Hellfire Pass (Death Railway)

Kanchanaburi · Thailand · Road

Hellfire Pass (Death Railway) — Kanchanaburi · Thailand · Road

In the mountain cutting where thousands of prisoners of war were worked to death, emaciated figures are said to still drag themselves along the Death Railway.

Hellfire Pass is the deepest rock cutting on the Thailand–Burma Railway, which the Japanese army forced Allied prisoners of war and Asian labourers to build in 1942–43; well over a hundred thousand people died along the line. The name came from the torchlight flickering over the emaciated men working through the night — a sight the prisoners likened to a scene from hell. Visitors and locals tell of footsteps in the empty cutting, the clink of tools, cold spots, and figures in ragged uniforms vanishing between the rock walls. Today the pass is a memorial site with a museum, and the silence down in the cutting is often described as oppressive.

FAQ

Where is Hellfire Pass (Death Railway) located?

Hellfire Pass (Death Railway) is in Kanchanaburi, Thailand.

More haunted places in Kanchanaburi

Accounts are drawn from local folklore and visitor reports.

Image: Athikhun.suw · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons