Your Tuesday Dose of the Spooky: Train Tunnels

It’s Tuesday again!  Time for your weekly dose of the Spooky, culled from around the web, the world, and life.  Every week I’ll have something new to send a shiver down your spine.

This week’s theme is train tunnels.

I don’t know what it is about train tunnels, but they scare the snot out of me.  The idea of a shaft, made by men, burrowing deep into the side of a mountain, just seems so crazy. Maybe it’s because I grew up in the California sun, but looking at pictures of tiny ovals of blackness that lead sometimes miles underground doesn’t make me feel great.  Mankind was meant to stand in the sunlight, in my opinion.  Or perhaps it was the story my mother told me about her foolish youth, when she and her friends decided to run through a train tunnel near Indian Springs, only to have an unexpected train chase them out–they barely made it.

It isn’t just tunnels; trains themselves terrify me, even though I was a huge train kid.  I had just about every Thomas the Tank Engine book published, and I don’t think I ever missed an episode of Shining Time Station.  But there’s something about locomotives that I will never be comfortable with.  Perhaps it is their size, perhaps it is the low rumble of rolling inevitability.  The sound of a train whistle echoing through a box canyon on a hot summer night gives me the heebie jeebies.  The fact that my favorite place as a kid was Roaring Camp astounds me.  But even more than a train locomotive, it is the tunnels that these locomotives travel through that emblemizes this fear in my mind.

In any event, trains and tunnels in media make me squirm.  I once wrote a review for Unstoppable on Netflix, and I remember physically shaking as I wrote it.   (The original review is probably long gone–good luck finding any specific movie review on Netflix; you can’t even sort them.)  The Stand By Me bridge scene?  Forget about it.  I’ll race you to the Route 136 bridge.  The Ghostbusters II subway scene?  Nope.  Someday I’ll write an entire post about why subways scare me so much (but nonetheless, I absolutely loved London’s Tube when I went there last January).

So, since it’s Tuesday, how would you like to hear about some train tunnels from real life?

First off, here in Spokane, Washington, there is an abandoned train tunnel that runs under my favorite cemetery, Greenwood Memorial Terrace.  For those that don’t know, this is the same cemetery that houses Spokane’s infamous “Thousand Steps.”  I plan to do a post about this cemetery in the future, including my encounter with what we call The Shadow Monster, but for now simply know that the Thousand Steps are our Local Haunted Thing, and that it’s almost impossible to go there in October without running into a group of local youths bent on taming this local Spooky Right of Passage.

Anyway, the tunnel.  It was dug between February 1909 and April 1910, straight through (or should I say under?) the middle of the cemetery.  All those times that I’d walked through that haunted cemetery at night, and I didn’t even know that in addition to the ghosts of people, I might have to contend with the ghost of a train?!  Needless to say, I was spooked when I found out about it.  I actually went out there looking for the entrance to the tunnel, even though they sealed it in the late 1970’s.  Well, they did a good job.

I thought I read somewhere that some Chinese laborers died during the construction of the tunnel and were buried at the worksite, but I haven’t been able to verify it, though my research is ongoing.  Consider that factoid an urban legend unless I post an update in the event that I ever find documented proof of such.  I’m not sure if this was a route used for passenger trains or not, but that said, it’s fun to think about passengers on the Tuesday Express wondering why they couldn’t rub away the hand prints forming on the windows as they chugged their way under the cemetery.

Now that we have a cemetery for our ghosts, how about a good old fashioned train disaster?  That’s exactly what happened at the Cascade Tunnel in 1910, where occurred a disaster so serious that not only does it have a Wikipedia page, it caused the town of Wellington to change it’s name to Tye to get away from the association with the disaster.

The original tunnel was constructed between August 20th, 1897 and December 20th, 1900, by The Great Northern Railway Company–the same company that owned the Greenwood Tunnel.  The original Cascade Tunnel passes through Stevens Pass, which stands barrier between Western and Eastern Washington State.  The tunnel was built to improve the existing route through the mountains, which since 1893 had consisted of a 4 percent grade and eight switchbacks.  Unfortunately, engineering compromises resulted in a tunnel that had problems.  The tunnel collected smoke, which was obviously uncomfortable for the passengers, but more importantly normal locomotives wouldn’t have enough air to breathe.  Due to the desire to reuse existing track rather than build a gentler grade, locomotives would have to climb significantly until just before entering the tunnel, so they could not accelerate in advance to clear the tunnel by momentum.  This problem was solved by using electric locomotives.  Within thirty years the tunnel would be replaced by the new Cascade Tunnel, which runs 7.79 miles, which is the longest tunnel in the United States.

