GHOST GLOSSARY
A dead house is in Britain, a small building at railway stations once used as a temporary morgue to house corpses of those who died on railway property, until they could be taken away. Ghosts of the dead who have been placed in the dead houses have been reported at some railway stations.
One such occurrence took place at the Middlebrough station in North Yorkshire. A young telegraphist by the name of Archer always was made uneasy by the strange atmosphere exuded by the dead house, and avoided going near it. One night at about 2 A.M., he steeled himself to walk past the house alone when he suddenly saw a fellow employee, Fred Nicholson, a signalman, standing at the end of the platform. As Archer drew nearer, Nicholson vanished.
Archer told the signalman on duty what he had seen, and he was informed that Nicholson had been killed by a train that afternoon—and that his body was lying in the dead house.
SEE ALSO:
FURTHER READING:
- Whitaker, Terence. Haunted England. Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1987.
SOURCE:
The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits– Written by Rosemary Ellen Guiley – September 1, 2007