Journal of the Bizarre

Every so often, a reader sends us a story so chilling that we feel compelled to share it with our audience. The following story, sent to us by Glenn from Cherry Hill, NJ, involves a late night encounter with a shadowy being of unknown origin.


In the fall of 2002 I moved from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to St. Lawrence County in upstate New York. It was a move that was made gradually, involving numerous seven-hour-long trips back and forth, cramming as many boxes and bags as I could into the hatchback and backseat of my Pontiac Firebird.

If you've ever made the long journey from Harrisburg to Canton, New York, you already know how mind-numbingly exhausting the trip can be. Once you leave Interstate 81 at Watertown and hop onto Route 11, you encounter long stretches of thirty or more miles at a time on a lonesome two-laned highway without passing through a single town. Sure, you'll see signs every now and then informing you that you've just entered a village with a strange nam…

Depending on who you talk to, the supposed "witching hour"-- when supernatural activity peaks-- is either midnight or 3 AM, and various paranormal researchers appear to be fiercely loyal to their preference. Others claim that the whole idea of a witching hour is a bunch of hot air, most likely invented by authors of ghost stories and Hollywood movie-makers.  So which hour are witches most likely to bewitch? That is what we at Journal of the Bizarre are here to find out.

But before we delve too deeply into the great witching hour debate, let's examine the two times most commonly associated with spooks, goblins, warlocks and witches.

Based on our research, most historical references describe the witching hour as midnight, as it represents the passing from one day to the next. Since the concept of "passing over" is an integral part of the theory of afterlife, it makes sense that midnight would come to symbolize the moment when spirits can pass between the earthly a…

In 1890, a terrifying apparition haunted the tracks of the Lake Erie and Western Railroad. The ghost-- who appeared to be looking for his lost head-- was believed to be that of Jimmie Welsh, a train conductor who met his unfortunate end in November of 1889.

The following newspaper story about the ghost of Jimmie Welsh appeared in the Chicago Tribune on March 19, 1890.


The Conductor's Ghost

Trainmen on the Lake Erie and Western railroad between Findlay, Ohio, and Fostoria are greatly disturbed over what they claim is the ghost of a dead freight conductor. The conductor was killed one night last November, at Arcadia, about eight miles east of this city, by his train breaking into two sections in such a manner that he was thrown to the track from the car on which he was standing and beheaded by the wheels before the train could be controlled.

The accident occurred at a point where dense woods nearly arch the track, above the rails, and here it is, the trainmen assert, the ghost of the m…

A shapeshifting table and a tragic tale of merry old England



Editor's Note: From time to time we receive emails from readers who have amazing stories to tell, so we decided to publish some of them as an occasional feature we call "My Strangest Experience". Today's amazing story is from "Edna" of Greenwich, Connecticut.


When I was five, my father, a military aviator, perished during a training exercise in Maryland. To cope with the hardship of bringing up a daughter on her own, my mother would send me to my Aunt Hester's home near Boston each summer for a few weeks, giving my mother time to cope with her loss on her own terms, without having to worry about providing for me. Aunt Hester was, in my opinion, "rich", having inherited a home in Melrose that once belonged to her grandfather, who had been an executive with the Boston and Maine Railroad.

Aunt Hester never married, and in those days (it was the late 1950s) we called women like her spinst…