THE GHOST CHILDREN OF MUNGER ROAD

American Hysteria

W!ZARD Studios

Society & Culture

4.4 • 3.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 May 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

*Urban Legends Hotline* Lauren's story: On a rural road outside Chicago, the ghosts of children killed in a school bus-train collision are said to push cars uphill, off the tracks, and out of harm's way, leaving their handprints in baby powder dusted on the bumper by local legend-tripping teenagers. So we investigated this urban legend, versions of which are told in small towns all over the country, by searching through old newspapers for related historical crashes, and then by unearthing reports of bizarre "mock accidents" that have occurred near Munger Road for decades. I even headed out all by myself to a rural road in Washington State said to be haunted by similar helpful ghosts, to see if there is any truth to this urban legend, or if it's all just an illusion. Listeners like you can now share urban legends from your childhood and if selected, we will investigate your story in depth, sometimes even testing it out ourselves. CW: Train accidents, death If you have an urban legend you'd like us to explore, head to americanhysteria.com and leave us a message! Thanks to Lauren and to Nick Smith, check out his film Munger Road on Amazon Become a Patron to support our show and get early ad-free episodes and bonus content American Hysteria is written, produced, and hosted by Chelsey Weber-Smith Sound design by Clear Commo Studios Research Assistant: Riley Swedelius-Smith Producer: Miranda Zickler Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Urban Legends Hotline, where we investigate the mysterious tales of your hometowns and stories passed through the old lockered halls of your schools to get to the
0:25.6	haunted heart of the urban legends that you grew up hearing and maybe even telling. Today we are
0:35.3	covering the Ghost Children of Munger Road. I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith,
0:42.5	and from one friend of a friend to another, this is American hysteria.
1:13.8	Okay, hi, Chelsea. My name is Lauren. I'm really excited about this, but also I'm 37 years old and I have not thought about this urban legend in a really long time. This is going to be a very, very bad retelling. I'm so sorry. But I grew up and then moved away from and then came back to the western suburbs of Chicago. So I'm a full-fledged townie at this point. So the town I live in now is
1:20.4	called Geneva. And there's a road that goes through like St. Charles area. It's a super long road called Munger Road.
1:30.5	And it goes to this like really weird small town called Wayne. Anyway, as the legend goes,
1:37.1	and as I remember being told when I started driving at 16, that if you go to Munger Road
1:43.8	at night, there are some train tracks there.
1:47.1	And apparently at some point in history, there was a school bus that got stopped on the train
1:54.8	tracks and it got hit by a train.
1:58.5	And as a result, all of the kids that were on the bus died and I'm sure
2:05.3	there's like more to this but that's like what I remember in terms of like the gist so as
2:10.1	the urban legend goes at night in order to scare the shit of yourself you're supposed
2:15.2	to drive to the train tracks.
2:18.5	This is terrible, not that I'm like an adult.
2:21.7	You're supposed to turn off the lights of your car.
2:24.0	Ideally, your car is supposed to be really dirty, and you park on the train tracks, which is incredibly stupid.
2:31.0	And you wait.
2:33.0	And if you wait long enough, the ghosts of the children who died in the
2:37.0	bus accident will appear outside of your car and you can tell because they'll put little
2:41.8	handprints on the dirt in your car and I think actually you're supposed to put the car neutral
	...

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