Ghostly Footage

The night shift at Metro Herald Newsroom was quiet—too quiet for Adrian Cole’s liking. He was a field reporter, the kind who once chased political scandals and crime rings, but now, ever since his career stumbled, he was assigned to “human interest stories.”

That’s how he ended up covering the Central Line redevelopment project—a forgotten train route closed after a mysterious accident twenty years ago. Most saw it as just another bureaucratic story. Adrian saw it as a possible way to claw back his credibility.

When he reached the old Westbridge Station—the last stop on the abandoned line—only two floodlights flickered weakly against the cracked walls. It smelled of rust, rainwater, and mold.

The project manager, a middle-aged man named Lewis, walked him through the site. “We’re clearing old debris tomorrow,” Lewis said. “Apparently, this section hasn’t been opened since ’04. Power outage, faulty brakes—whole carriage derailed. Seven people died.”

Adrian scribbled notes, his recorder blinking red. “Any survivors?”

“None,” Lewis replied. “At least, that’s what the reports said.”

There was something in his tone—uncertainty, maybe guilt. Before Adrian could press, a worker shouted from below. “Sir! You should see this!”

Down the platform, behind a half-collapsed barrier, a small security office had been discovered. Inside, old monitors sat dead on a table, their screens coated in dust. Lewis brushed one off. “This used to be the surveillance hub,” he said.

Adrian’s eyes caught a half-open drawer. Inside, several VHS tapes were stacked neatly, each labeled with a date—right up to October 12, 2004, the day of the crash.

“Mind if I take one of these?” Adrian asked.

Lewis hesitated. “Those should go to the authorities.”

“Authorities haven’t cared in twenty years,” Adrian muttered, slipping one tape into his bag.

That night, back at the newsroom, Adrian set up an old player in the editing room. He inserted the tape, his reflection shimmering on the dark monitor. The footage flickered alive: a grainy black-and-white view of the train platform.

For the first few minutes, it was uneventful. Commuters waited, checked watches, talked on phones. Then, suddenly, at 2:13 a.m., the feed glitched. The screen distorted, as if static were trying to form a shape.

When the picture cleared, the platform was empty.

No people. No train. Just a faint humming sound—like something mechanical but distant. Adrian frowned, rewinding and replaying the sequence, but the same thing happened: people vanished.

He leaned closer. At the far end of the frame, something moved. A dark figure stepped into view—a silhouette, tall and rigid, standing perfectly still.

Adrian froze. The figure’s head tilted slightly, as if looking directly at the camera.

The tape cut to black.Adrian didn’t sleep for two nights after watching the footage.

It wasn’t ghosts he feared—it was humans.

He went back to Westbridge Station one final time, determined to find where the tapes had come from. The new construction workers told him the office he’d entered before was now sealed off for “safety reasons.” When he mentioned the VHS tapes, the site supervisor gave him a hard stare.

“We’ve been told not to discuss that section,” the man said quietly.

“By who?”

“City council,” he replied. “Or what’s left of it. They sent people here last night. Took boxes from that office.”

Adrian’s pulse quickened. The same office. The same tapes.

He went straight to the municipal archives the next morning. After hours of requests and paperwork, a weary clerk finally handed him a faded accident report. The details were sparse—but one thing stood out: a list of passengers.

Seven names.

Six confirmed dead.

One marked missing.

The missing person’s name: Edwin Marsh — security supervisor.

Adrian stared at the signature at the bottom of the page — the official who’d declared the report “closed.”

It was the same name as Lewis, the current site manager.

His stomach turned.

Lewis had been there during the crash.

That evening, Adrian went to confront him. He found Lewis in the temporary site office, smoking beside the blueprints.

“You were here in 2004,” Adrian said. “You signed the closure report.”

Lewis’s eyes narrowed. “You’ve been digging too much.”

“Why fake the footage? Why hide it?”

Lewis stubbed out his cigarette, silent for a moment. “That crash wasn’t an accident,” he said finally. “Maintenance reports were ignored. The brakes failed. I was ordered to keep quiet. They said it would ruin reputations.”

“And the night guard? Edwin Marsh?”

Lewis looked down. “He found out before the crash. Tried to alert passengers. They locked him in the control room.”

Adrian felt cold all over. “So those tapes…?”

“Were his,” Lewis said softly. “He recorded everything that night, thinking it would expose the truth. But the system burned out mid-recording. They told me to bury it—and I did.”

The sound of construction machinery hummed faintly outside.

Lewis sighed. “You shouldn’t have brought this up again, Cole. Some truths don’t bring justice. They only reopen wounds.”

Adrian turned off his recorder. “Then maybe it’s time someone bled for it.”

Two weeks later, Metro Herald published Adrian’s exposé:

“The Hidden Victims of Westbridge.”

The article went viral. Investigations were reopened. City officials were forced to resign. Lewis was arrested for falsifying safety documents.

The final paragraph of the story quoted Adrian’s words:

“Sometimes ghosts aren’t the ones haunting us.

It’s the guilt we bury—and the silence we protect.”

That night, Adrian sat in his small apartment, staring at the city lights flickering beyond his window. The tapes sat on his table, sealed in a box labeled Evidence.

The hum he’d once heard in them was gone now.

But sometimes, late at night, he thought he could still hear the faint sound of a train passing through the dark—

not supernatural, not cursed—

just a reminder of the lives the world had tried to forget.