Everyone and everything has to start somewhere. The Hoosac Tunnel was planned in an effort to get the train system up and going in North Adams, Massachusetts when America was still in its beginning phases. A tunnel was to be built through the Hoosac Mountain Range for the train system to run through. The tunnel was in construction for 24 years, and took more than $20 million and 200 hundred lives. Most of these lives were lost in the badly controlled nitroglycerin explosions that the construction workers set off to hurry the construction along.

Among the first crews in America to use nitroglycerin was it really any surprise that tragedy struck? The first time nitroglycerin was used, it was set off by explosion experts Ned Brinkman, Billy Nash and Ringo Kelly. Unfortunately, however, the incident ended with a bang. Ringo Kelly set the explosions off early, killing his two compatriots with tons of rock. The incident was ruled an accident, although doubts started forming when Kelly disappeared shortly afterward. Two months later, Kelly was finally found. His body lay 2 miles into the Hoosac Tunnel, scarily close to where the other two men had died. He had been strangled. His murderer was never found.

This tale led to rumors of hauntings and caused the tunnel to be known as cursed, and many of the workmen refused to enter the tunnel again after dark. The workers started complaining of hearing men moaning in agony at night. Initially, it was brushed off by the construction company’s leader, Mr. Dunn, but as progress slowed, he eventually invited mechanical engineer Paul Travers to investigate with him. They entered the tunnel at 9 o’clock PM. About 2 miles into the tunnel, near where the explosives had been set off, they too started to hear anguished moans. Travers reported later that they “both heard what truly sounded like a man groaning out in pain… [He had] heard this same sound many times during the war. Yet, when [they] turned up…the wicks on [their] lamps, there were no other human beings in the shaft except Mr. Dunn and [himself]… Mr. Dunn agreed that it wasn’t the wind [they] heard,” and then presented the possibility of having been hearing Nash and Brinkman’s spirits.

These aren’t the only ghosts that haunt the Hoosac Tunnel. In October of 1868, disaster fell upon the Hoosac Tunnel once more. The workers had been constructing a ventilation shaft at the top of the mountain. Upon the top of the mountain sat a small building that acted as a pumping station and contained a lift to the bottom of the 500 foot deep pit. Inside the building were flammable materials such as gasoline, oil and power lamps. The fumes built up and the building exploded, sending the mining tools, the lift and the burning remains of the building to the bottom of the shaft, where 13 miners were working.

Another miner was sent down, and when he was pulled up once more he was near unconscious from the fumes. He claimed there was no hope, and the 13 miners were left to die in the bottom of the shaft. Slowly, the shaft flooded without the pumping station. When construction on the shaft was opened again, after a year of reports of vague shapes and muffled wails, the bodies of the miners were found. Several of them had survived long enough to attempt to build a raft to stay atop the water. They had died of asphyxiation.

There are many more horror stories involving the Hoosac Tunnel, although not all of them take place in the 19th century. In the mid 1900’s, Joseph Impoco started work at the railroad. Impoco claims that the ghosts in Hoosac Tunnel has saved his life more than once. According to Impoco, he had been chipping ice off the tracks when a voice told him to run. When he looked up, Train No. 60 was coming towards him. When he looked around to thank whomever had saved his life, no one was there but him.

Another time, Impoco was using a crowbar to free freight cars from the ice on the tracks, when a voice told him to drop the crowbar. Upon doing so, Impoco claims that it was instantly struck by 1,100 volts of electricity. Once again, Impoco found himself alone in the tunnel.

Although the ghosts in the tunnel may have saved his life, they have also tried to take it. When clearing trees and debris from the tunnel entrance, Impoco claims that a tree nearly fell on top of him, accompanied by a malicious laugh that Impoco felt certain did not come from his crew. After this incident, Impoco quit his job, but he returns every year under the certain feeling that something horrible would befall him if he did not. The only year Impoco did not travel to visit the tunnel was in 1977. He stayed and took care of his ill wife instead. She died in October of the same year.

More recently, college students left a tape recorder in the tunnel to see what they could uncover. Once retrieved, the sound of muffled human voices could be heard on the tape.

Stories like this are still prevalent among those who live near the tunnel. Apparitions, moans and shrieks, unnatural winds and the feeling of unease are the norm around Hoosac Tunnel. So is Hoosac Tunnel haunted with the ghosts of men long dead? Or is it a just a piece of American history with a gruesome past?

More Information

http://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com/hoosac-tunnel-disaster/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoosac_Tunnel
https://www.prairieghosts.com/hoosac.html
http://www.hoosactunnel.net/history.php
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/hoosac-tunnel