It was a quiet night. The group was gathered in the living room of a charming suburban home. There was coffee, cake, and conversation as the half-dozen friends, old and new, caught up on their travels and adventures.
With no warning, things changed. One of the group, a young woman, sat up to listen to … something. Her companions were suddenly silent, staring into space. The one who had been telling a story of her day in New York City had stopped mid-sentence.
Then came the sound. It built up from a long way off, and then it was upon them. The windows shook. China in the cabinet tinkled. A rushing noise swept around them all, and then as soon as it had come it was gone, back into the night, moving on toward some other destination.
Conversation resumed as if nothing had happened. No one seemed alarmed, except the one young woman.
“What the HELL was that?” she shouted.
“What? Oh, that. Just a train.”
This was an ordinary evening at my brother’s place.
While I was in law school, my dear brother and his lovely wife kindly let me stay with them in their house on Long Island. When not studying evidence or civil procedure I tried to earn a little of my keep by tearing out drywall and helping to rebuild an upstairs bedroom as a nursery. It is a fine house, with one unusual feature to its location: right by the back yard run tracks for the Long Island Rail Road.
When the trains ran by, we knew it. Everything in the house vibrated. Conversation naturally paused, picking up again when the last car had passed. We kept a train schedule near the stereo so we knew when it was safe to play old vinyl LPs.
So it is that I find great amusement in a particular Season One episode of of Paranormal State. In “Beer, Wine and Spirits” the PRS team visits Katie’s Bar in Smithtown, Long Island.
The PRS talks about the weird feelings some people get in the bar — like when they’re told that the place is haunted and then brought down to the basement. They talk about Charlie, a former patron who has been dead since the 1920s. They wave their EMF detectors around and talk about the readings. And they talk about the most dramatic and concrete evidence of paranormal activity on the premises: wine glasses spontaneously move, sometimes falling to shatter on the floor.
Somehow they never get around to talking about the fact that there are railroad tracks no more than 100 feet from the building. The very same LIRR that I know so well.
Might the regular passage of large, heavy trains just over the back fence have anything to do with the unsteady tumblers?
Can I at least get a “maybe?”And since the effect of vibration caused by railroad trains is somewhat better established than the existence of ghosts, a good researcher would rule this out before moving on to suggest supernatural explanations. The PRS doesn’t even mention it.
