Horrific Hauntings : The Haunting of The Hoosac Tunnel

 Throughout the early 1800s, Railroad engineers were on a quest to find a way to connect the American City of Boston with the districts of New York. In 1851, after considerable pre-work, the massive undertaking commenced but, it required a variety of sub-projects and architectural features for successful facilitation. Key among these constructions was the requirement for a tunnel that stretched five miles directly underneath the Hoosac mountain chain, running parallel to the Deerfield River from the town of Florida to the city of North Adams. With only pickaxes and rudimentary black powder available, the pursuit was tough, and a notable number of lives were lost to both tunnel collapses and a lack of ventilation.

 Almost fourteen years after the commencement of the project, after the advent of nitro-glycerine, the workers were finally able to make real headway through the unrelenting barriers of rock and clay. But this new technology did not come without a price, and it was not long after it was adopted that the first fatal accident occurred.

(Source: Journeys And Jaunts)

The Origins

 On the afternoon of the 20^th of March 1866, a three-man crew were experimenting with the new explosive at the head of the tunnel works. Ringo Kelley, a tunnel worker, accidentally detonated the explosive charge before his two colleagues, Ned Brinkman and Billy Nash, had made it back to the safety of their operations bunker. The two men were killed instantly, crushed to death by the falling rocks and debris.

 Following the tragic incident, Kelley became isolated and withdrawn. He was skittish and nervous around his colleagues, claiming to see inexplicable figures following him through the confines of the tunnel. Furthermore, he also claimed to hear deathly whispers when he was alone in the tunnel. Soon afterwards, he mysteriously disappeared following which his lifeless body was found at the exact location where Brinkman and Nash had succumbed to the weight of the avalanche of rocks. Although the local sheriff concluded that he had been strangled by one of his colleagues in revenge for the two deaths, no one was officially questioned about the murder.

 Eventually, the rest of the workers also began encountering shadowy figures, moving just beyond the reach of their lantern lights. Sometimes these inexplicable figures allegedly groaned in pain whilst, on others, they deafeningly shrieked in terror. Word soon spread that the ghosts of the two men now inhabited the tunnel and it caused a large number of miners to leave the site for good. With the massive walkout notably affecting the progression of the project, managers began to seek assistance from local clergymen and scholars, in an effort to stop the ghost stories.

 In 1868, the management asked Paul Travers, a qualified mechanical engineer and a respected cavalry officer, to come and inspect the site, hoping that the rumours could be finally dispelled. Rather than agreeing with the construction company’s theory that the noises were caused by the wind blowing through the tunnel network, the engineer instead sided with the ghostly claims of the workers. He claimed that during his visit he had been bombarded with the chilling sounds of the dead and the dying, terrifying repercussions he had not experienced since the battle of Shiloh.

A Tragic Explosion

 A month after Travers’ tunnel inspection had taken place, there was a humongous explosion in the pumping station of the tunnel, following an unexpected build-up of naphtha gas. The thirteen subcontractors who had been labouring in the tunnel at the time were all caught in the blast. Most of them instantly succumbed to the huge sections of the burning wreckage but as it would transpire, they would turn out to be the lucky ones.

 The few survivors quickly understood that there was no way back up and found themselves being pushed deeper and deeper into the depths of the tunnel network by an unending wave of muddy water. Those that did not drown survived a little longer by clinging on to a makeshift floater, but with the tunnel’s air pumps destroyed in the explosion, they eventually suffocated.

 Mallory, a tunnel worker, volunteered to be lowered down into the shaft’s bottom through a bucket, hoping to retrieve at least some of his fallen colleagues. When he was pulled back up several minutes later, he was barely conscious. Still falling short of breath, he told his managers there were no survivors to be seen and all the bodies were gone. It took several months to drain the site and during that period, at least some of the bloated corpses had found their way out of the flooded tunnel and into the surrounding waterways.

The emergence of Shadowy Figures

  Local residents began contacting the police, claiming that mysterious shadowy figures guided them to the remains of the victims, allegedly disappearing when each body was found. One worker claimed to see a group of men with pickaxes on their shoulders, walk towards a nearby water-filled pit. As the men had not replied to his calls, the worker had followed them for a short distance before they suddenly vanished near a slushy pit, leaving behind no traces in the wet mud beneath them. The worker observed a dark shape floating in the middle of the pit following which deafening screams of torment broke the silence around him.

 As the high-pitched cries continued, the man covered his ears and brought his lantern close to the object in the water. The dim light revealed the bloody remains of a young labourer, one of the victims of the tunnel explosion. Strangely, the screaming stopped instantly after the worker realised what the object in the pit was.

 When all thirteen bodies of the dead workers were recovered and given a proper burial, reports of shadowy figures disappeared along with them. However, sounds of disembodied voices in the dark depths of the facility continued, thus prompting the administration to take further steps to rationalise the happenings.

Inexplicable Transforming Orbs of Light

 On the evening of the 25^th of June 1874, Superintendent James R. McKinstry, the Drilling Operations Manager, arrived at the tunnel and he had enlisted the services of Dr Cliffor J. Owens, a university lecturer. After James unlocked the gates to the building works, the two men descended into the bowels of the tunnel. Before they had travelled too long, a terrifying commotion that floated from dark depths halted them. It sounded like a human being in great pain and it emanated from a dim light that steadily made its way towards the two men.

