{"id":1612,"slug":"staunton-train-station-staunton-virginia","story":[{"heading":null,"paragraphs":["Staunton has had a depot at the foot of Wilson Park since the Virginia Central Railroad arrived in 1854, and the site has been destroyed three ways. Union General David Hunter's troops burned the first station in June 1864. The 1872 replacement stood until the night of April 26, 1890, when a late-running excursion train carrying the Pearl of Pekin theatrical company lost its brakes on the downgrade and crashed into the depot. Among the dead was Myrtle Ruth Knox, an eighteen-year-old chorus girl from Missouri whose father had been chasing her across the country trying to bring her home — he reached Staunton after the wreck. The third depot, built in 1902 to a design by Staunton's ubiquitous architect T.J. Collins, still stands; Amtrak passengers today use the circa-1886 signal house, and the old depot is an event space in the Wharf Area Historic District.","An earlier death on the tracks is also remembered: D.C. McLewry, reportedly drunk, was struck and killed there in 1861."]},{"heading":"The station's cast","paragraphs":["The reported haunting roster follows the casualties. Myrtle Knox is described wandering the platform — the young singer who never made Baltimore. McLewry is said to stagger drunkenly along the rails. A local paranormal group that investigated the depot for years claims EVP captures, strange lights, and shadows, and counts as many as eight distinct spirits contacted through its sessions.","Visit Staunton files the station among the city's haunted locations — a reasonable candidate, the archive notes, on body count alone. Three depots, a war, a fire, and a wreck that orphaned a runaway chorus girl: the legend didn't have to invent much."]}],"name":"Staunton Train Station","aliases":[],"type":"TRAIN_STATION","type_label":"Train Station","cats":["HAUNTING"],"groups":["hauntings","roads"],"desc":"Staunton landmark with a published haunting reputation.","full_desc":"Staunton Train Station is a train station in Staunton, Virginia. Staunton landmark with a published haunting reputation. It sits in the archive under haunting reports. The dossier holds 1 reported claim and 1 legend — all telling, no verified spine yet, and the file says so plainly. Access details are unverified — research before visiting.","address":null,"city":"Staunton","county":null,"state":"Virginia","postal":null,"region":"South","lat":38.157978,"lon":-79.061876,"coord_kind":"CITY","status":"UNKNOWN","access":"UNKNOWN","access_notes":null,"ownership":null,"website":null,"phone":null,"year_built":null,"year_opened":null,"year_closed":null,"year_demolished":null,"designation":null,"current_use":null,"research_notes":"Discovery or enrichment; earliest report and independent corroboration remain under research. Confidence measures source provenance, not supernatural reality.","stage":"SOURCE_RESEARCH","quality":{"level":"LOW","score":43.1,"dims":{"location_confidence":0.75,"identity_confidence":0.65,"historical_confidence":0,"source_quality":0.6,"paranormal_claim_provenance":0.8,"coordinate_confidence":0,"current_access_confidence":0,"freshness":0.65}},"claims":[{"id":827,"type":"UNSPECIFIED_HAUNTING","description":"Tourism recounts apparitions, lights and paranormal-investigation recordings. Staunton Train Station in Staunton, Virginia carries the report the way old places do — as part of its identity. 'Staunton Haunted Locations' preserves the telling; the record keeps it filed where it belongs, as lore. The haunting claim is now part of the site's identity, filed alongside the documented history.","evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","evidence_label":"Documented legend","entity":null,"where":null,"first_report":null,"approx_date":null,"confidence":0.75,"conflict_notes":null,"source":{"name":"Staunton Haunted Locations","url":"https://visitstaunton.com/things-to-do/haunted-staunton/","publisher":"Visit Staunton","type":"TOURISM","authority":3},"conflicting_source":null,"variants":[]}],"history":[],"legends":[{"name":null,"summary":"Tourism recounts apparitions, lights and paranormal-investigation recordings. Staunton Train Station's file is thin on proof and long on persistence — the standard profile of American place-lore. The account has a collector's pedigree — written down as legend, which is the most honest status it can hold. The account appears in 'Staunton Haunted Locations'. The story outranks the documentation, which is how you know it's folklore.","earliest":null,"evidence":"DOCUMENTED_LEGEND","source":{"name":"Staunton Haunted Locations","url":"https://visitstaunton.com/things-to-do/haunted-staunton/","publisher":"Visit Staunton","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}}],"entities":[],"events":[],"investigations":[],"encounters":[],"media":[],"persons":[],"visitor":{"tour_availability":"Verify before visiting","notes":"Access details are unverified; research before visiting.","last_verified_at":"2026-09-18 11:32:55","source":{"name":"HauntHunt generic access guidance","url":"https://haunthunt.com/about#access-guidance","publisher":"HauntHunt editorial","type":"DIRECTORY","authority":2}},"sources":[{"name":"Staunton Haunted Locations","url":"https://visitstaunton.com/things-to-do/haunted-staunton/","publisher":"Visit Staunton","type":"TOURISM","authority":3}],"conflicts":[],"wiki":null,"counts":{"claims":1,"history":0,"legends":1,"entities":0,"sources":1}}