my broken and twisted legs cleanly below the knee.   
Couldn't risk it!  Just keep running I told myself.   Surly I can 
outrun this cloud of poison black gas!  I stumbled, and panicked.  I 
took another few steps, tripped up on my own two feet and fell hard on 
the stones at the tracks edge.  My cheeks emptied!  NO!!!!  I didn't 
even feel the blood dribbling on my scraped up face.  My hair was all a 
tangle in sweat and I didn't give a damn!  All I cared about at that 
moment was those railcar wheels...whizzing steal upon steal...the rush 
of dry dusty air...AIR, my PRECIOUS, PRECIOUS AIR!!!   GONE!!! 

I drew a little breath, it tasted like hot chalky charcoal burned in
lighter fluid.  And that started me on a fit of coughing and choking.  
At some point I must've managed to get back up to my feet, but in the 
end it was no use.  My last thoughts as I struggled on dizzily, 
head-achy, hands clawing at the loose ballast stones was:  
Helpers...MIDTRAIN HELPERS!!!   I must've heard them rumble past me, 
because the roar of those diesel engines rolling by sounded as loud as 
a jet plane overhead... 

I never saw the caboose at the end. 

But by now I figure a smart man such as yourself must've guessed as
much.  Nowadays the kids all know me round here as “Crazy Charlie...the 
Ghost of the Bozeman Tunnel!”   They say my daddy found me dead by the 
side of the tracks.  The coroner's report stated unequivocally “death 
by misadventure, of coal dust inhalation and carbon monoxide 
poisoning.” 

My parents intended to bury me with my favorite model locomotive tucked
under my arm in its protective box, an Athearn HO scale F45 in the 
Cascade green and black with white nose-stripes of the Burlington 
Northern.  BN number 6643 was my treasure.  That model was a Christmas 
present from Mom and Dad, and I had meticulously painted the handrails 
and added extra details like a snowplow, working ditch lights, and a 
winterization hatch to make it look exactly like the one in my picture 
book. 

The funeral director stole that treasure from my coffin just before it
was covered over with earth forever.  But I don't mind.  He took it 
‘cause his grandson in Colorado has the bug too.  I'd rather see it 
pulling a hotshot freight around his grandkid's layout than see such a 
beautiful locomotive go to waste with my bones.  But it just goes to 
show, you just can't trust undertakers –they'll snake ya every time. 

They call me the ghost...BUT LOOK!!!...and see THE REAL GHOST, that
stealthy black predator that fills the gully.  It fouls the air. It 
feeds on blue sky.  It shits a dirty stain of its own filth on the 
concrete portal!  It leaves its message for all to take heed: “I am the 
dark spirit of the tunnel...I live and breath...I will return again to 
claim the fresh mountain air for my own, to take aloft with me on the 
breeze.” 

What?  Why are you turning away?  You're still not convinced?  What more
do you need?  You still don't see it, do you?  I'm telling you Fella, 
that's more than just a cloud of exhaust!  It's a black beast!  It's a 
monster!   It's a killer!  For Heaven's sakes, IT KILLED ME!!! 

AWWWwwwwKKKKK!!!!  Chrissakes, you NEVER were payin' any attention to me
at all, were you?   Was I talkin' to myself this whole time? 

LOOK HERE FELLA, DON'T YOU PLAY DUMB WITH ME!!! 

I know you hear me Fella...you hear me just fine!  Don't you try to fool
me!   I see you talking away on that little toy you think is a 
telephone, trying to ignore me, but I know so much better.  Believe you 
me ...I KNOW you see me!  I KNOW you hear me. 

Hey!  LOOK at me when I'm talkin' to you! 

LOOK AT ME!!! 

Ya...What was that?  Ha, NOW you look like you've seen a ghost!!! 

OH, GOT YOUR ATENTION NOW, DON'T I?   Forget that big rig that just sped
by, It was ME that chipped the windshield on your squeaky clean 
Japanese sissy-mobile.  It's not fit to be called a pickup!  It's not 
American. 

GOODBYE TO YOU ASSHOLE!!!  Some help you were! 

“Hey Mister... Wait up!  You and me got something in common.” 


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