The Church Hill Tunnel

Hi, I'm Holly. And I'm Hailey. Welcome to Mountain Mysteries, Tales from Appalachia. Oh, did you want me to talk first?

I did, I was late on you. This is Hailey's episode. Oh, yeah, sorry. So I assume she would talk first.

So, hi. Oh, I'm G. I like to. I'm excited.

I'm excited that you're totally reaching out to me. It's really nice because I rarely speak with you. I like that. I think I'm really uncomfortable.

Hailey. I'm friendly, I'm like that. Did you just hate her? She's a good person.

She's a good person. She's a good person. She's a good person. She's really pretty.

Sexy voice. Yeah? Ew. Again, like that.

I mean, you're either going to get like a valley or I mean I could speak like my grandma. I used to. Yeah. Give me my cigarettes.

That was great. I have a much deeper voice than I think I do. You know something in listening back to our podcast is I pick up so much on both you and I. In general, it doesn't sound on a day to day like we have like much of a southern accent.

But when you listen to this podcast, you pick up on our southern accents. That's so funny. Yeah. I only get.

Okay. So I did promise you I tell you I have a couple of things to tell you. She's been talking. That will make you maybe not mad.

She's been talking to me. She taught me last week. It's been a whole thing. Listen.

Okay. So first and foremost, we were talking about how I take more risks. Yes. Then you do.

Yes. So and news for the podcast. I'll make it podcast official. I'm dating now.

Yes. A new gentleman? Gentlemen. Yes.

Call her. No, I do sorry. I have caller up. I don't have caller.

No, no, no. He's great. Do you have a problem dresses? There's a problem dress closet at the church.

I attend. So we had to go- I did not wear that one, that was going. We had to drop off these dresses. And this it's in the top floor of the church.

It's very dark, very scary. I have been there. So I went and dropped the dresses off. And we were leaving and we took the scary elevator up because I'm lazy.

They didn't want to go upstairs. We also have done that. So we took the elevator up, dropped the dresses off in the room. And we're going back down the stairs.

And I heard a noise that sounded like somebody walking. And I was like, well, heck, somebody's broken into this. House of the Lord. I'm gonna have to fight them now.

I am the beacon. So I'm like taking off down the hallway and he's yelling at me and he's like we literally talked about this. You would not last five minutes in a horror movie. He's like stop walking.

I'm like no I have to look. He's like oh my god he's a latch come with you. I'm like I mean pick what you want dude but I'm going. So I took off and I'm like opening doors.

He's like stop it. Stop it. I'm like you're not helping. He was he was more scared than you.

He was he would survive in the horror movie I would not and he's like I don't want to fight anybody tonight. I'm like I don't want you to. I just I'm going to tell him to leave whoever's up here. But she out demon spirit turned out.

I found nobody. We left and I called the pastor because I was like hey I also broken his office because I needed a box. Wait a minute. All right but yet you're looking for someone trying to tell them you know you are breaking into the house of the Lord and yet you have.

Listen I didn't really break in his door was unlocked. But it was what I walked in because I figured I was getting granola bars and stuff. What the hell is the story going to? Conferences granola bars to listen.

I was getting the granola bars to take them to the school because people donated them for my kids. That's cool. So I found a box. I just told the box I've called the pastor and I was like hey just so you're like I'm going to go you know when you open your closet.

I dumped the box of Nerf guns you had in there out. And I now have the box and he's like sweet I don't really care. It's going to be a little bit of church. So I took the granola bars and all of them fell in the house.

Oh also I thought I heard it intruder upstairs. I checked it out. I couldn't find anybody. My boyfriend it was very upset at the time.

He's very upset about it. And he's like well I get it. So he said no no no it was not a person. He said I bet it was the bats.

The bats in the church. Like in the attic or everywhere. Really. There's one downstairs one time.

Something got bit by one. Oh my gosh. For sure. Wow.

That's a terrible. So that's where that's where I went. Well fun fact when I bought my house there are bats in the attic. Oh yeah I forgot that.

And bats can only be removed by professional certain times of the year because they have to be released back into certain areas. So usually August is the time of the year where they take. Well the thing is we've had these removed I think a couple of times and they sealed where they thought they were coming in at but they're still in the attic. But they get out of the attic and into other parts of the building.

Oh my gosh. Very interesting. Okay so I've been to this church before and I have been to that top floor. I've been in the elevator and I'm going to tell you it's so creepy.

It's so scary upstairs. It's really really creepy. Yeah. And I think it's haunted.

