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| Bloods Point Road: The Phantom Train, the Ghost Bus, and the Shape in the Corn |
You don’t take Bloods Point Road by accident.
You turn onto it because someone told you not to.
The highway fades behind you. The noise drops away. The farmland opens like a mouth.
No businesses.
No houses close enough to matter.
No steady stream of passing headlights.
No houses close enough to matter.
No steady stream of passing headlights.
Just a long stretch of asphalt cutting through Boone County fields, the kind of road that feels wider than it is because there’s nothing to anchor you.
The first thing you notice is how exposed you are.
The second is how quiet it gets.
And then you see the crossing.
Two red signal lights.
A crossbuck sign.
Steel rails slicing across the road.
A crossbuck sign.
Steel rails slicing across the road.
You slow down without meaning to.
Because this is where it starts.
The Road That Feels Too Empty
Bloods Point Road sits outside Belvidere, surrounded by flat Midwestern farmland.
By day, it’s ordinary.
By night, it feels stripped down to something older.
People who’ve grown up nearby will tell you the same thing: the railroad crossing has a habit of activating when nothing is there.
The red lights flash.
The bell rings.
Sometimes the gates lower.
The bell rings.
Sometimes the gates lower.
You wait.
You listen for the distant growl of an engine.
You look both directions down the track.
There’s no headlight.
No vibration in the rails.
No approaching shape in the dark.
And yet the sound comes.
A horn.
Low. Distant. Moving.
The kind of sound that travels across open land.
It gets louder.
Your pulse follows it.
Then it passes.
Not visibly.
Not physically.
Just… passes.
And the lights go dark.
Drivers have reported stalled engines. Radios filling with static. Doors locking on their own. One story says a car was found abandoned on the tracks, doors open, keys still in the ignition.
There are tracks there. Real ones. Trains do pass through Boone County.
But locals swear there are nights when the crossing reacts to something that never arrives.
The Cornfields Don’t Move — Until They Do
Northern Illinois farmland is flat enough that you can see storms coming from miles away.
But at night, that openness turns against you.
Corn grows high in late summer. Taller than a car. Taller than most men.
The rows form corridors. Blind spots. Perfect walls.
Wind moves through them in waves. But sometimes there’s no wind — and something shifts anyway.
Drivers have described seeing sections of the field tremble while everything else stays still.
Not a gust.
A path.
Something moving parallel to the road, just out of sight.
Keeping pace.
By the time you realize it’s matching your speed, you’re already gripping the steering wheel too tightly.
You don’t stop to investigate.
You don’t roll the window down.
You drive.
And you don’t look at the corn again.
The Bus That Never Crossed
Every haunted road eventually collects a tragedy.
Bloods Point has one that refuses to fade.
The story most often told is simple: in the 1950s, a school bus tried to beat a train at that crossing. It didn’t make it.
The number of children changes depending on who tells it.
Five. Seven. A dozen.
Sometimes the driver survived. Sometimes no one did.
Five. Seven. A dozen.
Sometimes the driver survived. Sometimes no one did.
In some versions, the signal lights malfunctioned.
In others, there were no warning lights at all.
In others, there were no warning lights at all.
What matters isn’t the count.
It’s what people claim happens now.
Late at night, if you park near the crossing and shut off your headlights, you might see a shape in the distance.
A boxy outline.
Faint yellow paint catching the moonlight.
Windows too dark to see through.
Faint yellow paint catching the moonlight.
Windows too dark to see through.
It doesn’t move.
It just sits there on the road ahead.
If you blink, it’s gone.
Others say they hear it before they see anything — the rattle of metal, the squeal of brakes, the hollow echo of children’s voices carried across the fields.
Not loud.
Just enough.
Enough to make you roll your windows up even though you didn’t realize they were down.
The more unsettling versions say if you leave your car in neutral on the tracks, something pushes you.
Not a shove.
A steady pressure.
As if small hands are trying to move you out of harm’s way.
Or onto the tracks.
Depends on who’s telling it.
The Clown That Wasn’t There Before
The clown is newer.
That’s what makes him worse.
He wasn’t part of the original train stories. He wasn’t tied to the early accident rumors.
He just… appeared in the narrative sometime in the late 20th century, when urban legends started spreading faster and darker.
Some say he was a performer disfigured in an accident.
Some say he lived in a farmhouse near the crossing and snapped after the bus crash.
Some say he isn’t human at all.
Some say he lived in a farmhouse near the crossing and snapped after the bus crash.
Some say he isn’t human at all.
The most common version is the simplest.
If you stop your car on Bloods Point Road and turn off your headlights, you won’t see him right away.
You’ll see the corn.
Tall. Motionless. Lined up in endless rows.
Then something will be slightly off.
A break in the pattern.
A vertical shape where there shouldn’t be one.
He doesn’t run at you.
He doesn’t scream.
He stands.
Face pale. Smile wrong. Features uneven, as if rearranged and put back together carelessly.
If you turn the headlights back on, he’s closer.
If you blink, he’s closer.
And if you panic and hit the gas—
People say you’ll see him in the rearview mirror.
Keeping pace.
Reported Encounters Along Bloods Point Road
Bloods Point isn’t famous because of one story.
It’s famous because people keep adding to it.
