A ghost hunter in North Carolina was walking along the supposedly haunted train tracks on a 100-metre long trestle when an oncoming train struck and killed him.

Twenty-nine-year-old Christopher Kaiser and a dozen other amateur ghost hunters were on the tracks early Friday morning hoping to have ghostly sightings of a train that derailed at the site 119 years ago. Instead a real train with three engines and one car turned the corner towards them.

Everyone except Kaiser were able to run away unscathed, reports the Columbia Daily Tribune in Missouri. Before being hit and falling 30 metres off the trestle and into the ravine below, Kaiser pushed a woman away from the train. She was airlifted to hospital but her condition is unknown. AOL News says that most of the ghost hunters are out-of-towners and some fled the scene because they were trespassing on railroad property.

On Aug. 27, 1891 a passenger train derailed off the trestle near Statesville, NC and sent 30 people to their deaths. Legend has it that every year on the crash's anniversary, the sounds of screaming passengers could be heard on the bridge.