Oh 100% it's haunted. But they ask yourself if a church is haunted. Right. What's that good versus evil?

Are they benevolent spirits that God is like okay you're cool here. Yeah I think so. It would have to be right. Yeah.

In the house of the Lord. Yes. Because then it really does get into good versus evil. Yeah I can't have that conversation.

No because if there's demons there are demons in your church. That'd be bad. In the house of the Lord. It would be bad.

No these are all good ghosts. But no I really thought there was an intruder in there and I was ready to spite them. Anyway okay well okay let's just go back just for a second. Number one I already knew this but congratulations on the man.

Yeah. Number two that sounds great that people donate dresses. That's great that donations of granola bars. I don't know where the Nerf guns come in but cool.

I don't either. Glad it wasn't an intruder. You're scaring this man to death. I hope he sticks in with you.

Me too. And bats wow. There was a whole lot to process. To get to the bats.

To get to the bats. I didn't know where this was going. I thought we were going towards ghosts for sure. No.

I kind of like the idea of an intruder and you tackling them. I mean I never would have been an intruder in there. I did go into the baptistry. Chut me.

I walked into the baptistry and I was like nobody in here. Have you ever been in a baptistry at night with no water? No what a baptistry is. Oh because you're Catholic.

Where you don't come? Okay gotcha. Yeah gotcha. It's like a mini pool.

Kind of a mini pool. Yeah. That's cool area. I don't like it.

Beautiful when it's in service. Nice. At night in the dark. Drained.

Scary. I think any like drained pool at night. Yeah. Yeah.

Well kooky. All right you want to talk about this vampire of Richmond? Yes I do. Okay so.

Picking up from your story from last week. So we're going back to Virginia. But we're actually going to talk first about the Churchill tunnel. Because that's going to get us into the vampire.

Well we have to get our time. Yeah to start digging away. All right so. My spoon.

The Churchill tunnel is an old Chesapeake in Ohio railway. It's a CNO tunnel. It was built in the early 1870s and it goes approximately 4000 feet under the Churchill District of Richmond, Virginia. On October 2nd, 1925 the tunnel collapsed on a work train.

It killed four men and trapped a steam locomotive in ten flat cars. Rescue efforts only resulted in further collapse and the tunnel was eventually sealed for safety reasons. Not sad. So we're going to talk about all that.

But so freaking cool. So cool. So let's kind of dive into the history of the tunnels. That's kind of a little sneak peek.

So Churchill tunnel was completed in 1873 obviously for the CNO rail road. Which was seeking to extend its tracks from terminus in the Chaco Valley section. They've done Richmond to connect with their new peninsula subdivision which extended about 75 miles southeast down the Virginia peninsula to reach Collis Potter Huntington. Which was a new coal pier in Newport News, Virginia.

Say that five times. So much. So much. Long story short they're extending the train.

Gotcha. So I wanted to put all that in there. I'm glad. I wrote it all out.

She took the time. I checked the time. So the tracks to the new tunnel left the old Virginia central line. Left the Virginia central line west of 17th street and it curved around to enter the tunnel on 18th street.

So really just about a block away. Around kind of the Union Hill area if you know anything about Richmond. No. I don't either.

But if you do then there you go. So from the get there was some construction problems. Like normal bedrock through what most of CNO carved its western tunnels. Richmond had blue marl clay.

Shrink soil soil. Shrink soil soil. So that's the type of soil that kind of changes with rainfall and groundwater. So it'll shrink up when it's dry and then when it's swell up when it rains.

Okay. Gotcha. And that's that type of clay. That does that.

Shrink. Yes. So this causes those cave ins. Gotcha.

So because it's not very stable. The tunnel has remained an issue throughout its life as a tunnel to ground water seepage and safety concern even after it was abandoned in 1925. Good to see that. So they tried to make a safer alternative to get where they needed to go because they needed to connect all the stuff.

So the 1890s CNO acquired the Richmond and Allegheny railroad which is the art of the day. Which we talked about. Sure have. And it has been built east from the Blue Ridge Mountains along the path of the James River and the Kenawah Canal.

And that provides a water level route to Richmond. So that's a little bit of a safer option than having to go through this tunnel. There's still a lot of tunnels there but they didn't have to go through that type of shrink and swell soil. I just really like to talk about the soil.

So there's all kinds of tunnels. There's not as many issues because they're above the ground in a lot of places or they're above the water level. That's good. Because otherwise.

Because you don't have to deal with flooding. Alright so after completion of the viaduct in 1901 the Churchill Tunnel fell into disuse for over 20 years. Nobody touched it. In 1925 to add capacity the railroad began efforts to restore it to some sort of usable condition.

