The Haunted History of the Staunton Train Depot

If you're searching for one of the most haunted spots in Staunton, Virginia, look no further than the Staunton train depot. It has all the ingredients for a supernatural hot spot: war, fire and tragedy.

Staunton grew quickly thanks to its prime location and temperate climate. By the 1800s, it was a thriving center of business and politics, but it was the arrival of the Virginia Central Railroad in 1854 that truly transformed the town. The train station, sitting at the heart of it all, became a vital artery for both commerce and war.

In 1864, Union General David Hunter set his sights on the train depot, hoping to disrupt Confederate supply lines. During his campaign through the Shenandoah Valley in June 1864, his troops torched the station, and fire consumed everything in its path, including those unfortunate enough to be trapped inside.

The depot was rebuilt after the war, only to be devastated again in 1890. This time, the tragedy involved a train traveling through Staunton—and a 17-year-old girl named Myrtle Knox.

Myrtle Knox and the Cincinnati Express

In the fall of 1889, a company of opera singers began a series of exclusive engagements across the state of Missouri. In the audience for one performance of the operetta was 17-year-old Myrtle Knox, an amateur singer herself. So when it was announced that the production would be leaving Missouri for an Eastern tour the following year, she was delighted to be invited along.

The company left Missouri aboard the Cincinnati Express on April 26, 1890. That night, Myrtle climbed into her berth and fell asleep, secure in her belief that she was about to discover a whole new world of people and places.

Shortly after midnight, the packed C&O train began its descent into the Shenandoah Valley. The four miles of track just west of the C&O depot in Staunton, then as now, twisted and turned as they dropped some 80 feet before reaching the station.

About two miles into the steep downgrade, the Cincinnati Express's brakeman applied air pressure to the brakes, but the train didn't slow down. Myrtle Knox and her berth mate held on for dear life as the cars approached their last and most difficult turn—the turn leading directly into the station.

The train barreled into the depot, shaking violently as it derailed and sending debris and splintered wood flying in every direction. Most of the passengers escaped the crash with relatively minor injuries, but Myrtle's berth had borne the worst of the car's impact with the depot.

Seventeen-year-old Myrtle Ruth Knox, who had been setting out on an adventure as a singer, was carried from the wreckage and placed on a makeshift stretcher beside the train. One of her legs had been nearly severed, while another splinter had pierced her femoral artery. She died within minutes.

More than a century later, Myrtle's story has become part of the haunted history surrounding the Staunton train depot.

Travelers report seeing a ghostly young woman in a nightgown drifting across the platform. Some even claim that the apparition tugs at the hair of unsuspecting female visitors. Others have reported hearing the faint strains of unseen music around the depot, perhaps a lingering connection to the young singer whose Eastern tour ended here before it had really begun.

And Myrtle isn't the only person said to remain at the station.

The Soldier on the Tracks

Confederate soldier D.C. McLarry met his end here in 1861. According to the story, McLarry had been drinking heavily and was too intoxicated to see where he was going when he stumbled onto the railroad tracks. An oncoming train struck and killed him.

Today, people say his shadowy figure can still be seen near the rails. Unlike Myrtle's ghostly young woman drifting across the platform, McLarry is described as swaying along the tracks, almost as though he's still stumbling through the final moments of his life.

With a history stretching back to the arrival of the railroad in Staunton, destruction during the Civil War, a devastating train wreck and more than a century and a half of passengers passing through, the old depot has accumulated plenty of stories.

Whether Myrtle Knox still walks the platform in her nightgown or D.C. McLarry continues to stumble along the tracks is impossible to know. But unlike a lot of haunted places where the tragedy behind the ghost story is vague or has been lost over time, the Staunton train depot has a very real history of disaster and death behind its legends.

And if the stories are true, some of the people who arrived at the station all those years ago may have never actually left.