THE STORY
Reported Haunting
The Reading & Columbia Railroad once maintained an actual station stop called "Spook House" beside an abandoned farmhouse north of Landisville. Railroad crews stopping there for water reportedly saw a mysterious figure in the stream and culvert beside the supposedly haunted house.
One of Lancaster County's strangest railroad legends centers on a nineteenth-century station stop officially known as Spook House. When the Reading & Columbia Railroad opened through East Hempfield Township in 1863, its timetable included the unusually named stop beside an old thatched-roof house approximately one mile north of Landisville. The house had reportedly already stood vacant for many years. One explanation for its haunted reputation claimed that sheep sometimes entered the abandoned building and their nighttime bleating was mistaken for ghostly wailing. Railroad crews, however, told a stranger story. Steam locomotives stopped at Spook House to take on water, and some engineers reportedly saw a mysterious human-like figure in the stream or culvert beside the property. Railroad historian John D. Denney Jr. later recorded that the structure stood directly across the tracks from a nearby greenhouse and that its old well remained in use long after the house disappeared. The Spook House was demolished around 1899. The former Reading & Columbia Railroad right-of-way is now the Lancaster Junction Recreation Trail, and Uncharted Lancaster places the approximate historic station site at these coordinates.