Gosh I bet that took a lot of time money. So this is 1925. On October 2nd while repairs were underway a work train was trapped in that collapse. So they're trying to make this place usable.

They collapsed. It was trapped under 150 feet of the tunnel near the western end which is below Jefferson Park. Authorities shut down the street car line to the area for several days. At the time there were no homes in the area and most of the buildings were kind of downtown.

So nobody needed to really get in and out of there. Approximately 200 workmen crawled under flat cars and then escaped out of the eastern end of the tunnel including fireman Benjamin F. Mosby who died hours later at Grace Hospital because of burns caused by the ruptured boiler. As it started to kind of cave in I guess there were signs and sounds of that.

So they went the men dove under these flat cars and it created a pocket for them. So they were able to crawl underneath the flat cars and get out. Wow. Like what a?

Yeah. I don't know. Right place. Right time.

Or wrong place wrong time. Who knows? A little bit of both. So the engineer Thomas Joseph Mason was killed.

An initial report claimed that besides Mason there were six black laborers. They were unaccounted for. The missing number of men was later scaled back down to two which they identified as Daylabers Richard Lewis and H. Smith.

So during the next week the community anxiously watched rescue efforts. Each time progress was made further cave ins occurred. So only the body of Mason was able to be recovered on October 10th. So at that point only Lewis and Smith were still unaccounted for and their bodies were never found.

They were never able to recover their bodies. Yeah. So the following spring the Virginia State Corporation Commission which regulates the state's railroads ordered the western end of the tunnel to be sealed off for safety reason. Left inside was the work train complete with a four zero steam locomotive and 10 flat cars.

I love that. So that's totally sealed off. There's still a big locomotive in there. And the bodies are in there too.

Two bodies. I love that. It's crazy. So absolutely no way to access it.

No way to access it. I want to. Yeah. I wonder if there are any flake photographs.

So here's, okay. So here's kind of some more stuff. I want to know this stuff. So looking into the tunnels East interest because I remember this was the West interest that collapsed.

So looking at the East entrance in 2010 it flooded. So the ground of this tunnel was under several inches of water and the western end was covered with kind of a concrete plug. But for years that Eastern end was used as part of a turning way for a connection with the Southern Railways line to the West Point and it could be entered by some venture, some trespassers. Like us.

Like us. We didn't say that. No, no, no, no. Not anything that can be used in the court.

It's a 1998 exploratory expedition by Richmond Times, this patch reporter, Mark Holmberg, he explored portions from the Eastern end with a professional caving crew and equipment. And it's believed that most of the western portion of the tunnel which has not caved in is filled with water from all these floods. So the western entrance can still be seen at the southeast end of an alley off of 18th Street in Richmond. A Virginia historical marker was placed at the site in 2012.

The eastern end is hidden in a small dense, jungle-ish area just north of the intersection of East Franklin Street and north 31st Street. So if you're looking for it, there it is. Gotcha. And the end of the tunnel is still open for some distance but it's floor and the area outside are really, really swampy.

So it would be really hard to get into. Yeah. It's good boots. Mm hmm.

In June 2006, the Virginia Historical Society and other parties announced that they were investigating the possibility of trying to recover the train and the bodies. The society planned to keep the train for preservation. The history channel actually expressed some interest in participating in the project. However, when a hole was drilled through the tunnel's seal and a camera place inside, it was found the tunnel was filled with silt and water, meaning that an excavation of the tunnel would likely cause it to further collapse and there are actually several homes on Churchill that would be engulfed by massive sinkholes.

Wow. Because it goes through Churchill and there weren't any houses on it when they started this project but now with the development. Here's the thing. What'd you do?

I would never. And like how much is there insurance knowing that what's underneath their house and also, does that also mean that maybe they've got some like haunted property then? Probably. Like I heard a weird noise.

It wasn't that. Yeah. So needless to say that project was put on hold. This is freaking fast.

Right? I've never heard of this before. Me neither. Okay.

So we're going to talk about now the vampire legend that goes with it. Ah ha ha ha. So local residents claimed the mausoleum of WW pool which was dated in 1913. In the Hollywood cemetery that we talked about last week, holes are remains of a vampire.

Supposedly pool was run out of England in the 1800s for being a vampire. They said you can't live here if you're a vampire. Get out. But I find this popular.

Oral legends is circulated up until the 1960s. So they may be influenced by the architecture of the tomb which has both masonic and ancient Egyptian elements and double W's that look like fangs. So because the cemetery is adjacent to Virginia Commonwealth University, the story has become super popular among students, especially from the 80s on until now. And it was first mentioned in print in the student newspaper in 1976.

