CANDLELIT CHRONICLES: HISTORIC HAUNTS

Sad News with Even Sadder Ramifications

Two 10th grade girls in Pennsylvania were killed by an Amtrak passenger train. That is tragic news, and we pray for the family and friends left behind. What is even more distressing is that  autopsies and forensic psychological investigation concluded that both deaths were suicide: intentional, premeditated, planned. As a person who has suffered from train-phobia all my life-I'm the product of a generational railroad family-I simply cannot imagine what kind of steel nerves would allow anyone to wait for an oncoming train. Simple evolutionary survival instinct alone would impel any human to attempt to avoid and escape approaching danger. Yet these two girls, ages 15 and 16, deliberately and with forethought planned this excursion to achieve their deaths. Amazing, tragic, and mind-boggling. I cannot begin to conceive of the grief of their loved ones-particularly now that the intention of the act has been made public. There is still a particularly negative cachet surrounding suicide. In any event, this is a tragic outcome and an undeniable shame that these two young girls lost their lives, and I include in that the recent tragic death of the boyfriend of one of the two girls, when hit by a car while on his bicycle. Three young lives ended precipitously and unnecessarily. I canot help but wonder at the depths of despair required to convince these two girls that life could hold no further joy, hope, nor laughter.





http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/2-pennsylvania-teen-girls-hit-by-train-com...





"Siderodromophobia": extreme fear, amounting to phobia, of trains, railroads, and rail travel.





http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_phobia_is_the_fear_of_trains_railroads_or_train_t...