Were it not for the famous Lizzie Borden murder trial taking place five hundred miles away in Fall River, Massachusetts, the story of the phantom train of Cambria County might have become well-known outside of Carrolltown.

This tiny borough sits twenty miles west of Altoona, and, in 1892, became a stop on the newly-formed Cambria & Clearfied Railroad. The focal point of this rail line was a tunnel constructed through Strittmatter Hill, just south of Carrolltown. And it was near this spot where one of the strangest unexplained events in Pennsylvania history took place.