So since 2001, the vampire story has been combined with the collapse of the church hill tunnel. And this whole neighborhood that's on top of church hill. Right. So according to kind of the newer story which combines the cemetery and the panel stories, the tunneling awakened an ancient evil that lived under church hill and brought the tunnel crashing down on the workers.

Rescue teams found an earthly blood covered creature with jagged teeth and skin hanging from its muscular body, crouching over one of the victims. The creature escaped from the cave in and ran towards a James River of pursued by a group of men. The creature took refuge in Hollywood cemetery where it disappeared and a mausoleum built into a hillside bearing the name WW pool. So that's the legend.

I love it. I love this. According to Gregory Maitland, who is an urban legend and folklore researcher with a paranormal research groups, night shift, and the Virginia Ghost and Haunting Research Society, what a cool job. I think this is that's our second act.

Absolutely. They said that the quote creature that escaped the tunnel was actually the 28 year old railroad fireman Benjamin F. Mosby. We talked about him earlier.

Right. When the boiler exploited and he was burned. He was burned. Oh, yes.

So he had been apparently shoveling coal into the firebox of the steam locomotive with no shirt on when the cave had occurred and the boiler ruptured. Mosby's upper body was horribly scolded and several of his teeth were broken before he made his way through the opening of the tunnel. This reported that he was in shock and layers of his skin were hanging from his body and he later died at Grace Hospital and was buried at Holy Mary. Just a side note here.

Shoveling coal has never been historically for folks successful. Have you watched the Titanic? Not a good idea. People who were shoveling the coal and the watertight doors went down, they drowned.

So whoopsie. I mean, like this guy. No good can come from shoveling coal. That's why I have stopped doing it.

Right. It's not good. So the house I live in has a coal shoe. Does it really?

Obviously not used anymore, but it's an old coal shoe. I want to see it. Oh, it's a mascara basement. You haven't let me in the basement yet.

You haven't got the scariest. No, you haven't taken me down there. Next time. You just keep telling me, oh, that's the scary basement.

That's why we always keep that door locked. Yeah, it is crazy. It is crazy. You don't have the fluids.

You just don't tell me. And, and something else you have mentioned to me about this basement is that you think there's a body. I do think there's a body buried down there. There's a big old slab.

It's about body sized. Just saying. It's like an it's set. I think so too.

But I'm really upset that this guy, I mean, this Benjamin Mosby guy, he was horrifically burned and he'd shipped his teeth while climbing out of a tunnel trying to survive. Yep. And then dyes. And then made it out.

Only did I thought so. Yeah. Why do things happen like that? I don't know.

Like if you survive that much, why? And in large part, the hospital in that day and age wasn't prepared to deal with his burns. This was 1925. Yeah.

Yeah. So that is the story of the Richmond vampire and the Churchill tunnel. I love this whole Churchill tunnel. I want to learn more and more about it.

When they went in there with their cameras, did they take photographs? I believe so. I think there's some pictures. I think the History Channel put some stuff out about it.

I'm not 100% sure. But we'll find a really good photo. I want to see them so bad. Yeah.

It's amazing. But I kind of love that. I hate that people lost their lives, obviously. I kind of loved it.

But I love the idea of abandoned things that are preserved like that. Me too. Like shipwrecks. I think shipwrecks are really cool.

Me too. Anything like that that it's like preserved. Abandoned towns I think are really cool. Yes.

Flooded towns. So freaking cool. So yeah. If you haven't caught it, Hayley did an episode about a flooded town under Lake Lanier that's haunted.

Killer episode. It's one of my favorites. Catch that one as well because that one's really, really fascinating. Yeah.

In time I hear something like that. And that one has a really interesting history of the community that was displaced. Yes. Really, really interesting.

So good. So yeah, that is cool. I'm sorry. I'm going to be looking for photos online.

When Hayley leaves here tonight, I'm going to get out my Google and just start looking through. Okay. Okay. That's awesome.

I love it. Where was I going to be mad? Oh, I'll tell you that story next week. I don't want time now.

Find the truck. That's it out of my house. Bye. No, but for real, if you want to email us some of your stories about, I don't know.

What are you? If you email her your anger at... Email me your anger. You can do so at mountainmisseries.appalatchin at gmail.com.

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I love it. Thanks for listening. Yeah. We're super grateful.

I'm not grateful for Haley though. She's going to be funny. It's fine. Okay.

Bye.