Silver Run Tunnel

A 1,376-foot railroad tunnel along the North Bend Rail Trail, originally built for the B&O Railroad. The tunnel is one of 13 along the 72-mile rail trail and is the most famous for its paranormal reputation. It is a stop on the West Virginia Paranormal Trail.

The Silver Run Tunnel near Pennsboro is the nineteenth tunnel on the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad line between Grafton and Parkersburg, built between 1867 and 1870 in the years immediately following the Civil War. The tunnel stretches 1,376 feet through solid rock, and its most unsettling feature is a bend in the middle that makes both entrances invisible from the center -- stand in the heart of Silver Run, and you are in complete darkness, unable to see daylight in any direction. The tunnel is permanently damp, frequently foggy, and haunted by one of the most persistent and well-documented ghosts on any railroad in America.

According to local legend, in 1910 a young Baltimore and Ohio engineer was making a midnight westbound run from Grafton to Parkersburg when his headlamp illuminated something on the tracks near the Silver Run Tunnel. A woman in a pale gown was walking directly in the path of his locomotive. He threw the brakes into emergency, but a fully loaded train cannot stop on demand. The engineer and his fireman leaped from the cab as the train ground to a halt, expecting to find a body. There was nothing on the tracks. No blood, no torn fabric, no evidence that any person had been struck.

The story might have ended as a single unexplained sighting, but the woman in white came back. Train after train reported seeing her -- a solitary figure in a white dress walking the tracks inside the tunnel or standing motionless in the center of the right-of-way. Conductors who saw her inside the tunnel reported that she appeared directly in front of their locomotives, that they were certain they had struck her, and that searches for a body found nothing. The repeated sightings disrupted the railroad's schedule, as trains stopped to search for a victim who was never found.

The legend of the White Woman of Silver Run acquired a name and a narrative. She was said to be a young bride abandoned at the altar by her lover, who then walked onto the tracks in her wedding gown and was killed by a passing train. Her ghost, still dressed in white, returns to the tunnel to haunt the place where her life ended and her heartbreak became eternal.

The most famous account involves an engineer named O'Flannery, who dismissed the ghost stories as nonsense. On a misty night, O'Flannery boasted to his crew that if he saw the woman, he would not brake -- he would drive straight through. He kept his word. But telegraphers along the B&O line reported something that O'Flannery did not: as his locomotive rolled into Parkersburg, a ghostly figure was clinging to the cowcatcher at the front of his engine, riding the train she could not escape.

Today the Silver Run Tunnel is part of the North Bend Rail Trail, a 72-mile recreational path that follows the former B&O right-of-way through the hills of Ritchie and Wood counties. The tunnel is now used by hikers and cyclists rather than trains, but the paranormal reports have not ceased with the end of rail traffic. Visitors who walk through the tunnel report cold spots, the sound of footsteps echoing ahead of them in the darkness, and the fleeting glimpse of a white figure at the far end of the tunnel that vanishes before they can reach the exit.

Silver Run Tunnel is a stop on West Virginia's official Paranormal Trail, and the News and Sentinel and Marietta Times have covered its ghost legends in their annual October haunted features. The tunnel is approximately three miles from the town of Cairo and can be accessed from the rail trail or via Silver Run Road, though there is no designated parking area. Those who visit after dark should bring a flashlight. The tunnel is pitch black in the center, the walls drip with moisture, and the White Woman of Silver Run has been walking these tracks for over a century.