The Haunted Wells Fargo Train Car

A Ghost, A Gun, and Some Bad Shrimp

On January 26, 1882, a small article appeared on page three of the Reno Gazette-Journal. The headline read, “A Haunted Car.” It described eerie encounters that Wells, Fargo & Co. messengers had with a haunted Wells Fargo train car. That car, Express Car No. 5, regularly ran between San Francisco and Ogden. Express cars carried gold, silver, and other valuables. Armed messengers guarded them, much like today’s armored trucks. But this one had a problem.

The Phantom Express: First Class to Fright

For years, messengers on Car No. 5 reported strange disturbances. The stories spread so widely that in December 1881, the company sent the car to Sacramento for a full renovation. They believed this would, as one messenger put it, “kill the ghost and return the car to the rail free from all demoralizing influence.”

It didn’t work.

On January 24, 1882, Express Car No. 5 left San Francisco once again. The poor messenger assigned to it later called it the strangest night of his life.

“The ghost came in and tumbled the boxes of freight about, tolled bells, and made sweet music, and called the messenger by name.”

Wait, what? What exactly was happening in this car?

Wells Fargo vs. the Afterlife

Before the renovation, another messenger had an even stranger experience. He heard something moving on the roof. Thinking he was about to be robbed, he waited for the intruder to make a move. When nothing happened, he opened the door, peered outside, and saw nothing. Everything was still.

As he turned back toward the mail table, a box of cooked shrimp and a bandbox crashed to the floor.

Just imagine the smell of cooked shrimp in an unrefrigerated express car in 1881. Yuck. The freight scattered one more time, and then everything went silent.

Railway Spirits and the Man Who Shot at a Ghost

According to the article, Express Car No. 5 once transported a corpse. The messenger on duty claimed he saw the head and torso rise from the casket, look around, call him by name, and then vanish. Maybe the reporter exaggerated, or maybe the messenger had eaten too many of those cooked shrimp. Either way, it wasn’t the first or last time someone reported something strange.

The article blamed a train accident near Truckee, California, years earlier. That wreck killed Conductor Marshall and an express messenger. I tracked down the accident. The story checked out.

On October 20, 1872, an eastbound train on the Central Pacific Railroad sped toward Reno. Somehow, several cars detached from the engine. Despite frantic efforts to stop them, they crashed back into the locomotive. The post office, express, and baggage cars derailed.

Conductor Marshall got caught between two sleeping cars while trying to brake the runaway train. The impact nearly cut him in two. Express Agent John Hawks, Express Messenger Van Wormer, and Postal Agent Joseph Taylor also died in the wreck.

The Express Car That Refused to Stay Empty

That Haunted Car article wasn’t the last time No. 5 made headlines. On March 7, 1882, Aaron Y. Ross, a respected Wells, Fargo & Co. messenger, fired his gun at something inside Car No. 5. Ross wasn’t a man prone to wild stories. He stood six foot three, weighed over 200 pounds, and carried himself with authority. A year later, he fought off a train robbery single-handedly. He eventually retired at 87 and died in Ogden in 1922 at the age of 93.

But in 1885, even Ross had enough of Car No. 5.

One evening, while working alone in the car, he went to sleep around 10 p.m. At midnight, a loud crash jolted him awake. He checked the car. Nothing was out of place. Figuring he had dreamed it, he went back to sleep.

The next time he worked that route, it happened again. Every night, he woke to the same sound: a box falling and shattering. He eventually got used to it and ignored the noises. Then, one night, the sound was louder than usual. Ross sat straight up in bed. As he looked around, he saw something.

“The shadowy figure of a man stood at his desk, pen in hand.”

Ross had no idea how the man got in. When he grabbed his rifle, the figure vanished.

Car No. 5’s Last Ride

The last known report of Car No. 5 came in 1893, when it ran a mail route between Los Angeles and El Paso. That year, another chilling event took place. A tramp hitched a ride underneath a Central Pacific car. When the train stopped at a water tank, he lost his grip and died horribly. On the next trip past the accident site, messengers heard peculiar moaning. It happened every time—always in the same spot.

Car No. 5 met its own end near Lordsburg, New Mexico, in a wreck on December 10, 1893.

Sources:

• The Daily Bee, 14 Oct 1872
• The Mail, 7 Mar 1882
• The Mail, 19 Jan 1885
• Los Angeles Herald, 19 Dec 1893
• Arizona Daily Star, 10 Dec 1893