The original tunnel is now abandoned, though it still stands.  Part of it caved in around 2006, blocking one end.  Up until that time, it was the site of an occasional rave, as crazy as that sounds.

This is how one website describes the entrance to the tunnel today:

But if you really want an experience, you must visit the original Cascade Tunnel nearby (preferably at dusk for the full effect), perhaps the creepiest location in America. Return to U.S. Highway 2 from the new Cascade Tunnel and continue another 5.6 miles east on the highway. At 47.74587 N, 121.0941 W, you’ll turn left onto an unmarked road. Part of the old Cascade Highway and no longer maintained by the state, this broken concrete surface winds back west through the Tye River valley as you slowly descend into thick vegetation.

Eventually you will take a right at the sign for the Iron Goat Trail, a walking path that parallels the original railroad tracks. Park in the gravel parking lot. You won’t have any competition for a spot because no one else will be there.

When standing at the informational center and large trail map, you’ll have two choices. Take the Iron Goat Trail right or left. You’ll want to walk left and bypass the orange plastic mesh that was put there to keep out thrill seekers. The area is infested with Grizzly Bears, Black Bears, Wolves, Mountain Lions and many other creatures of the forest. But the quick 0.3-mile walk is worth the risk.

Around a bend, you’ll catch a glimpse of the old Cascade Tunnel, the dark and foreboding western portal looming ahead of you. You probably shouldn’t enter because massive flooding can occur at any instant overwhelming the entire tunnel and creek bed (thanks to snow melts atop the mountains and a hole in the tunnel’s roof). Hence the orange mesh to keep people out.

So what happened in the original Cascade Tunnel that caused so many deaths and forced Wellington to change its name to Tye?  Snow.

The train in fact cleared the tunnel and was sitting out in the open under the peak of Windy Mountain, near Tye creek, next to the town of Wellington, which was essentially a Great Northern company town.  The snow was so severe that it could not be cleared from the tracks, and the train sat there for six days.  Weather knocked out the telegraph lines, isolating the town.  Then, the avalanche struck.

Charles Andrews, Great Northern employee, described the avalanche as follows:

“White Death moving down the mountainside above the trains. Relentlessly it advanced, exploding, roaring, rumbling, grinding, snapping — a crescendo of sound that might have been the crashing of ten thousand freight trains. It descended to the ledge where the side tracks lay, picked up cars and equipment as though they were so many snow-draped toys, and swallowing them up, disappeared like a white, broad monster into the ravine below.”

When it was all said and done, ninety-eight people were dead.

So, armed with this knowledge and healthy fear of passages underground designed for giant mechanical beasts, what did I do?  I hiked through a tunnel.  It was a cool experience to walk through it.  When you start, there is a tiny dot of light at the end that we mistook for a dim light held by a hiker in the distance.  My friends and I discussed it, and we were annoyed that we had to walk the whole tunnel behind someone too scared to do it in the dark.  It was only after walking for half an hour that we realized that the dot of light was the other tunnel opening.  Two miles is a very long distance when you’re underground and can stare at it straight.

And, finally, the ever awesome Aaron Mahnke did an episode of Lore about train tunnels called “The Bloody Pit,”  and it’s every bit as terrifying as it sounds.  In fact, it’s probably the Spookiest episode in the series (although he’s since done several episodes just as terrifying, notably “Echoes”, written about insane asylums, and “The Castle,” written about the original murder house).

Have a good Tuesday, everyone.  Keep above ground, and I’ll see you next week.

---

Further Reading:

Russel, Julie Y. “Hidden Tunnel at Greenwood Cemetery.” HistoryLink.org. HistoryLink. nd. web. 8 Aug. 2015. <http://www.spokanehistorical.org/items/show/127>.

Lange, Greg. “Train disaster at Wellington kills 96 on March 1, 1910.” HistoryLink.org. HistoryLink.org. 26 Jan. 2003. web. 8 Aug. 2015. <http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5127>.

Wade, Pete. “Scenic, Washington: Old Cascade Tunnel: Scariest Place in America?” RoadsideAmerica.com. RoadsideAmerica.com. 9 Sep. 2007. web. 8 Aug. 2015. <http://www.roadsideamerica.com/tip/16418>.

---

Do you like Spooky Tuesday?  Then please help me out by sharing my posts with your friends and on Facebook.  Consider subscribing to my mailing list so that you’ll get the latest articles as soon as they come out.  I also welcome comments, and I would love to hear suggestions about things to make all of our Tuesdays Spookier.