Following their long tradition of projects based on narrative themes, The Residents are pleased to announce the release of The Ghost of Hope, an historically accurate album based on train wrecks. Pursuing this theme in both a literal and metaphorical sense, the group discovered a series of vintage news articles highlighting the dangers of train travel in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Inspired by the era's elegant language, the group then contrasted that eloquence against the sheer horror of these devastating events, resulting in an album that sounds both startlingly new and curiously nostalgic. Using the familiar elements of music, spoken voice, sound effects and audio textures, The Residents have constructed a highly original series of tone poems quite unlike the music of anyone else - except, of course, The Residents.

"My heart is warm with the friends I make and better friends, I'll not be knowing,
Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, no matter where it's going."
- Edna St Vincent Millay

While the great poet's romantic relationship with train travel was undoubtedly heartfelt, she was definitely not traveling by rail as the 19th century neared its end. The dangers posed by increasingly fast trains coupled with heavier and heavier cargo loads, moving across an aging rail system, made derailment a common occurrence. In addition, the primitive communications and safety mechanism of the era often resulted in either head-on collisions or, conversely, "telescoping,"which occurred when a stationary or slow-moving train was hit from the rear by another train on the same tracks. When this happened, especially in winter when the cars were heated by coal-burning stoves and illuminated by kerosene lamps, the wooden passenger cars were quickly engulfed in flames, instantly roasting any surviving the initial impact. In retrospect, a simple fact was obvious: this revolutionary technology was progressing faster than society could regulate or control it.

Utilizing various techniques, including music, sound effects and text from actual newspaper accounts from the era, The Ghost of Hope purports to re-create several of these horrific incidents. While the dangers described in these factual events are now largely confined to the past, humanity perseveres, valiantly thundering ahead into the uncharted realms of digital technology, genetic engineering, artificial intelligence and the attempt to spread our seed throughout the cosmos. Meanwhile, have we learned from the past or are we doomed to repeat our mistakes on an ever grander scale?


HORRORS OF THE NIGHT
July 2, 1883

A recent arrangement between the Rochester & Pittsburgh and the Erie railroad lines resulted in abnormally heavy traffic along the P&R, with trains hauling load after load of gravel in the daytime and coal at night. On Saturday evening, July 2, 1883, the coal train, consisting of four separate sections, was making its regular run when the engine stopped on a steep grade to take on water. As the engineer jumped to the ground and began oiling the locomotive, a five car section including a coach carrying fifteen passengers, broke loose, quickly rolling back down the tracks; before he could pursue, two more coal cars broke loose,immediately following the others down the incline.

Meanwhile, unaware of what had happened ahead, the second section of the train was slowly pulling its load of coal up the same steep grade. As the engine came out of a curve, the operator looked up to see the lights of the passenger coach roaring down the hill toward him; yelling a warning to the fireman, he threw the engine in reverse and both jumped, but their effort came too late to avoid the impending collision. As the two men watched, the locomotive ripped into the coach like a meat cleaver splitting a cantaloupe, crushing its sleeping occupants.

The roar of the crash shattered the stillness of the night followed seconds later by the cries of agony coming from the few who survived the initial impact, but this lull in the raging bedlam was all too brief as the two runaway coal cars immediately blasted into this unforeseen whirlpool of pain and chaos from the uphill side. During the brief respite between the two collisions, a few lucky passengers managed to escape but the unfortunates still pinned in the wreckage were instantly parboiled by the scalding steam escaping from the locomotive's boiler.

Amazingly, only six men died in the crash although many more were wounded, maimed and disfigured.


THE CRASH AT CRUSH
September 15, 1896

Business was less than booming in the mid-1890s for the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railroad, popularly known as "The Katy." Consequently, an ambitious young passenger agent named George Crush devised a scheme to stimulate interest by raising the concept of "train wreck" to a then-unprecedented spectacle. Crush's plan was simple - he toured Texas for several weeks promoting the idea of a staged event in which two aging locomotives, one painted red and other green, would charge down a short expanse of track, meeting in the center with a thunderous roar. It would be the ultimate in late 19th century family entertainment

The chosen location for Crush's publicity stunt was a large natural amphitheater not far from Waco, Texas. The success of the passenger agent's ingenious plan was proven when 40,000 people arrived to witness "The Crash At Crush," making the newly created destination of Crush, Texas, the Lone Star State's second largest city for one day. In the raucous spirit of a carnival, a grandstand and circus tents from the Ringling Brothers were erected, as the event blew up into an extravaganza far beyond Crush's expectation.

