A ghost in the papers
In August 1905, newspapers in several states printed a strange little story from LaPorte County. People near a railroad stop called Flaherty station, the papers said, kept away from it at night. A headless figure had been seen there after dark, moving its arms like a railroad man flagging down a train.
The stories said the ghost was Columbus Cole, a local man who had died a couple of years before. It was the kind of short, odd item that papers often passed along to one another. More than a century later, the headless flagman is still told as one of LaPorte County’s ghost stories. Here is what the record shows, and what it doesn’t.
What the legend says
The versions differ in their details, but the heart of the legend is the same. The legend goes that the figure stood near the tracks at night, without a head, and signaled as if a train were coming. People said it was Cole. The papers reported that local residents avoided the station after dark because of it.
None of this is evidence of a ghost. These were short newspaper items, reprinted in papers far from Indiana. They tell us that a ghost story was going around in 1905. They don’t tell us that anyone saw a ghost, and the details they give don’t hold up well against the record.
Who was Columbus Cole?
Columbus Cole was a real man, and that matters more than the ghost. The earliest reports of his death come from November 1903, nearly two years before the ghost story appeared.
According to those reports, Cole was killed on Nov. 14, 1903, when the steam boiler of a farm machine exploded during the corn harvest. The accident happened on the Flaherty farm, south of Stillwell, a small community in LaPorte County.
Writer Tim Prasil of Brom Bones Books found and described two of those 1903 reports, from the Indianapolis Journal and the Walkerton Independent, in 2025. Separately, the La Porte County Historical Society Museum, which looked into the case for us in November 2026, told us it found the accident reported in the La Porte Weekly Herald of Nov. 19, 1903, and located Cole’s death certificate. No train is part of any of those accounts.
The papers disagreed
Here the story gets tangled. The 1905 ghost stories didn’t all agree on how Cole died. At least one said he had lost his life in a boiler explosion, which matches the 1903 reports. According to Prasil, another version, printed in Connecticut, said he had been run over by an engine near the station’s water tank. That is a death that suits a railroad ghost much better than a farm accident does.
Details often shift as a story is retold. A farm accident can turn into a railroad death, and a farm called Flaherty’s can turn into a station. We can’t know who first changed this story, or why. What we can say is that the reports written closest to the time describe a farm accident.
Where was Flaherty’s Siding?
The 1905 papers called the place Flaherty station. In our own La Porte After Dark stories, we have called it Flaherty’s Siding. Nobody knows where that was, or whether it ever existed as a railroad stop.
The museum found no Flaherty station or siding on maps of the Lake Erie & Western Railroad, the line that ran through the area. Prasil found no evidence of a station with a platform there either. Railroad schedules show nearby stops at Walkerton, Stillwell and Kankakee, which the museum describes as a whistle-stop near where the line crossed the Kankakee River. It’s possible that people nearby used the Flaherty name for a spot along the tracks near the farm, but we found no record that proves it.
If you know where Flaherty’s Siding was, we’d like to hear from you, and so would the museum.
Remembering Columbus Cole
The ghost is a legend. The man was real. Columbus Cole died in a farm accident on an ordinary working day in November 1903, and his family lost him. That is the part of this story worth keeping.
Please don’t go looking for the headless flagman. The farmland south of Stillwell is private property, and nobody knows where the “station” was anyway. Never walk on or along railroad tracks, day or night: trains can come at any time and can’t stop quickly. Stay off railroad tracks and respect private property.
If you want to learn more, the La Porte County Historical Society Museum in La Porte is the place to start. Thanks to the museum for digging into this one. For more local stories, see our La Porte County history page and La Porte After Dark.
Questions
Is the headless flagman ghost real?
It is a legend. Newspapers printed the story in 1905, but there is no evidence of a ghost. The man it was named for, Columbus Cole, was real.
How did Columbus Cole die?
The 1903 reports say he was killed on Nov. 14, 1903, when a steam boiler exploded during the corn harvest on the Flaherty farm, south of Stillwell. The 1905 ghost stories didn’t all agree: writer Tim Prasil found one that said a train ran him over.
Where was Flaherty’s Siding?
Nobody knows. The La Porte County Historical Society Museum found no Flaherty station or siding on Lake Erie & Western Railroad maps.
Can I visit the site?
Please don’t go looking for it. The farmland is private property, the location of the “station” is unknown, and you should never walk on railroad tracks. The La Porte County Historical Society Museum is the best place to learn more.
Sources: Brom Bones Books (Tim Prasil): A Headless Ghost Near Stillwell, Indiana · Strange Ago: Headless ghost sightings from long ago (reprints the Barbour County Index, Aug. 16, 1905) · La Porte County Historical Society Museum (research shared with La Porte Weather Now, Nov. 2026) · Wikipedia: Stillwell, Indiana · Michigan Railroads: Stillwell, IN station