Ghost Car Extra

Long Haiou was the logistics receptionist at Changsha Railway Station and worked in the ticket office.

When the black 076 pulled into the station that night, she happened to be the one on duty. Not only should it have been impossible for a train to be pulling into the station at that time, but she hadn’t received any prior notice. (1)

In that era, it was normal for military trains to arrive suddenly because of combat readiness, so she didn’t think too much about it.

The only thing that made her suspicious was that soldiers would usually be there in advance to take over when the military train arrived. But at that time, no one was on the platform and the train arrived so suddenly. If it weren’t for such a monstrosity making so much noise, she would have said that the train slid into the station without anyone noticing.

But she didn’t care too much about it. It was the middle of the night, after all, so maybe she didn’t see how it had arrived. Or maybe she did see it, but she was just a little forgetful.

She wrapped herself in a military coat and went to lay back down again. Soon, she fell asleep.

When she woke up again, she found that there were a lot of people outside of the duty room.

She got up and saw that the train that came in last night was still on the tracks. All of the railway station’s employees surrounded the train and there was a commotion among them.

She put on her coat and went out. She noticed two colleagues who had just come to work whispering outside the duty room. “What’s the matter?” She asked. “Why is everyone out here? Why hasn’t this train left yet?”

Military trains generally didn’t stop for too long and would definitely leave in the morning if they arrived at night. But the sky was very bright right now.

One of the colleagues said, “No one knows what happened. The train came into the station at eleven o’clock last night. Old Wang checked the tracks at five and found that nobody was on the train. There wasn’t even a serial number or sign on it. No one knows where it came from.”

“It’s a ghost car,” the other colleague said.

The railway staff here often told stories to scare the young girls who were new employees. They said that the trains with no one on them often arrived in the middle of the night. Once people started to investigate, they discovered that those trains had been bombed by the Japanese. Since there was no one on the trains, it was said that the ghost cars carried those who had been killed back to their hometowns before taking them to the netherworld.

But the ghost cars in the stories all left before dawn and were never found again. Why was this train still parked at the station now?

It was a bit cold in early spring, so Long Haiou wrapped her coat tighter around her body and walked closer to the train. She found that all of the train cars—including the front one—had been welded with iron sheets. The ugly welding gaps were thick and full of bubbles, indicating that the temperature of the welding process had been very high.

She looked at how the locomotive was painted and the font of that 076 and realized that this was a Japanese military train. These types of military trains were built in the northeast during the Japanese invasion of China. They once drove to the northwest, but were later seized by the Nationalist government. Now they fell under the Nationalist’s government’s jurisdiction and had been repainted. This train, however, still had the faded Japanese military flag printed on both sides of the front of the car. There was a lot of rust all over the body of each car, almost as if the train had come out of a scrap iron station.

She looked at the station’s big clock. It was now seven o’clock in the morning and this train had entered the station sometime after eleven last night. This train had been at the station for seven hours. Other trains would be coming in soon and accidents might occur if this train was still parked here.

She saw the station master holding a megaphone off to the side and repeatedly shouting in the direction of the locomotive, “The driver of 076, we’ve prepared a berth for the train up front. Please move away from the main tracks.”

On the other side, she saw dozens of soldiers coming out from behind the station master. The man leading them was wearing an officer’s uniform. She could recognize that he was the lieutenant of the sub-military district commander, Zhang Qishan. His surname was Wang. (2)

Several soldiers approached the locomotive and found that the door had also been welded shut. There were only two gaps that allowed the light to shine in. The inside of the train was completely dark and nothing was visible.

The station master shouted a few more times, but there was no response or movement from the locomotive. Lieutenant Wang waved his hand and the soldiers took out gas cutting torches. They climbed onto the locomotive and cars behind it and started cutting the iron sheets on the train.

The remaining people divided into teams, raised their guns, and squatted behind the soldiers who were busy cutting in order to cover them.

At least thirty minutes passed before a hole was cut out of the iron sheet of the first carriage. Lieutenant Wang shouted into the hole a few times. When he saw that there was no movement, he waved his hand and let the soldiers rush in.

At this time, Long Haiou and the others had already moved far away from the train station. On the one hand, the soldiers didn’t allow them to get close; on the other hand, they were also afraid of what might happen.

Long Haiou saw a soldier go into the train carriage to look around. After a few minutes, he poked his head out and motioned for the other soldiers to follow him in.

After several soldiers went into the carriage, Lieutenant Wang climbed in as well. When he came out of the train later, he walked straight to Long Haiou and her colleagues and said to them, “Lock down all of Changsha Station and tell everyone that no trains will pass by today. Have them take other routes. We’re taking over this station. Where’s the telephone? Take me to the telephone room.”

As Long Haiou nodded, she noticed that Lieutenant Wang’s face looked pale. She wondered what was on the train as she led him to the telephone room. So many questions kept popping into her head, but was stopped at the door. Lieutenant Wang went in and closed the door, so she didn’t get to hear anything.

From that day on, Long Haiou never saw Lieutenant Wang again.

Changsha Railway Station was closed for twenty-five days following that eventful day. After those twenty-five days, they were able to enter their workplace again. The train was no longer there, but they could tell from the wear and tear on the platform that heavy machinery had been fixed there.

During those twenty-five days, not a single newspaper mentioned anything about this train and no one told her what the subsequent development was.

Everything that happened became a legend. Why did this ghost car stop in Changsha Station in the middle of the night? What kind of cargo was in the enclosed compartments of the train cars?

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TN Notes:

(1) This chapter is about the same ghost car incident in the Mystic Nine, but with a different point of view.

(2) Lieutenant Wang was also mentioned in Chapter 4 of “The Mystic Nine”.

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Translated by: Tiffany X
Edited by: merebear226