Halloween night should have ended with laughter, music, and masqueraders returning home with stories to tell. Instead, for a truckload of Philadelphians traveling through southern New Jersey, the celebration ended in sudden and unimaginable horror.
More than thirty costumed men and women were riding toward Billingsport when their truck reached the railroad crossing near Clarksboro at the same moment as an approaching Pennsylvania train. The locomotive struck the vehicle squarely in the center, ripping through it and scattering its passengers along the tracks.
Seven people were reported dead before midnight, while scores of others were rushed to nearby hospitals with terrible injuries.
7 Merrymakers Killed in Crash
CLARKSBORO, New Jersey. — Seven were killed and a score or more injured tonight when a Pennsylvania train crashed into a truckload of Halloween masqueraders near Clarksboro, N.J. The masqueraders were all Philadelphians, and were en route to Billingsport, New Jersey.
The truck and a Camden-bound train arrived at the Clarksboro crossing simultaneously, the engine striking the loaded motor directly in the center and literally tearing through it.
Bodies were hurled in all directions, many of them so badly mangled that identification will be difficult. Emergency calls were sent in to Woodbury, N.J., and nearby towns for physicians and ambulances and the injured were hurried by every conveyance available to the Underwood Hospital at Woodbury and the Cooper Hospital at Camden.
There were more than 30 persons, both men and women, in the truck, and virtually every one of them received some sort of injury. While the death list was placed at seven shortly before midnight, physicians working with the injured said that others were so badly hurt that the number of killed undoubtedly will be increased.
Source: The Washington Herald. Washington, D.C. November 2, 1919.