 When the light drew near, Owens could see that it was unnaturally blue in colour, unlike anything he had ever witnessed before. As it neared them, it suddenly seemed to change in shape, transforming into a humanoid figure with an empty space instead of a head. The two men found themselves holding their breath in fear as the shape came to a halt right in front of them. It was hovering a few feet above the ground and seemed to be silently looking at them. For a few moments, the men were surrounded by an eerie silence, before the inexplicable figure gave out a high-pitched shriek to break it. Soon afterwards, the figure retreated back into the dark depths.

Frank Webster’s Encounter

 Three months after Dr Owen’s experience, a local hunter named Frank Webster disappeared in the woods near the construction site. Three days later, he was found in a disorientated state on the banks of the Deerfield River. When questioned, he claimed that he had been hunting deer in the forest when he heard someone calling to him. The voices led him through the trees and into a nearby fissure in the mountain rock. In the poorly lit cave, he had seen shadowy figures working on the rock around him. Strangely, not even their axes hitting the rock made a sound and the cave remained completely silent. Furthermore, the figures did not respond to Frank’s calls.

 Soon afterwards, an invisible force snatched his hunting riffle from his hold and it had repeatedly beaten him with it until he blacked out. To accredit his claims, Frank did not have his rifle with him when he was rescued and he was covered in bruises and abrasions, suggesting a violent assault.

The Disappearance of Harlan Mulvaney

 The first train successfully passed through the Hoosac tunnel on the 9^th of February 1875. The project had taken over twenty-five years to complete, costing millions of dollars and well over a hundred lives.

 The opening of the railway line reduced the number of reports of disembodied voices emanating from the walls of the insides of the tunnel but reports of unearthly orbs of light emerging from the depths of the tunnel still persisted in magnitude. To further worsen the phenomena, other unsettling happenings commenced.

 In the middle months of 1875, Harlan Mulvaney, an employee of the Boston & Maine railway company, was delivering a load of timber to the tunnel, in order to replace the damaged wooden supports. Members of the maintenance team had been waiting for him at the entrance and had allegedly waved at him as he passed. As they lit their lanterns and gathered their tools to follow him, Harlan’s wagon recklessly bolted past them back out of the tunnel. As the horses pulling it kicked wildly as they ran, Harlan stood upright in his seat with his face depicting an extreme sense of terror.

 A few days later, a local hunter located the wagon and the horses standing unattended in a forest clearing three miles away from the tunnel entrance. The timber lay undisturbed and Harlan’s coat and pipe sat on his seat, but there was no sign of Harlan himself. Sadly, Harlan Mulvaney was never seen again.

The Disappearance of Bernard Hastaba

 During the 1970s, stories of the haunting of the Hoosac Tunnel were published in a national newspaper, thus generating a renewed wave of public interest. Paranormal investigators and researchers gathered at the site in large numbers, hoping to collect some form of evidence to prove the existence of the paranormal phenomena. One such individual was a man named Bernard Hastaba, who announced in 1973 that he would walk the full length of the tunnel, to disprove the alleged paranormal happenings in the tunnel.

 With a group of onlookers watching him, Bernard entered the tunnel through the North Adams end only to be never seen again. The following day, a rescue team retraced his tracks hoping to find Bernard alive. However, they found no evidence suggesting that he had made his way into the tunnel. It seemingly appeared as if he had vanished into thin air.

Accounts of Paranormal Investigators

 In 1976, an investigator claimed to have seen the spectre of an old man. Dressed in a miner's uniform, the man was apparently backlit by a bright white light. When the investigator confronted the ghostly figure, it had walked directly into a rock face before disappearing.

 Another investigator named Ali Allmaker claimed to have encountered a paranormal presence while venturing into the tunnel. A shadowy figure had allegedly appeared right next to her before mysteriously disappearing moments later. Furthermore, she claimed to have recorded the muffled sounds of groaning and crying on her tape recorder but they were never officially verified.

Apparently Benevolent Apparitions

 Joseph Impaco, a railroad employee, claimed that his life was saved by the tunnel ghosts on two distinct occasions.

 One evening, Joseph had been removing ice from the rail lines on a blind curve near the tunnel’s north entrance when a male voice suddenly whispered “Run, Joe, Run” in his ears. He apparently stopped what he was doing and looked around, but he found no one. Moments later, feeling a violent push on his chest, Joseph fell backwards away from the tracks. Quickly afterwards, a train had come steaming around the corner at an unexpectedly high speed. Without the warning and the subsequent push, Joseph claimed that he could have been killed by the oncoming locomotive.

 Six weeks later, Joseph experienced something similar. This time, he had been trying to free up the frozen wheels of freight cars when the same voice had whispered “Joe! Drop it, Joe!” in his ears. Instinctively, Joseph had let go of the metal crowbar he was holding, following which it was immediately thrown against the walls of the tunnel by over 11 thousand volts of electricity. A power line had short-circuited and fallen onto the tracks nearby and the benevolent apparition had saved Joseph’s life once again.

Conclusion

 The sheer number of human lives the tunnel had used for its foundations had earned it a frightening nickname, “The Bloody Pit.” Despite its haunting nature, were its workers really attacked and terrorised by the souls of their dead co-workers? Is there a possible rational explanation?

Hoosac Tunnel  (Source: Sam LaRussa / Flickr)

 The claustrophobic darkness of the underground tunnel and the notable lack of oxygen could have played tricks in the minds of those labouring in the tunnel. The terrifying environment could have caused them to misinterpret something benign as far more sinister. However, the unsolved deaths and disappearances that occurred at the site do raise questions with no conclusive answer. Perhaps, the souls of the dead miners are still trying to find a way to exit the earthly realm.