The Western and Atlantic Tunnel at Tunnel Hill

Georgia · USA · Haunted site

A railway tunnel cut through a Georgia ridge in 1850, and the battlefield that grew up around its mouth.

The Western and Atlantic Tunnel was bored through Chetoogeta Mountain in the years before 1850, the first railway tunnel south of the Ohio River, and for a decade it was the proudest piece of engineering in north Georgia. Then the war came to it. The tunnel and the ridges around it changed hands repeatedly during the Civil War, and the fields on either side of the cut saw fighting through the winter of 1863 and into the Atlanta campaign the following year. The ground here absorbed a great deal before it was ever a curiosity.

The stories told about it fall into two groups. The first belongs to the tunnel itself, where visitors describe shapes at the far end of the bore that resolve into nothing when approached, and a story, repeated since the early twentieth century, of a man travelling with a circus train who was killed when he leaned out at the wrong moment.

The second belongs to the open ground outside. People walking the fields at dusk report campfires and swinging lanterns that vanish as you close the distance, figures in Confederate and Union uniform seen at a distance and gone when looked at directly, and a smell of decay that some in a group notice while the others notice nothing at all. The tunnel is preserved and can be visited, which makes it one of the few places on this map where you can stand inside the story.

FAQ

Wo befindet sich The Western and Atlantic Tunnel at Tunnel Hill?

The Western and Atlantic Tunnel at Tunnel Hill liegt in Georgia, USA.