The Twin Tunnels

High School is a bizarre time.

A time of life when everything you’ve gathered as true unravels like a fishing rod with an award-winning bass on the hook. The strangest of these truths is an odious concept introduced to boys entering their adolescent years known as male pride. This nonsensical concept drives boys and men alike into all manner of boneheaded behaviors, and the overcast evening in October of 2013 was no exception.

Rumor had spread through Cedar County High School that just a few towns south of the school building sat a train tunnel with a paranormal complex to it. The chemistry class I found myself in had male pride in spades. In my row alone sat Danny McNeil and Simon Combs. Two dudes who could largely categorize their thoughts as “dumb things I’ve done” and “dumb things I’d like to do”. They’d be perfect. I called them over to my desk to talk shop about being the first to plant our flag at the summit known as The Twin Tunnels. It took them less than seconds to sign the verbal contract and we scouted out who would fill out the rest of our ragtag unit. We surveyed the room, plucked a couple worthy classmates, and planned to meet up that night.

So there we were, full to the brim with poker-faced confidence as we gawked into the toothy mouth of the hollow tunnel. The jet-black nothingness of the forsaken hole seemed to know our thoughts and was now using them to mock us by being particularly intimidating. Lucky for us, the folk legend produced at Cedar High conveniently came with a task list. To begin your entanglement with the undead, the gutsiest member of your party would chuck a stone into the vast darkness. This is the cosmic equivalent of knocking on the door of the demented figure that made the left twin tunnel its home for reasons that remain unclear. What follows is what precedes any good “knock, knock”. A returned fire, of course. That’s right. Legend had it this spirit would chuck a rock back at you as its supernatural greeting.

As previously mentioned, 17-year-old boys will go to unmeasurable lengths to prove themselves in the company of testosterone-fueled peers, but add attractive members of the fairer sex to the equation and all bets are off. Thankfully we had two of them in Hannah and Allie rounding out our ghoul-hunting caravan. Allie was dating Danny, and the two of them would likely have a conniption if they were separated for more than 20 minutes, and Hannah was here because women have the good sense to travel in pairs around neanderthals like us. Let’s just say rock throwers were not tough to come by.

Simon went into his windup and “WHAP!” The stone made a hammer-like crackling sound as the piece of gravel careened across the steel tracks creating a flash of do-it-yourself lightning. Then silence... Not one of us would have admitted it, but if you lugged a polygraph into that godless tunnel, you would have read five puberty-stricken teens in the greatest lie of their lives for claiming courage.

After what could have been 10 seconds or 30 minutes, the silence was broken. Not by a return fire from beyond the grave and not from a steady flowing stream traveling down our legs (though we were close). No, it was Hannah, the most courageous member of our outfit, voicing her disappointment. “This is just stupid. You guys are all worked up over an empty tunnel?!” She hadn’t the faintest that in less than 30 minutes her life would change as she knew it. For now, her words of disapproval jolted us back into the real world where we were invincible and ghosts didn’t exist.

Some Details About The Tunnels: They are located at the end of a dead-end backroad where a trailer park sits. That community is likely the bigger threat to mankind when it comes to stepping foot on their property. The two tunnels are connected by brick and form a sort of shotgun looking shape. As far as we knew, they had long since been abandoned by the CSX Railroad Company. There wasn’t much wiggle room from one side of the tunnel to the other. Probably just enough space to fit the railroad beasts of old, but nothing modern. They were a little over a mile in length, and they bent slightly to form something of a parenthesis shape that was curved, but not quite “C” curved.

Now that the rock was thrown, the rulebook dictated that we were to travel the length of the tunnels. If we brought proof that we had journeyed to the tunnel’s backside and lived to tell of it, we would have officially gone where no Cedar High student had ever gone before. One small step for teenagekind. We plunged, now a little less timid, over the endless pattern of wood and steel that looked to have been there from the dawn of time. The gravel was especially chunky, giving us even less a chance of keeping balanced. Bopping back and forth, we began making the fatal mistake of speaking ill to the spirit among us.

Despite our lingering fear, we had all mustered the guts to make some headway into the freakish tunnel. There was no going back now. We even began calling the spirit’s bluff. “Hello, Mr. Tunnel Devil, any chance you could come around so we didn’t waste our gas money on something so lame?” We gathered railroad pegs as we went to serve as bragging right souvenirs. “C’mon out, tunnel thing! Here demon, demon, demon!” We had proved the nonexistence of the tunnel haunter once and for all with our dignity largely intact.

