Real life RPG inspirations – Mass murder on the railway
I often say that you hardly need to make stuff up, just look at history for ideas. Boing Boing linked to an article recently on a mass grave of 57 migrant Irish workers who were meant to have all died from cholera in 1832, while working on a few miles of the Philadelphia to Pittsburgh line.
In June of 1832, the 57 Irish migrant workers arrived at the docks of Philadelphia. Their job was to lance a flat path for the track through steep, hilly terrain. In railroad parlance, this is known as a ‘cut’ and thereafter that stretch of track would be known as Duffy’s Cut. Six weeks later, they would all be dead. History would blame cholera for their deaths, but history is always written by the winners, and the winners—in this case the railroad company and the landed gentry of Chester County—would be best served by such an explanation. But in fact there is a lot about the historical record that doesn’t add up.
It’s a really interesting article of cover up, death, big business exploiting the workers and people doing each other over for profit. Not to mention ghosts. Lots and lots of ghosts.
A nice atmospheric quote from the full article.
A dark shadow looms over the valley at Duffy’s Cut, dubbed Dead Horse Hollow because the carcasses of dead horses were allegedly dumped there back in the day. Some say it’s cursed, other say it’s haunted. But for the 178 years since the 57 Irishmen died there, the valley has remained untouched by development or, for that matter, any manifestation of modernity.
Something tells me I’ll be using this in a one off at some point.