The day of the big event finally arrived. With George Crush mounted atop a white stallion and the aggressive crowd surging closer and closer to the expected point of impact, the event was delayed for an hour while the hoard of hungry Texans was moved back to a "safe" distance. At 5:00PM, the two locomotives were rolled to the opposite ends of the four mile track, and, at a signal from George Crush, the two engineers opened their throttles and jumped to safety. Rushing down the slight incline to meet in the middle, each train had reached a speed of approximately forty-five miles an hour when the head-on collision occurred, causing both boilers to unexpectedly explode. With panic gripping the crowd, only luck prevented fatalities in the ensuing stampede, but the shrapnel and debris created by the blast killed three people while maiming dozens of others.

George Crush, who envisioned himself as the new P.T. Barnum, was immediately fired by the railroad, but when no negative publicity grew out of the event, Crush was rehired a week later. "The Crash At Crush" remained his one and only venture into the rarified air of garish ineptitude.



DEATH HARVEST
July 6, 1917

William A. Winsor, a well known and respected purveyor of meat in Tuna Valley, PA, was enjoying a rare Fourth of July holiday with his wife and four of his children when the unexpected toll of tragedy struck. The Winsors had chosen this lovely summer day as the perfect time to picnic, gather wild strawberries and entertain each other with games, poetry, and song, accompanying themselves on violin and flute. As the warm summer day drew to a close, they gathered in their Buick and headed home but, for some reason, Mr. Windsor was oblivious to the Pennsylvania Railroad's motorcar as it approached the scene of the accident at Irvine's crossing. While the engineer asserted that he blew his whistle and rang the bell, witnesses claimed to have heard no warnings originating from the railcar.

Hurled from the Buick by the impact of the crash, each member of the family except Gladys, one of the daughters, received skull fractures as their heads struck the hard rock ballast between the tracks. All perished instantly except Gladys and her father, William, who was found with with his head stuck in the ground and his feet in the air. Both miraculously survived to face the daunting reality of a future without a wife, mother, children and siblings. As evidenced by the day's activities, strawberries were strewn along the railroad bed among the bodies of the deceased.

Curiously, this incident represented one more chapter in the history of tragedies beleaguering the Winsor family. Many years earlier Mr. Windsor's older brother died from a gunshot wound while pigeon hunting at a racetrack; fifteen years later, his youngest brother expired, shot by his own gun in a nearly identical accident; and five years after that, Mr. and Mrs. Winsor's three year old daughter died from burns she received when her dress ventured too close to a bonfire near her home.

William Winsor had recently been replaced as Chancellor Commander of the Tuna Valley Chapter 453 of the Knights of Pythias. A ritual of succession in his honor had been planned, but the ceremony was sadly abandoned.


A SHROUD OF FLAMES
January 16, 1884

Having left Wellsville, NY, at 6:00AM, a regular morning train, running on the narrow gauge tracks of the Bradford, Bordell & Kinzua Railroad, was carrying about thirty passengers as it passed through the mountains near the village of Tarport. Immediately after clearing a curve, the engine was progressing at about fifteen miles an hour when a dull roar was heard, instantly followed by a swelling blaze that quickly consumed the train, obscuring everything but its smokestack, rushing down the tracks like a tiny black sail lost in a sea of flames.

Shrieks and screams coming from the passenger coach, occupied by several women and a few children, sliced through the air as the car was swallowed by a searing fireball, roasting its occupants as they scrambled to escape. By the time the wildly out-of-control train reached another curve and jumped the tracks, nothing was left of the passenger coach but the smoldering framework of its iron and timber bed, still sitting on the tracks. Amazingly, the baggage car, used by the men as a smoking compartment, was intact, but scattered across the snow behind the train were the charred remains of three women, burned beyond all recognition.

A subsequent investigation of the incident disclosed a 230-barrel tank of oil 150 feet from the track and high on the incline above it. Unknown, this tank had sprung a leak, causing oil to seep down the hillside beneath the the snow and onto the tracks undiscovered for a stretch of approximately one thousand feet. As soon as the engine entered this span of oil saturated track, sparks from the boiler instantly ignited the fuel, creating the hellish inferno that quickly engulfed the train.

In addition to the three deceased women, who could only be identified by their jewelry and fragments of their clothing, twenty others were seriously injured, mostly with burns about the face and hands. The skin of the engineer's right hand peeled off like a glove.


THE GREAT CIRCUS TRAIN WRECK OF 1918
June 22, 1918

It was around 4:00AM as the Hagenbach-Wallace circus train carried 400 sleeping performers and roustabouts from a performance at the Indiana State prison in Michigan City to Hammond, IN. The circus train was within walking distance of its destination when a brakeman noticed a fire in a hot journal box on a flatcar somewhere near the middle of the long string of cars. After notifying the conductor, the train stopped and the brakeman retreated back up the tracks to warn any oncoming traffic.

