Sometime in the 1940's, a school bus full of kids had stalled on the train tracks while there was an oncoming train. The train was barreling towards the bus and was unable to stop in time and smashed right into the bus, killing a bunch of the children. Legend goes that any car that stops on the tracks will be pushed by the ghosts of the children off the tracks and try to save their lives. Legend also states that if the ghost children cannot push the car past the tracks, the people in the car will die.
One Halloween, when I was in high school we drove to these railroad tracks, at the edge of town back then, to test it out. It was a bit eerie, all the street names near the tracks have children's names like Bobby St., Cindy St. Betty Lou St etc., after the dead children. We get to the tracks and there are several other carloads of people doing the same thing. Finally get to our turn to try and we sprinkle baby powder on the sides and bumper of the car, supposedly it will help the hand prints of the ghost children visible from where they pushed the car. We came to a complete stop, just before the tracks, turned off the engine, and put the car in neutral. Slowly the car started moving forward and we went up and over the tracks, safely to the other side.
We get out to take a look and sure enough, you could see hand prints all over where we had put the baby powder. There did seem to be the slightest bit of slope, which made us a bit skeptical whether ghosts pushed the car or not. We talked it over and decided to try it in the other direction since there seemed to be a bit of an incline and gravity wouldn't be aiding the ghosts. From the other direction, we stop just before the tracks, turn off the engine and put the car in neutral. We all expected to roll backwards a little, but instead the car moves forward slowly. Slowly we inch towards and right on top of the tracks, then the car just stops moving for a second or two, right in the middle of the train tracks. A little freaky, but then it starts to move forward again and we just make it over the tracks.
It's funny now, but we all breathed a little sigh of relief when we cleared the tracks. It can't be real, but we all still felt a little relieved. It's a fun thing to do on Halloween. Of course that's just the kind of thing those dumb kids say in all those horror/slasher movies too.