"The Signal-Man" is a short story by Charles Dickens, first published as part of the "Mugby Junction" collection in the 1866 Christmas edition of All the Year Round.
The signal-man of the title tells the narrator of a ghost that has been haunting him. Each spectral appearance precedes, and is a harbinger of, a tragic event on the railway on which the signalman works. The signalman's job is to sit in a signalbox near a tunnel on a lonely stretch of the line and control the movements of passing trains.
