Ghost Children of San Antonio: Haunting or Urban Legend?

As with all good ghost stories, picture yourself sitting around a campfire, a flashlight eerily shining under the face of a slightly over-dramatic storyteller. Got it? Good.

The story began around 1940 on a dark and rainy morning in south San Antonio. A bus full of children was making its rounds on the way to school, children singing happily as they bounced around. Suddenly, the bus stalls – in the middle of a railroad crossing. Laughter and singing are replaced by screams of terror as a train barrels toward the bus, unable to see through the rain until it was too late. Ten children perish as a train collides with the bus. The streets in the surrounding neighborhood have been named after the children to preserve their memory.

Desperate to prevent such tragedy from happening to anyone else, the spirits of the children tirelessly guard the tracks, pushing to safety any vehicle that stops too close. It is said that if you sprinkle a powdery substance, such as flour or baby powder, on the back of your car, you can see their ghostly handprints.

Great story, but is it real? Are there really spirits protecting drivers from peril? Of course, the internet is flooded with videos and testimonies of people claiming to have experienced this phenomenon. Numerous paranormal investigation teams have visited the site to see what they find. Police practically have to patrol the area on Halloween just to keep traffic moving, since so many people want to stop on the tracks and await rescue.

In all reality, the tracks do sit on a downward incline, which could explain any vehicles moving off of the tracks, if you want to get scientific. It is also said that the developer of the nearby neighborhood named the streets after his own children. On top of that, there is no actual public record of such a crash ever taking place. However, that is surely not going to prevent people from continuing to flock to the site to test it for themselves.

You have the facts; all that remains is for you to decide: urban legend or protective spirits saving countless people from the tragedy that took their lives?