The brothers first heard about Duffy’s Cut from their grandfather, a railroad worker, who told the ghost story to his family every Thanksgiving. According to local legend, memorialized in a file kept by the Pennsylvania Railroad, a man walking home from a tavern reported seeing blue and green ghosts dancing in the mist on a warm September night in 1909.

“I saw with my own eyes, the ghosts of the Irishmen who died with the cholera a month ago, a-dancing around the big trench where they were buried; it’s true, mister, it was awful,” the documents quote the unnamed man as saying. “Why, they looked as if they were a kind of green and blue fire and they were a-hopping and bobbing on their graves… I had heard the Irishmen were haunting the place because they were buried without the benefit of clergy.”

When Frank inherited the file of his grandfather’s old railroad papers, the brothers began to believe the ghost stories were real. They suspected that the files contained clues to the location of a mass grave.

It’d be interesting to learn whether or not there had been sightings reported in the 100 years since their grandfather’s tale – but regardless, this is a provocative tale.

Haven’t read the book, but sounds like a cool read. (h/t Michael Prescott)

“One night my sister woke up because of someone coughing loudly right near her ear. We told her she must dreamt or imagined it but she insisted that loud coughing had done it. However, as we by that time all had heard the snapping of the fingers I started thinking and now and then my mother and I discussed the matter.

Prompts one to wonder about the all the ghost stories kept within a family unit, fleeting events never repeated and muted from outsiders, that persist within the living memory of those who witness them, and then vanish with their passing. After all, not all ghost encounterees (is that a word) call Ghost Hunters, do they?