Flinderation Tunnel

Flinderation Tunnel from Facebook

There's an old, out-of-commission railroad line that passes beneath the Flinderation Tunnel near Salem, West Virginia. Officially known as the Brandy Gap Tunnel, it's located just off Flinderation Road and hence its local moniker. The 1,086' long tube was built in the 1850s as part of a main line of the B&O/CSX system.

It's sited about an hour away from the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, and in fact they were featured together on the same Ghost Hunters episode in 2009. The asylum is well known as one of West Virginia's hottest paranormal spots. Flinderation's claim to spooked out fame begins with a three-man track gang working in the tunnel, sometime in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century.

While the gandy dancers were doing their thing, a train roared through the narrow tunnel, its engineer unaware that there was any work going on inside. One man managed to escape the speeding train, but the other pair were mangled and killed by the Iron Horse.

The train itself derailed, and there are conflicting tales as to why. One story says it was because the track work wasn't completed; another says that it tipped off the tracks while dragging a worker's body under its wheels. No one has found any published verification of the train wreck story, but it was long ago and far from any large towns. Beside, a train derailment and a couple of railroaders accidentally shuffling off this mortal coil wouldn't have been big news during that era.

Another tale equally as gruesome claims that the tunnel was a regular gathering point of the KKK in the early 1900s. Not only did the klansmen meet there, but they used the dark tunnel as a lynching spot to create a little extra terror while performing their horrific deeds.

To add to the eerie mix, Travel Channel's Ghost Stories said that a cemetery once existed atop the tunnel. The show claimed that some of the coffins fell through the roof of the tunnel, and that a disinterred body may have once been lodged between the tunnel's roof and the cemetery above.

As you might imagine, Flinderation's karma took quite a hit because of these events, and the tunnel has the paranormal lore to back its hard luck history.

People claim to have heard phantom train whistles and have seen a ghost train (or at least its lights) rumble through the tunnel, along with the sound of metal scraping against metal. The spirits of a young boy and girl, giggling and laughing, have been seen and heard. Voices saying "Help me" and "Quit pushing" have been reported by paranormal investigators, apparently remnants of the long-ago derailment.

Other sounds such as deep grumbles, sobbing and screaming are heard as common occurrences and been captured by EVPs. Unexplained lights, bodiless footsteps, orbs and mists have been both sighted and photographed.

Flinderation Tunnel was officially closed and the tracks were torn out in the nineties. It was out of service for some time prior to then because of the decline of railroad traffic in general and, it's said, because the tunnel's dark tales made it a track that railroaders religiously wanted to avoid. Today, like so many other abandoned rail lines, it's a recreational run, part of the eastern end of the North Bend Rail Trail.

So you can lace up your Nikes, hop on your bike, or jump on your horse (it's also an equestrian trail) to check out the legends of Flinderation Tunnel. When you get inside, your creep-o-meter will red line. It's pitch black once you're a few feet in (and flashlight batteries are said to die inside), its path is muddy and treacherous, and water drips through the ceiling while the splashes echo noisily off the walls. Or is that a decomposing body falling through the roof...?

Heck, if you dig the chills and eerie ambiance of Flinderation Tunnel, you can "like" its Facebook page. Even apparitions know how to get out the word with social tools nowadays. And ain't that spooky?

Homestead Carnegie Library

Homestead Library from Library Journal

Built in 1898, the Carnegie Library of Homestead - actually, it's located in Munhall - was designed by Alden & Harlow and constructed by William Miller & Sons, both well known artisans from Pittsburgh, at a cost of $250,000.

This library was Carnegie's gift to the workers and families of the nearby Homestead Steel Works. It was small consolation for a community torn asunder by the bloody Homestead Strike of 1892. Many didn't even want to accept the building, though it eventually became a well-used neighborhood gathering spot with its books, pool, gym and music hall.

It didn't take long for some bad mojo to strike. Robert Peebles "was found dead in eight feet of water" in the pool on November 28th, 1899, "under mysterious circumstances" according to the Homestead Messenger. No one has claimed to see his spirit hovering, but there are plenty of other eerie experiences connected to the complex.

Books fly off the stacks and switch positions on the library shelves for no apparent reason, and doors open and close without any human intervention. Loud disembodied voices have been reported (no doubt drawing a frown and a "shhhh" from the not-easily-spooked librarians). The ghosts of old steel hands, still dressed in their sooty mill outfits, wander about the structure.

