NAME.....Ghostly Handprints
CODE.....TR8702
ORIGIN...Early 1970's, USA
STATUS...False

A few years back in a small town in America, a tragic accident happened. A school bus packed with children stalled while travelling over a railway crossing, with a train heading towards them at great speed. There was no time to evacuate the bus, and the train was travelling so fast it couldn't stop in time. Every child on that bus perished in that fatal accident.

Locally, rumours were abounding that the railway crossing was haunted, and a couple of teenagers thought that they would check this rumour out for themselves. They drove to the railway crossing and parked up right over the tracks. After a few minutes, the strangest of things happened, the car started to roll forwards of its own accord. The car continued to roll until it was completely clear of the tracks.

The teenagers jumped out of the car and rushed around to the back of it to see who was pushing it. Of course nobody was there, but they saw something that made them shudder to the bone. The car was extremely dirty and dusty from the drive out there, and all the way along the back of the car they could see little handprints in the dust, so small they could only have been made by children.

Summary

The 'Ghostly Hands' has all the hallmarks of a classic ghost legend such as 'The Vanishing Hitchhiker' (HR4704), but is thought to have originated as late as the early 1970's. The legend is told in a subtle manner, and it is left for your own imagination to fill in the gaps. We are led to believe that the spirits of the deceased school children pushed the teenagers car off the tracks and out of harms way, desperately trying to avoid another tragedy.

There are variants of this legend, but the handprints are a distinct motif in all of them. In one version it is set in the early morning, and the handprints appear in the dew. In another version, the handprints are only seen when the back of the car is inspected using a forensic technique with white powder.


Final Thoughts

Ghostly Hands is similar in many ways to the legend of Gravity Hill, in Scotland County (USA). Apparantly, if you stop your car at a certain place on the hill and slip the gear in neutral, your car will start rolling uphill. The legend has it that the spirit of a woman who had crashed and died along that section of the road, is trying to push the car uphill to safety. Of course, there is a lot more logical and scientific explanation to this strange occurrence, and the supernatural has nothing to do with it. It is simply an optical illusion, nature playing tricks with our eyes. The vehicles at this particular point actually roll downhill; the slight decline looks uphill because of the surrounding landscape. The trees by the side of the road slant slightly down the hill and do not grow completely vertical; this confuses the senses and creates the illusion.