Following closely behind on the same track, a troop train was pulling twenty empty Pullman cars destined to transport soldiers from Kalamazoo, MI, to Chicago. While the engineer, Alonzo Sargent, was an experienced railroad man, Mr. Sargent had been on duty continuously for almost 36 hours; also, shortly before the accident, an icy wind began to penetrate the cab, causing the engineer to close the window, overheating the compartment and further dulling his rapidly dimming senses. Consequently, as the troop train barreled down the tracks, the drowsy engineer missed two signals and a warning posted by the circus train fireman, and plowed into the motionless caboose at a speed of thirty-five miles per hour.

As the locomotive forced its way into the rear of the circus train, the mangled frame of the caboose, along with the bodies of those inside, wrapped around the nose of locomotive as it continued its mission of mayhem through the hapless sleeping car ahead. Crushing and splintering everything in its path, the engine mercilessly left a trail of carnage and chaos, eating the essence of four more sleeping cars before finally coming to rest. With little hesitation, the wretched remains of the once bright and happy circus train burst into flames.

By the time the fire was extinguished and the bodies recovered, eighty-six circus performers and workers were dead. Five days later, in a section of a cemetery near Chicago called Showmen's Rest, fifty-eight of them were buried in a mass grave - most burned beyond recognition. Created by Buffalo Bill, the corners of Showmen's Rest are marked by four stone elephants standing as silent sentinels in tribute to the dead.


TRAIN VS ELEPHANT
September 17, 1894

At the time of this strange incident, the railway line connecting Teluk Anson and Tapa, in the western part of Malaysia had recently been completed, so exposure to train travel was relatively new. Several years later, a Malaysian man recalled the time in his youth when he found a sign shrouded in the undergrowth on the outskirts of his town: "THERE IS BURIED HERE A WILD ELEPHANT WHO IN DEFENSE OF HIS HERD CHARGED AND DERAILED A TRAIN ON THE 17th DAY OF OF SEPTEMBER 17, 1894."

Curious, the man researched the incident, speaking to several people old enough to remember the suicidal encounter between the train and the elephant. Some felt the bull was seeking revenge for the death of a calf recently killed by the same train, while others felt the event was purely a territorial dispute with the elephant defending its turf from the newly invading "Metal Monster."

The British engineer claimed the beast had staked its spot in the center of the tracks and no warning deterred its determined charge as the train thundered down the track at a speed of fifty miles an hour. While the impact of the crash killed the elephant, the bull did successfully derail the engine and three coaches.


KILLED AT A CROSSING
July 1, 1915

Described as the the first automotive railroad crossing fatalities in Northern Pennsylvania, Wilson Page and Mrs. Robert L. Folwell were both killed when their Ford was struck by the "Woggle-Bug," a self powered railcar. Before the coach could stop, the auto was carried approximately 800 feet down the tracks. The impact of the crash tossed Mr. Page's body one hundred feet into the air, crushing his head and breaking his arm, while Mrs. Folwell's body was thrown against a switch signal near the crossing, fracturing her skull and scattering her brains fifteen feet along the tracks. The curiosity aroused by this uncommon accident incited an unusually large crowd to gather at the rail-yard intent on viewing the tragic couple's mangled remains.

A search of their effects revealed that Mr. Page, driving his father's car, carried no money, only a collection of postcards from a large number of young women, while Mrs. Folwell's bag contained a few articles of clothing, twenty-six dollars and two letters. Subsequent investigation revealed that Mrs. Folwell, aided by Mr. Page, was in the act of escaping arrest in Olean, NY, where she had recently attempted suicide by drowning herself in the Allegheny River. Further inquiry disclosed the woman had used several aliases while gaining employment as a typist, real estate salesman and detective.

Mr. Page was survived only by his father, Fred Page. Mrs. Folwell was survived by her mother, Mrs. Robert Soulsby, two sisters, Mrs. J. H. Mitchell and Mrs. Lindsay Foster, and her husband, Robert Folwell. According to Mr. Folwell, the couple only lived together as man and wife for one day in accordance with a prenuptial agreement.

"Rushing Like a Banshee" is a preview single for the album The Ghost of Hope, co-produced by Eric Drew Feldman (Captain Beefheart, Fear, Pere Ubu, Snakefinger).

It was released by Psychofon records in a variety of special limited editions, including an object d'art train wheel edition.

A video for the song was created by John Sanborn.