Online threads about the road don’t read like polished ghost stories. They read like quick confessions.
“I didn’t believe it either.”
“I thought it was just teens hyping it up.”
“Something happened and I can’t explain it.”
“I thought it was just teens hyping it up.”
“Something happened and I can’t explain it.”
The most common reports involve the railroad crossing.
Drivers describe pulling up to flashing red lights with no train in sight. They wait. The bell keeps ringing. The horn sounds close enough to rattle the glass.
And then nothing passes.
A few seconds later, the lights shut off as if a train just cleared the intersection.
Some say their car stalled while sitting on the tracks. Not dead battery. Not engine failure. Just a brief, suffocating silence under the hood — like something pressing down on it.
Others mention their radios turning to static the moment they stop near the crossing. When they drive away, the station returns.
The bus stories are quieter but more personal.
People have claimed they felt something brush the side of their vehicle while parked. A soft tapping against the rear door. Gravel shifting behind them even though no one is there.
One repeated story describes a driver who turned on the interior dome light and saw faint handprints in the dust on the back window.
Small.
Spread apart.
As if someone had pressed both palms there.
Spread apart.
As if someone had pressed both palms there.
When they stepped out to check, there was no one on the road. No footprints in the dirt shoulder.
The clown accounts are less frequent — but more unnerving.
Several online posts describe seeing a figure standing at the edge of the cornfield just beyond headlight reach. Not moving. Not waving. Just present.
One driver wrote that when they turned their brights on, the shape seemed closer than it had been seconds before.
No running footsteps.
No visible approach.
No visible approach.
Just closer.
When the Stories Overlap
The most unsettling accounts aren’t about just one thing.
They’re about nights when the crossing lights flash, and the horn sounds, and something moves in the corn at the same time.
Drivers have claimed that while waiting for the phantom train to pass, they’ve seen a yellow reflection in their side mirror.
Not ahead.
Behind.
Others say they heard children laughing while the red lights blinked — only to notice a pale shape standing between the rows of corn beyond the tracks.
The stories don’t stay separate for long.
The train becomes the warning.
The bus becomes the tragedy.
And whatever stands in the corn becomes the witness.
Or the reason.
On Bloods Point Road, the legends don’t compete.
They layer.
Why Bloods Point Feels Different
Some haunted roads feel theatrical.
Bloods Point feels patient.
It isn’t packed with attractions. There’s no organized ghost tourism. No staged fear.
It’s farmland and rails and sky.
The isolation does most of the work.
Out there, you are very aware of how far help would have to travel to reach you.
You’re aware of how small your car feels against open land.
And when a story attaches to a place like that, it doesn’t need proof to survive.
It needs repetition.
One driver hears a horn that isn’t there.
Another sees a bus that vanishes.
Someone else swears they locked eyes with something standing in the corn.
Word of mouth is enough.
Because fear spreads more easily than fact.
Similar Legends: When Roads Remember
Clinton Road — West Milford, New Jersey
One of the most infamous haunted roads in America, Clinton Road is known for phantom headlights that tail drivers for miles before vanishing. Coins tossed from a bridge are said to be thrown back by a ghostly boy below.
Like Bloods Point, Clinton Road thrives on isolation — long stretches of darkness with nowhere safe to pull over.
And like Bloods Point, what lingers most isn’t what you see.
It’s what follows you.
Riverdale Road — Thornton, Colorado
Riverdale Road carries overlapping legends: a burning farmhouse, a phantom jogger, and rumors tied to a hanging tree.
But the most persistent reports involve pursuit.
Headlights that disappear.
Engines revving behind you.
The sense that something is pacing your car just beyond sight.
Engines revving behind you.
The sense that something is pacing your car just beyond sight.
Bloods Point has the crossing.
Riverdale has the curve.
Both use darkness as a weapon.
Bray Road — Elkhorn, Wisconsin
Bray Road is known for the Beast of Bray Road — a wolf-like cryptid reportedly seen walking upright near rural highways.
Unlike Bloods Point, Bray Road leans cryptid rather than ghost.
But the setting feels familiar.
Cornfields.
Open farmland.
A shape stepping into headlights before slipping back into the rows.
Open farmland.
A shape stepping into headlights before slipping back into the rows.
Sometimes the road isn’t empty.
It’s watching.
Archer Avenue — Justice, Illinois
Archer Avenue runs past Resurrection Cemetery and is tied to one of Illinois’ most famous ghost stories — Resurrection Mary.
Drivers have reported picking up a quiet young woman in white, only for her to vanish from the backseat near the cemetery gates.
Like Bloods Point, Archer Avenue blends road, tragedy, and repetition.
A stretch of asphalt.
A story that won’t die.
And headlights that sometimes illuminate more than they should.
If You Go
Locals will tell you not to park on the tracks.
Not because of ghosts.
Because real trains still use those rails.
But if you drive it late enough—
Windows up. Engine idling. Red lights blinking in the dark—
And you hear a horn that doesn’t belong to anything you can see…
You’ll understand why Bloods Point Road never quite shakes its reputation.
Some roads feel empty.
This one feels watched.
And sometimes, it follows.
© 2026 Karen Cody. All rights reserved. This original story was written exclusively for the Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth blog. Do not copy, repost, or reproduce without permission. This tale may appear in a future special collection.
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