Hoosac Tunnel

Known as "The Bloody Pit," this 4.75-mile railroad tunnel took 24 years to build (1851-1875) and claimed at least 135 lives through accidents, explosions, and disease. It remains the longest active transportation tunnel east of the Rocky Mountains.

The Hoosac Tunnel stretches 4.75 miles through Hoosac Mountain in the Berkshires, a testament to 19th-century engineering ambition and one of the deadliest construction projects in American history. When work began in 1851, engineers estimated it would take four years and cost $2 million. Twenty-four brutal years and $21 million later, the tunnel finally opened in 1875—having claimed at least 196 lives along the way. The workers who survived called it "The Bloody Pit."

The rock of Hoosac Mountain proved nearly impenetrable. Workers attacked it first with black powder, picks, and shovels, then later with the volatile new explosive nitroglycerin. The tunnel became one of the first major American construction sites to use nitro, and workers had little understanding of how to handle it safely. Progress came in blood: cave-ins, explosions, falls from scaffolding, drownings in flooded shafts, and disease killed men constantly. A central vertical shaft nearly 1,000 feet deep was sunk to speed excavation—and became the site of the tunnel's worst disaster.

On October 17, 1867, a candle in the hoist building ignited naphtha fumes leaking from a gasometer lamp. The explosion sent flaming debris plunging into the shaft, where 13 miners worked 538 feet below. The pumps were destroyed and the shaft began filling with water. The next day, a worker named Mallory was lowered by rope; he was overcome by fumes and reported no survivors. It took more than a year to pump the water and reach the bottom. When rescuers finally descended, they found a grim tableau: several victims had survived long enough to fashion a makeshift raft to keep from drowning, only to suffocate from toxic fumes. During the year the bodies remained unreachable, workers reported seeing the ghosts of the 13 miners wandering the woods around the shaft.

The tunnel's most infamous ghost story predates that disaster. On March 20, 1865, three explosive experts—Ned Brinkman, Billy Nash, and Ringo Kelley—were setting a nitroglycerin charge when Kelley inexplicably detonated the blast before Brinkman and Nash could reach shelter. Both men were crushed under tons of rock. Kelley vanished. Exactly one year later, his body was found inside the tunnel—strangled to death at the precise spot where Brinkman and Nash had died. Deputy Sheriff Charles F. Gibson estimated Kelley had been murdered between midnight and 3:30 AM. No suspects, no weapon, no footprints, no signs of struggle. The superstitious workers were certain: the ghosts of Brinkman and Nash had claimed their revenge.

The hauntings began almost immediately. In September 1868, mechanical engineer Paul Travers—a respected Union cavalry officer who had served at Shiloh—was asked to investigate workers' reports of unearthly sounds. He and site manager Mr. Dunn entered the tunnel at 9:00 PM and traveled two miles into the darkness. "As we stood there in the cold silence," Travers wrote to his sister, "we both heard what truly sounded like a man groaning out in pain... I'll admit I haven't been this frightened since Shiloh. Perhaps Nash and Brinkman, I wonder?"

In June 1872, Dr. Clifford J. Owens entered seeking a rational explanation for the howls of pain echoing from the tunnel. He didn't believe in ghosts—until he and a superintendent witnessed a headless apparition and could offer no explanation. On October 16, 1874, local hunter Frank Webster vanished near the mountain. Three days later, he was found stumbling along the Deerfield River in shock, claiming strange voices had ordered him into the tunnel, where he saw ghostly figures wandering in the darkness. He said invisible hands had snatched his rifle away and beaten him with it.

Today, the Hoosac Tunnel remains active, carrying freight trains through the Berkshires 24 hours a day with no set schedule. Entering the tunnel is extremely dangerous—the narrow clearance offers virtually no escape if a train approaches. Yet reports continue of chilling winds, shrieking noises, disembodied groans of agony, and floating apparitions. The 196 men who gave their lives to bore through Hoosac Mountain have never left. A granite memorial on Central Shaft Road now honors the 13 who died in the 1867 disaster, built from stones taken from the shaft itself.