Screaming Jenny of Harpers Ferry, West VA...

Screaming Jenny of Harpers Ferry, West VA *ghost story*

Years ago, along the railroad tracks outside of Harpers Ferry, were some old storage sheds. Poor folk were using them for shelter. In one of the sheds, lived a woman named Jenny. She had no family and lived alone. She had fallen on hard times and had noone to lean on. Jenny never had enough to eat and in winter her tiny fire barely kept her alive during the cold months.

One cold evening in late autumn, Jenny sat shivering over her fire, drinking broth out of a wooden bowl, when a spark flew from the fire and lit her skirts on fire. She was so hungry, she did not notice her flaming clothes until the fire had burnt through her skirt and scorched her skin. Leaping up in terror, Jenny threw her broth over the licking flames but the fluid did nothing to douse the fire. In terror, Jenny fled from the shack and ran along the tracks, screaming for help as the flames engulfed her body.

The Harper's Ferry station was not far away, and Jenny ran for it, hoping to find someone to help her. Within moments, her body was a glowing inferno and Jenny was overwhelmed by pain. Her screams grew more horrible as her steps slowed. She staggered blindly onto the tracks just west of the station, a ball of fire that barely looked human. In her agony, she did not see the glowing headlight of the train rounding the curve, or hear the screech of the breaks as the engineer spotted her fire-eaten figure and tried to stop. A moment later, her terrible screams broke off as the train ran her down.

Alerted by the whistle, the crew from the station came running as the engineer halted the train and ran back down the tracks toward poor dead Jenny, who was still burning. The men doused the fire and carried her body back to the station. She was given a pauper's funeral and buried in an unmarked grave in the local churchyard. Within a few days, another poverty-stricken family had moved into her shack, and Jenny was forgotten.

Forgotten that is, until a month later when a train rounding the bend west of the station was confronted by a screaming ball of fire. Too late to stop, the engineer plowed over the glowing figure before he could bring the train to a screeching halt. Leaping from the engine, he ran back down the tracks to search for a mangled, burning body, but there was nothing there. Shaken, he brought his train into the station and reported the incident to the stationmaster. After hearing his tale, the station master remembered poor, dead Jenny and realized that her ghost had returned to haunt the tracks where she had died.

To this day, the phantom of Screaming Jenny still appears on the tracks on the anniversary of the day she died. Many an engineer has rounded the curve just west of the station and found himself face to face with the burning ghost of Screaming Jenny, as once more she makes her deadly run towards the Harpers Ferry station, seeking in vain for someone to save her.

**Watch and listen as the trains pass this point in the old armory yard. They say.. You will be able to tell which engineers have met screaming Jenny by the slack speed they guide their trains over this section of track. Sometimes in the night, you will hear some train conductors, wildly blowing their whistle. You'll know then that Jenny has once again returned. **