Haunted Tunnel

Ashland, Ohio



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Photos taken by Sarah Hoffman

Sarah Hoffman took these photos at a haunted tunnel near Ashland, Ohio. Here's her e-mail about the tunnel:

"Way back in the olden days there was an orphanage and it was burnt down. The kids were burnt alive in the building. Also, there was a man and his wife who lived close to the tunnel. The wife died because she was sick. Well, at midnight the man hung himself above the tunnel, and if you go at night and honk the horn 3 times you can see his body hanging. No lie! And if you turn off your car and put it in neutral, it will start moving really fast through the tunnel. It's bad ass!! There are orbs and stuff in my photos. I've gone there during the day and at night. At night the kids do some scary stuff out there to give you an awakening, trust me! My boyfriend and his friends went there around 10:30 at night one time, and his friend was hanging out the window asking to start trouble. All of a sudden I see a little kid standing beside the car, and then my boyfriend saw someone hanging above the tunnel. That's because we honked the horn three times. I bet you'll love it if you go and see it!"

In October 2005, I received an e-mail from Shannon Fisher with another variation of the story:

"I grew up in the neighboring town of Mansfield, and we would pay visits to that tunnel almost every weekend in the fall (after Friday night football games of course!). Back in my day, right after you went under the tunnel (or before, depending if you get there right from Rt. 42, or take the maze of spooky county roads to get there (I recommend the county roads, much more effective if you want to scare the crap out of your friends) there was an old farm house. The story that was passed along was that an old witch lived there and had kidnapped (for the purpose of ritual sacrifice of course) many of the neighboring farmers' children. One day a group of the local farmers got together and decided that they had to stop her, killing her by way of decapitation, burning her body and burying her head on her property (to any horror movie buff this sounds familiar, but I graduated in 1997, well before the release of The Blair Witch Project). She haunted the property since that day. So the story goes that one night a group of college students from Ashland University got lost going to a party and stopped right in front of the witch's house to look over their directions and see where they made a wrong turn. They never made it to the party, they were found decapitated inside their car, with the doors locked. The police were baffled because the bloody mess was contained to the inside of the car. There was not a trace of blood on the outside of the car, which would have been impossible (the killer had to exit somehow). The most bizarre thing was that the radio was still on, but their car battery was dead. It was said that if you got near the house that your radio would go wacky, going under the tunnel you had to honk three times and the ghost of the witch would appear (this only worked at midnight of course), and if you put you car in neutral the spirits of the sacrificed children would push your car through the tunnel to protect you from the witch. The house was supposedly the site of satanic rituals and such. We went in many times and it was spooky, it was so dark that you could not see your hand in front of your face. There was always a significant temperature difference between the outside and the inside of the house as well. You would hear cries coming from the basement also. My husband and I went back a few years ago and the house had been torn down (it takes away from the whole mood of the tunnel when you don't have a spooky old house at one end). I just thought it was interesting how the story has changed since the house is no longer standing, but yet it accommodates basic superstition related to the tunnel. Oh and by the way, no witch, college student, or anyone else was ever killed in the area. My senior year of high school I did an independent study of urban legends in the Mansfield area (the tunnel, bloody Mary, and such) and I could find no record of any college students being massacred in the area, the house was built in the late 1800's (public record) and it was for the better that it was torn down. On my last visit there, the floor was sagging from rotting floorboards. It was just becoming a safety hazard (as well as an annoyance to Ashland PD). I am sure the whole orphanage story was concocted to explain what you can see of the foundation of the house (sorry kids my research never turned up an orphanage either). Stories of a man hanging himself were around when I would visit there as well (it was said he was the father of one of the sacrificed children). I do agree that some strange and unusual things did happen when we were there and the place still gives me the willies."



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