Before we knew it, the light at the end of the tunnel became our metaphorical light at the end of the tunnel. We breathed sighs of relief and readied ourselves for the pilgrimage back to civilization. “Well, this was a real flop.” Danny lamented. “I really thought we’d get a good story out of this. Ah well.” The slight quiver in his tone told me he was happy as hell to have had an uneventful time. As the trudge back began, an air of hubris swept over us all at once. Who could believe that Cedar County High School’s biggest tall tale was nothing more than a vacant threat? That was - until we reached the midway point of the paranormal parenthesis.

“You guys want to hit up the McDonald’s on the way h---”, we froze. Beaming into the tunnel from just outside was a powerful yellowish-white light. It blinded us and was just hot enough to melt our collective confidence into puddles at our feet. Now, I doubt you’ve ever found yourself in a train-sized tunnel staring down the barrel of the world's most unfortunate spotlight, but in my case, one particular “Stand By Me” quote bubbled to the front of my mind. “TRAIN!” It was impossible. The tunnels were abandoned… unless… At that moment I realized second-hand particulars of folk legends are not exactly details you want to take as gospel. Misunderstanding the minor details of a story like this usually doesn’t amount to much, but in our case, the stakes had quickly risen to life or death.

In one motion, we turned and began hauling ass back the way we came with as much momentum as you could hope to gain with the balance-impeding gravel on the tracks (good luck). Danny, the all-state wrestler among us, instantly proved the value of his countless laps around the gym as he jetted toward the south mouth of the tunnel in a show of supreme athleticism. Somewhere on the other end of the spectrum was Simon, who promptly tripped and crashed into the rocky chasm of mud separating the tracks from the tunnel wall. As I began planning the rest of my life sans Simon, the sole of my trusty Nike Blazer sunk into the muck - like Simon - never to return. Unfazed by the lack of foot protection, I continued my labored stride, nearly certain the mighty locomotive was nipping at my heels.

Danny belted words of encouragement finely honed from years spent in the smelliest room in Cedar County High School. Simon responded with a guttural panic scream that only incited more fear in the rest of us. Say what you will about the corny wrestler callouts, but they got us across the finish line. Ducking behind a smattering of forest, we waited for what must have been several eternities before Simon came barreling out with just enough energy to produce a “now I know where we stand” side-eye. Apologies were in order - but now wasn’t the time. If the train conductor spotted us we’d have a whole new set of problems for trespassing on CSX Railroad’s private property.

We held as still as possible under the circumstances. In a few beats, our deep breathing and adrenaline began to subside. A minute passed. Then two. Eventually, I peered back into the gaping mouth only to find more darkness. Then came my finest exhibition of adolescent arrogance “Looks like the coast is clear. Let's head back.” In case you were wondering, I discovered shortly after regaining reception that those tunnels were (and very much still are) active containers of dozens of freight trains each night. Would that tidbit of knowledge have shaped my perspective at that moment? Absolutely. As it was, after some brief back and forth with the platoon, we came to the undeniable conclusion that the only way to get back to our cars was to go back the way we came. We collected ourselves and set forth on our third and final expedition.

This journey inward came with one major surprise: no surprises. Only the eerie quietness of a post-war battlefield. We trekked onward vigilantly and wondered to ourselves what the source of the white light could have been. Our questions were answered only by silence as we anticlimactically emerged from the north mouth of the tunnel and hastily made our way to our vehicles. I pulled my newly retrieved, mud-caked Nike into Danny’s hand-me-down Ford Ranger.

I took the first moment of peace I had in ages and did what any 17-year-old in 2013 would do. I got on my phone. I went to Google to discover the real origin story of The Twin Tunnels to see why they were even haunted in the first place. Yeah, you heard that right. Not one of us had bothered to gain that critical piece of information from a reliable source before heading out. Remember that adolescent arrogance I was telling you about? The answer that populated the glowing screen put a knot in my gut and turned my face as white as new cotton. The phone cascaded to the rusty Ford floorboards below.

“...The left train tunnel is haunted by a former railroad watchman named Franklin Lee who hung himself in the tunnel in 1936. You will know him by his beaming white watch light.” My blood ran icy cold as I glanced back into the gateway to hell.

“Floor it.”