STAUNTON TRAIN STATION
Train Station — Staunton, Virginia
Status: Status unknown · Access: Access unknown
Dossier: https://haunthunt.com/place/staunton-train-station-staunton-virginia/

Staunton landmark with a published haunting reputation.

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.

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.

THE STATION'S CAST
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.

FILED CLAIMS — 1 on record, reported not verified
· [Documented legend] unspecified haunting: 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.
  source: Staunton Haunted Locations (https://visitstaunton.com/things-to-do/haunted-staunton/)

SOURCES — 1 cited
· Staunton Haunted Locations — Visit Staunton
  https://visitstaunton.com/things-to-do/haunted-staunton/

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HauntHunt is a research archive. Claims are filed as reported — documented where sources exist, marked as folklore or unverified where they do not.
Methodology: https://haunthunt.com/methodology/ · Corrections: https://haunthunt.com/report/