The Hoosac Tunnel took twenty-four years to build, cost twenty million dollars, and killed nearly two hundred men. The workers who drilled through the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts between 1851 and 1875 named it themselves: the Bloody Pit. They were not being dramatic. The tunnel was 4.75 miles of rock that did not want to be a tunnel, and the men who forced the issue paid for it with their lives — in explosions, cave-ins, and one catastrophic shaft fire in 1867 that left thirteen men stranded six hundred feet underground, where they built a raft and waited for eleven months for a rescue that nearly did not come.
The named dead have names attached to specific incidents. On March 20, 1865, a powder man named Ringo Kelley detonated a nitroglycerin charge before his two coworkers reached safety. Both died. Kelley fled. A year later, his body was found inside the tunnel, in the exact section where the blast had killed his coworkers. He had been strangled. No one was ever charged. In 1868, a cavalry veteran named Paul Travers walked a short distance into the tunnel during a snowstorm and came back out in a hurry, reporting groaning from the dark ahead. He said he had not been that frightened since Shiloh. In 1874, a hunter named Frank Webster went missing for three days near the tunnel, emerged in shock, and claimed invisible hands had taken his rifle and beaten him with it.
The tunnel is still active — freight trains run through it regularly — which makes access limited and regulated. The ghost accounts are still generated, by railroad workers, local historians, and the occasional person who has arranged access and gone in. The Berkshire Hills are still there, and so is the tunnel, and the mountain has not changed its attitude about any of it.
Story Source: www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com
Address: Hoosac Tunnel, North Adams/Florida, Berkshire County, Massachusetts
Accessibility Rating: Limited or Restricted Access — Partially accessible; some areas off-limits, permit required, or access is seasonal or irregular.
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What Others Have Experienced
Visited the West Portal on October 17th — the anniversary of the 1867 disaster. The moment I stepped across the threshold, my camera started firing on its own and I couldn’t control it for my entire visit. Camping nearby that night, I couldn’t shake an uneasy feeling.
— from abandonednyc.com
My daughter and I ventured inside and watched a dark shadow cross the tracks in front of us and vanish into the wall. Back in the parking lot, the tunnel exhaled a rolling fog across the entrance — then retracted. A chill shot through us from across the lot.
— from abandonednyc.com
I went in alone — which I shouldn’t have. Deep inside I heard something that stopped me cold: a voice I couldn’t explain. I ran back to the parking lot and watched mist pour from the portal behind me as I left.
— from journeysandjaunts.com
Visited the east portal — an impressive limestone arch with an active rail line running through it. Walked up to the memorial at the air shaft site on Whitcomb Rd and took in the Deerfield River bridge nearby.
— from TripAdvisor
I’ve been to the Hoosac Tunnel more times than I can count and have never seen or heard a ghost. But every time, the darkness, the cold, and the constant moisture leave me feeling unsettled in a way that’s hard to explain.
— from hoosactunnel.net
