Читать книгу Ghosthunting Ohio: On the Road Again - John B. Kachuba - Страница 16

While I was doing some research at the Dayton Metro Library, I met Nancy Horlacher, the Local History Specialist. She was interested in my project and e-mailed me a story titled “The Phantom Driver on Englewood Dam,” from the manuscript entitled Tales and Sketches of the Great Miami Valley, by Earl Leon Heck, written in 1962.

Mr. Heck reports on a strange and disturbing vision that terrorized truckers in the winter of 1952 as they drove their rigs on the road that crosses the Englewood Dam. The road was narrow, flanked by wooden guardrails on either side, with a precipitous 125-foot drop-off should a driver become careless or sleepy.

Heck writes that on a stormy, icy night that winter a seasoned trucker named Roy Fitzwater stopped at a small inn located near the dam, a favorite stop for drivers. He was shaken and visibly distraught but refused to answer any of his fellow truckers’ questions, stating only that he had witnessed something “quite horrible.” Ohio Highway Patrol Officer Harrell was also eating at the inn and knew Fitzwater. He asked the trucker what was wrong but Fitzwater simply shook his head and declined to say anything more, eventually leaving the inn without revealing anything.

Over the next few weeks, three more truck drivers stopped at the inn as frightened as Fitzwater, but none of them would talk about what they had experienced. Officer Harrell happened to be at the inn each time and saw these seasoned, professional masters of the road reduced to nervous, scared children. About a month later, Roy Fitzwater stopped at the inn and Officer Harrell was once again present—you have to believe that Harrell needed a lot of coffee to keep himself going since he was so often at the inn. This time the patrolman convinced Fitzwater to tell his story.

Fitzwater said that while he was crossing the dam on a dark, stormy night, car headlights suddenly appeared in the opposite direction heading toward his truck.” It comes straight toward me, with blinding lights,” the trucker said, “just as if he intended to plunge right into me.”

Fitzwater told Harrell that he slammed on the brakes and tried to swerve out of the way, knowing that if he was not careful, he could drive his rig over the side of the dam. When the car was only about 200 feet away it turned across the truck’s path.

“The lights go out,” Fitzwater continued, “but inside the car appears a dull blue-green light of the most unearthly kind, revealing a skull and skeleton at the wheel. You can see the bones all lighted up with this peculiar, uncanny light. It is just too horrible to describe. It just about takes the life out of you.”

Harrell and other patrolmen staked out the dam and the road, but the phantom driver was never seen again after that horrific winter in 1952. Perhaps he’s driving other highways of America’s Haunted Road Trip.