Supernatural Stories Haunt Hoosac Tunnel
It’s head.
On the moonless night of June 25, 1872, at 11:30 p.m., James McKinstrey, drilling superintendent, and his friend Doctor Clifford J. Owens stepped into the gaping mouth of the Hoosac Tunnel in N. Adams, MA. Nearly overcome by the heavy, dank, foul air, they stood in the inky blackness, gasping, listening to the far-off echoes of dripping water, the flutter of bat wings and their own heavy breathing.
Well, it was their own, wasn’t it?
Stones crunched under their heavy boots as they penetrated deeper into the tunnel. The glow from their swinging, creaking lanterns created a play of shadows that danced hellishly over the wet, black earthen walls. Long shadows fell like bodies across the path ahead.
Nearly two miles into the tunnel, the men were forced to rest. At first the only sounds-an occasional ticking-came from the straining, riblike support beams. Then, hauntingly, a moan. Like a strong gust of wind rushing through leafless tree limbs.
Was someone hurt?
The lanterns, guttering now from lack of oxygen, grotesquely distorted their faces as they stared at each other with terror-stricken eyes It was then that the strange specter appeared.
The light, about two feet off the ground, approached from a westerly direction. As it neared it assumed human form. “The headless form came so close that I could have reached out and touched it,” Doctor Owens would later write, “but I was too terrified to move. For what seemed like an eternity, McKinstrey and I stood there gaping at the headless thing like two wooden Indians. The blue light remained mtionless for a few seconds as if it were actually looking us over, then floated off toward the East End of the shaft and vanished…”
This was not the only supernatural occurence at the Hoosac Tunnel
On October 18, 1867, came the worst tragedy in the tunnel’s violent construction period. A crew working working the Central Shaft in little more than crawl space was buried alive.
They were 580 feet beneath the surface.
It was a Saturday. At 1:00 p.m., without warning, a tongue of flame like an escaping breath from hell shot skyward. It completely enveloped the building erected directly over the shaft. Not only was the structure consumed, but the blaze rendered the machinery for pumping water and raising workers from the bottom totally useless.
Within the conical shaft were circular platforms containing jacks and tools of every descrition. One by one the platforms gave way, sending showers of sharpened implements raining down the shaft onto the men. A bucket filled with stone ascending the shaft when the fire broke out, was empied quickly, then lowered to retrieve the trapped workers. But the flames rapidly melted the connections, sending the bucket – the only remaing means of escape – plunging downward.
Shortly after , amid tons of ash and debris, the building’s timbers and roof collapsed. Aone in the darkness the workers could only feel the waters rising against their legs, hear it gushing into the shaft, overpowering the cries of men going mad.
The doomed crew numbered thirteen.
What happened following the Central Shaft disaster is best described in Carl R. Byron’s book, “Pinprick of Light.”
“All during the following winter, villagers told of vague shapes and muffled cries near the water-filled pit. In the midst of snow-storms or heavy fog, workmen claimed to have seeothers carrying shovels and pickaxes appear but for a moment, only to vanish, leaving no footprints in the snow replies to their calls.”
One last tale, more temporal perhaps than supernatural, endures. Again, from Byron’s “Pinprick of Light.”
“On the afternoon of March 20, 1865, a premature blast detonated by Ringo Kelley crushed fellow blasters Ned Brinkman and Billy Nash under tons of rock. Kelley immediately left the locale as fellow workers swore that the spirits of Nash and Brinkman were wandering through the bore waiting to even the score. Naturally, a year later to the day, Kelley’s strangled body was found on the exact spot where Nash and Brinkman died. Deputy Sheriff Charles F. Gibson fixed the time of death between midnight and 3 a.m., but weapon, footprints or suspects were ever found.”
During the tunnel’s construction, 195 men were killed. One hundred ninety of them had names; five remain unknown. Occicially the Hoosac Tunnel was opened on Thanksgiving Day, 1878.
Only one problem remained: the horses. Exausted and blind from working in the dark tunnels, the animals were deemed to be of no further use. They were led to their quarters one final time. There, rather than receiving food and water, they were walled in and left to die.
This grisly chore accomplished, the men walked away from the excavation site, leaving behind trails of swirling bats disappearing into the big night sky, the moaning and sighing of the tunnel, and unspeakable things that must forever remain in the dark.
