In San Antonio there is a legend, a legend of the haunted ghost tracks. They sit at the end of Villamain Road as you are turning onto Shane Road. What are the ghost tracks you may ask? Well, they are a section of railroad tracks in south San Antonio that are said to be haunted by the spirits of the children that died there.

The story goes that in the 1930s (or 1940s, depends on who’s telling the tale, but does that really matter) a bus was carrying a group of children home from school. There is an alternate version that says they are coming home at night from a field trip. But when they reached the intersection of Villamain and Shane Roads, the bus stalled out on the tracks. One tale says that when the driver noticed a train coming, they tried to get the kids off the bus, but didn’t make it in time, while another says they driver tried to unsuccessfully restart the bus. In both stories the driver wasn’t successful and the bus was crashed into killing the students. But the story doesn’t end there. The bus driver, so distraught over the accident decides to commit suicide, by parking on the tracks and waiting to get hit by an oncoming train. Unfortunately for the driver, they ended up having to live with the guilt, because it’s said that the little ghost children pushed the car off the tracks keeping the driver safe and alive.

Today you can visit the tracks and, if you are brave enough, park on the tracks and the little ghost children will push your car to safety. Some people have even gone so far as to try to catch evidence of the children. They will sprinkle baby powder on the trunk of their car before they park. They have said that after they are pushed off the tracks, they have found little hand and finger prints on the trunk of their cars.

Well today I decided I wanted to try this. The ghost tracks are only about five miles from my house, so I grabbed my wallet, phone and water bottle and headed to the car. As I was driving out there, I realized I had been here before. I drive Doordash part time and had made a handful of deliveries here, so I had driven across the ghost tracks before and never realized that’s what they were as I only discovered this story about a month ago.

The tracks are on a slight incline. Its more pronounced on the Shane Road side than the Villamain Road side. I check to make sure nothing was coming, cars (people live out here) or trains (don’t actually want to get hit by a train) and I drove onto the tracks and put the car in neutral. Now I have a Jeep so there isn’t a flat surface to sprinkle baby powder on and I just got my car washed they day before, so I skipped that part of the ritual.

If you were reading earlier, I mentioned that the decade the story happened didn’t really matter and for a very good reason, there have never been any accidents recorded happening on the railroad tracks in San Antonio. There was a fatal accident that occurred in 1938 with almost the same circumstance, but that accident happened in Salt Lake City Utah about 1300 miles away from the ghost tracks here in San Antonio. Even though there is no record of the accident there are countless people, I work with some, that have been pushed from the tracks at Villamain and Shane and that said they had ghostly prints show up on their cars. Is it physics? Or some little ones trying to keep everyone safe?

If you are visiting the San Antonio missions, there are five, and are interested in experiencing a little San Antonio history visit the ghost tracks. They are just down the road from Mission San Juan and it’ll only take a little time out of your day. Whether they story is true or not, the tale is part of San Antonio’s many haunts to add to your list.