I'm Not Afraid of Munger Road
“Sometimes fairy stories say best what needs to be said.”
Every year around Halloween, as the “pumpkin patches” begin to pop up in LA parking lots, it’s easy to meditate on ghost stories and folktales. Whether they’re true or not, or even based in reality, they never fail to entertain and always evoke some sort of response. It’s around this time of year that I often recall an old local legend we heard growing up around our hometown of St. Charles, Illinois…
As the legend goes, there was a school bus driver who, once upon a time, stopped an entire bus full of children smack-ontop of the intersection between Munger Road and the train tracks. Naturally, it wasn’t long before a train came and hit the school bus head-on, killing all the passengers onboard. Nowadays, they say that if you visit the same intersection at night and sprinkle some baby power on your car’s bumper (or maybe even your windows), all while leaving your vehicle in neutral, the ghosts of these kids will push your car to safety. This is, supposedly, The Haunting of Munger Road.
There are countless legends like this in small towns across America, and as someone who firmly believes that even hints of truth can be found in anything, most likely one of these stories is probably true. Or, at least based on a true event. However, there is no truth to Munger Road. At least not in the ghost story surrounding it.
Even though folks have had strange experiences on this dark country road, and a horror film has even been made about the Midwestern locale, there is no evidence that a school bus full of children was ever hit by a train on Munger Road. Though there may be evidence of that happening elsewhere in the country, this dingy Illinois road is not one of them. But that still didn’t make us any more comfortable driving down it at night, and often we’d mutter a short voiceless prayer under our breath as we passed.
Folktales and folklore have an interesting way of producing deep-rooted superstitions. And even if you’re not superstitious, as The Office’s Michael Scott would say, you’re probably still “a little stitious.” But, what’s fascinating about folklore, in general, is its commitment to detail. Munger Road and the train tracks that cross it are real places in the Chicago suburbs. So is the Village of Sleepy Hollow in the state of New York, though there are no real Headless Horsemen there (and, truth be told, in the original short story, there isn’t a real Headless Horseman either).
Again, as a firm believer in the unexplainable, and someone who takes most paranormal tales fairly seriously, there’s a clear difference between folk legends such as The Haunting of Munger Road and multiple eyewitness accounts of say, UFO activity (which the government now admits as being a real, unexplainable phenomenon). One is based on complete fiction, with no one to corroborate the tale, while the other is based on countless firsthand accounts and testimonies.
There’s no doubt that people can (and do) believe whatever they want. We’re free to do so, it’s our God-given right. But when choosing what to believe and what not to, it’s important to look at the facts to determine what’s true.
Just this past week, an old friend of mine argued that facts and truth didn’t necessarily go together. I shared the definitions of both, which overlap pretty clearly, and he immediately ended the conversation, frustrated that I focused on that rather than his prior argument. But you can’t divorce facts from truth and, quite frankly, part of the reason our country is in such a mess right now is because of that division. But that’s another discussion for another time…
The Haunting of Munger Road has been disproven time and again by local historians and ghost hunters alike, reminding us that, in the end, truth triumphs over fiction. But what of the other, deeper truths? The ones that many claim are just folktales due to the sensational or even supernatural nature of them? Where does Christianity fit into all this?
Unlike most religious texts, the Christian Bible was written and compiled over the course of centuries by nearly 40 different human authors (not counting God’s divine inspiration), all while maintaining textual consistency, which is a pretty incredible feat that most authors today struggle to do in their own works. Imagine how much harder it would be without the internet…
There are over 5,000 complete Greek biblical manuscripts, 10,000 in Latin, and over 9,000 in other languages such as Slovic, Ethiopian, Coptic, and Armenian. There is more evidence for the Bible’s authenticity than any other literary work. By comparison, everything we know of Julius Caesar’s conquests comes from his firsthand accounts in Commentarii de Bello Gallico, which we only have 10 copies of. Likewise, there are only 5 historical manuscripts of Aristotle’s Politics.
In just the four Gospel accounts about the life of Christ alone, aside from many of the author’s own firsthand testimonies, there were over 500 witnesses to Jesus’ resurrection whose accounts were used to compile together and corroborate the historical events. Even many pagan and non-Christian historians wrote about the Christian belief in the resurrection, and given how many lives were so quickly changed in the first century, it was clear that these people truly believed that it happened.
Though the historical accuracy of biblical events has been in doubt in the past few hundred years, more, more, and even more archeological discoveries have not only proved many of the people, places, and events true but continue to provide more physical evidence for faith. Beyond even that, the vast majority of Old Testament prophecies have already been fulfilled to the letter, with the remaining prophecies specifically about the “End of Days” still to come.
If you’re still not convinced, consider the works of Lee Strobel and Josh McDowell, who both go into insane historical and logical details that I can’t work through in a single post here. But believe me, they’re well worth your time.
Folktales and urban legends can frighten and inspire, but they can’t completely change a person’s life. In truth, not much more than an encounter with Jesus can do that. Before the Apostle Paul became a Christian, he persecuted, jailed, and killed Christ-followers as being heretics. He hated them and what they believed, thinking it was complete blasphemy.
It was only after meeting the resurrected Christ that Paul’s life was completely changed, and he became the most prominent leader in the Christian church, writing over half of the New Testament. Because of his writings, among other biblical accounts, many have come to trust in Christ themselves, which has led to the building of hospitals and schools, the liberation of women, the modern abolition of slavery, the founding of well-known global charities, scientific advancements, the elevation of the arts, countless humanitarian efforts, missions organizations, the end of infanticide (and the continued efforts against its modern-day counterpart), and communities that just take the time to love and serve one another.
You can read a lot more about that in Alvin J. Schmidt’s How Christianity Changed The World, but one thing is evident, no other story, true or not, has produced fruit quite like that. And if Jesus can do all of that, there’s no reason to be afraid of a place like Munger Road.
The Bible isn’t just a bunch of urban legends and folktales. It’s a collection of historical stories, epic psalmic poetry, words of wisdom, and plenty of prophetic words, some of which are admittedly pretty fantastical but are nevertheless true and life-changing. If anything, the Bible is God’s love letter to us, and in a world full of false ghost stories meant to frighten us, it shines like a spotlight on the truth and leads us into charitable action for the betterment of both ourselves and others.
This Week’s Petty Pick
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving is probably my favorite American folktale and short story. It’s a strange story about Ichabod Crane, a lanky schoolmaster, who hopes to court a local lady and gain her father’s inheritance, only to encounter a mythic Headless Horseman along the way.
This story has been adapted in countless forms (my favorite being the Sleepy Hollow TV series), but probably the best audio adaptation has to be the one narrated by Tom Mison (who starred as Crane in the aforementioned show). Listen to it here if you’ve never heard the story before, it’s a good one!