Lou’s View: THE HEADLESS TRACKWALKER
By Lou Bernard
A decapitated railroad employee, walking along the tracks and saving other people. It’s one of Henry Wharton Shoemaker’s most enduring stories. Originally published in the 1913 book “Susquehanna Legends,” it’s been reprinted in the 1983 Lock Haven Sesquicentennial book, I’ve used it on many tours, and it’s even been told around campfires for all I know. In case all that has somehow missed you, let me recap.
Henry Wharton Shoemaker was a local folklorist from McElhattan. He wrote down a lot of legends from the area, after hearing them from retired lumbermen, descendants of Native American tribes, etc. His books are available at the Ross Library for checkout, if you’re interested, and they’re actually pretty good reading, if you’re into that sort of thing.
The story is essentially conveyed by an elderly gravedigger, who is described as standing around, telling the audience about all these spooky things. Shoemaker doesn’t come right out and mention coveralls and a wheat stalk in his mouth, but it’s heavily implied. In his youth, he said, it all began when he was visiting a girl, and decided to walk home. (Worst thing you can do in these stories, go home. Statistically, it’s bound to cause trouble.)
He took a shortcut along the railroad tracks. Shoemaker doesn’t come right out and state which tracks, but there are hints that the tracks cut through Lock Haven and along the Susquehanna, near present-day Peddie Park. As the young man walked, he saw a light coming toward him, and was glad for the company.
Until he realized that the man approaching had no head. Nothing kills the social vibe faster than that.
A bloody gash pretty much was all that remained of the trackwalker’s neck. He held his lantern in one hand, and his head in the other. He beckoned to the boy. (The story doesn’t explain exactly how he beckoned, as his hands were clearly full.) The boy followed.
The headless trackwalker guided him to a spot on the tracks where scrap metal had been piled up, enough to derail the train. Which was on the way; the boy could hear it coming.
He tried to clear the tracks, but the metal was too heavy. So he grabbed the lantern from the trackwalker and ran ahead (no pun intended), waving the lantern to flag down the train.
Seeing the lantern, the train stopped, just short of a horrible crash. As the conductor helped the boy clear the metal from the tracks, he told the boy about the first trackwalker ever killed on the line, who was said to still be walking along, without his head, preventing others from sharing the same fate.
How much of this was truth, and how much was inventive legend? Shoemaker always claimed to have written down the stories as they were told to him, and there is evidence to support this. It is worth noting that legends and stories reflect the values and fears of the time.
Zombie stories, for instance, tend to surge in fiction when we have concerns about crowding and overpopulation. Anyone can outrun one zombie; their problem is their numbers. Alien stories make an upswing during times of war, when the fear of invaders coming from somewhere else is very real. The stories reflect the fears.
Railroading was a dangerous occupation, and a common one. In Clinton County around 1900, practically everyone cared for someone who was involved with the railroad somehow. A man named Dominico Orelle was killed in Westport in 1910 by a train; another trackwalker named Guiseppe Pannore was killed by a train in 1908. Note that these are both only a few years before this story was published in Shoemaker’s book.
Is there really a headless trackwalker protecting people along the tracks? Maybe, maybe not. But by writing this legend down, Henry Shoemaker provided a valuable insight into one of the great fears of the era, giving us an insight as to what the times were like.