The library isn't the only hot spot for the unexplained. The housekeeper claimed to have seen a shadow moving in the back steps of the old music hall in the library; shadow figures of both sexes are regularly sighted in the building. The voices of ladies giggling in the basement locker room have been heard, and by no less than the Syfy Channel's "Ghost Hunters" squad.

The TAPS team visited the library in May of this year, and in September aired an episode from Homestead including Carnegie's building. And they confirmed most of the above phenomena to be active during their midnight expedition.

So if you ever stop by to grab a book or catch a show in the music hall, remember that the old steelworker standing nearby may not be on break from pumpin' iron and sweating steel, but an ethereal reminder of Homestead's misty past.

Mood Music

Ready to get your Halloween spook on? See if these tunes help get you in the mood:

Boris Pickett & the Crypt Kickers do "The Monster Mash":


John Zacherle, the Cool Ghoul, and "Dinner With Dracula":

Michael Jackson's "Thriller":

Mike Oldfield's "Tubular Bells" from "The Exorcist":

Halloween: Popes and Druids, oh my...

Most folk know that Halloween has morphed from the the old Irish festival of Samhain, which was the night when the world of the dead intersected with that of the living. To keep the spirits from roaming the earth (and to keep themselves from wandering into the otherworld) the farmers would gather around a bonfire, some dressed in masks and costumes, in an effort to get through the night with their ancestors by hook or crook.

But what many don't know is that the holiday thrived and survived thanks to the papal theory that "if ya can't beat 'em, join 'em."

In the middle ages when the economy was agrarian, pagan harvest rites like Samhain continued unabated no matter how much the Church tried to squelch them. All focused on the dead; after all, it was tied into the season when the earth's bounty began dying.

Surprisingly, it's thought by many that the All Hallows (Saints) holiday, the church's effort to co-opt the pagan rites, wasn't first aimed at the Irish, but the Romans.

In the early seventh century, the Romans celebrated the Feast of the Lemures, which featured rituals such as bean offerings to the dead, walking around in circles at midnight, banging brass pots and asking your departed relatives to stay wherever they were. And it culminated on May 13th, not the end of October.  

Pope Boniface IV decided to usurp the pagan's dead day with a Christian holiday, and declared an All Martyrs day on the same date. It seemed to work; after a century or so, Popes Gregory III & IV decided to try the same trick and moved the holiday to November 1st, not only to counteract Samhain but several other autumn pagan rituals common in Northern Europe. They renamed it All Hallows Day. (It was actually celebrated at the same time, as the Church holiday began at sundown.)

Our most recognizable Halloween custom sprang from the church-sponsored holiday. Catholic dogma taught of a nether world for the dead called purgatory, a not-so-pleasant half-way house on the way to heaven. And since the souls there couldn't do much to advance their cause, their fast track to the Pearly Gate was greased through prayers from the living.

So a custom sprang up called "souling." Beggars would door knock for sweets - a fruit cookie of sorts called a "soul cake" - and in exchange for the pastry promised to pray for departed souls. That practice morphed into today's trick or treating.

The church also introduced the association of witches with the holiday. They weren't really part of the culture until the witch hunts of the Middle Ages, although their familiars seem to have a long history of causing panic. The black cats were especially dreaded by the superstitious because all that could be seen of them at night were their seemingly disembodied glowing eyes.

But many of the customs remain from the old days as the church couldn't entirely dig out the pagan roots of Halloween.  Skeletons were used from the beginning, some even being propped up on window sills to keep the dead at bay. Ghosts and the undead, of course, were the reason d 'etre of the pagan rites. Costumes and masks were worn by the Druids and their followers. And the jack-o-lantern was handed down through Irish folklore.

So there it is. Halloween is a tangled weave of Christian and pagan ritual and belief. Still, it's kinda hard to imagine that a bag of candy and Freddy Krueger was what the Vatican and Druids had in mind all those centuries ago. C' est la vie.

A Couch Potato Halloween

Another quick PSA - TV Tango has a listing of all the October Halloween shows being aired during the 2011 Devil's Night season by the major networks & cable biggies. So if the weather outside gets frightful, you can get your ghoul on in front of the tube. It's pretty inclusive, ranging from Freddy to Charlie Brown.