Haunted Carbondale: Carbondale's Depot and 'the shadow people'

Carbondale's Old Train Depot, the third to serve the community, was built in 1903 and remained in service until 1981, when the one further south in Illinois Avenue replaced it.

However, it would appear no one ever told some early Carbondale residents, as visitors to the station today still report seeing them on occasion hurrying to catch one of the dozens of trains that passed through Carbondale daily when rail travel was at its peak. Currently, the building houses the offices of the Carbondale Chamber of Commerce, Carbondale Main Street and Station Carbondale's railroad museum.

The most commonly reported apparition (and by commonly, I mean rarely) is what a staff member working in the building called "shadow people." She described seeing the hazy outlines of people passing from the street-side entrance to the building across the room in front of her desk and exiting, without opening the door, onto the passenger platform. The figures wore, as best she could tell, clothing in the fashion of that worn during the early part of the 20th century. They appeared, most often, according to her, most often on late summer afternoons when everyone but her had left for the day. The shades showed no awareness of her or the modern day offices they passed through.

The Little Egypt Ghost Society hosted an investigation in the building on a Saturday night during October several years ago. While no one spotted any shadow people hurrying to catch a train, a number of small unexplained occurrences did take place. The Society's electronic voice phenomena (EVP) equipment picked up an number of what sounded like voices. However each voice only said a single or couple of words, certainly no sentences, and nothing coherent was recorded. The Society's digital thermometers also registered a number of fluctuations in temperature throughout the evening, but no significant swings in readings one way or the other, at most a couple of degrees at one time.

The most interesting event to happen involved the building's lights. The group had gathered in the old freight shipping room at the north end of the building. Lights were on in that area, as well as in the Station Carbondale section of the station and the hallway leading to the Carbondale Main Street offices. Various tests for temperature, EVPs and other phenomena had been conducted at various locations, but the group had migrated back to the freight room. Members of the Society were talking about some of their experiences at other locations in southern Illinois when, suddenly, the lights in the hallway leading to the Carbondale Main Street offices shut off. Those lights could be turned on and off from several locations throughout the building, but as far as could be told at the time, all of the group had moved to the freight room, and there were no switches for the affected lights in that room. Still, it could have been a group member flipping a switch that no one notices. It certainly gave the group a start.

So the next time you are in downtown Carbondale, stop by the old train depot, take a look a the old engine and caboose parked there, and visit the Station Carbondale museum, open during business hours or by appointment. Think about the hundreds of thousands of people that passed through the station doors, and those that still do.

Author Scott Thorne runs Castle Perilous Games and Books in the heart of Carbondale. Haunted Carbondale walking tours leave the store at 7 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays during October. Email castleperilousgames@gmail.com for more information.