225 - The Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus Train Crash/Showmen's Rest

According to Lorraine Boissoneault, "The circus had just completed two performances in Michigan City, Indiana, and was traveling overnight the 45 miles to nearby Hammond. The first train, carrying workers and many of the circus animals, cruised on to its destination with no problems. But engineers on the second train halted their progress to fix a hotbox. The overheated axle bearing could cause a fire on the train if not deal with immediately. It was around 4 a.m. when the second train pulled off onto a side track, but the last five cars— including four wooden sleeper cars—remained on the main track. As the engineers worked, and the performers slept, an empty train used to transport soldiers to the East Coast for subsequent deployment to the warfront in Europe came barreling down the main track. The driver blew past several stop signals, and then the lamps of several of the circus engineers trying desperately to stop the oncoming train. But the train’s steel-frame Pullman cars smashed into the wooden circus coaches, at speeds between 25 and 60 miles per hour, according to contemporaneous newspaper reports. The sound of the collision was so loud that nearby farmers awoke and hurried to see what had happened." What people came to see was one of the worst train accidents of all time. Many people were injured, and many people died that day. Some were burnt up from the crash so bad they were able to be identified. The dead performers, both identified and not were laid to rest at Woodlawn Cemetery in Chicago. That plot is now known as Showmen's Rest. The ghost stories attached to the area include people hearing ghostly animal noises, and circus music at the cemetery. Our quick investigation lead us to find if the crash site is haunted or not.