People always ask me where it all began, where Moonville Tunnel got so haunted, and what let all those ghosts in. There are lots of made-up stories out there. But this one, it is true. With its deep roots in the history of southeastern Ohio, this ghost story has been long passed down by those living in the communities surrounding Moonville. And it is this fierce tragedy that very well may have opened up Moonville to the spirit world. Listen-
In the 1800s, in southeastern Ohio, there were small coal mining communities along the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad between Zaleski and Athens. Among them was Moonville, a settlement along the Raccoon Creek with two families living in the town proper. The Fergusons were farmers and railway workers, and the Coes had a sawmill, gristmill, train station/depot, and coal mine. Also, along the tracks, telegraph lines ran from train station to train station so that dispatchers could communicate with each other. Their interactions were essential as the railroad had only one set of tracks, and trains traveled in both an eastward and westward direction. The dispatcher’s job was to monitor and control the signals so engineers knew when to pull off the tracks if there was a rockfall on the rails or to let an oncoming train pass.
Most of the time, the system worked quite well. Sometimes, however, it failed. Theodore Lawhead was an engineer for the Marietta & Cincinnati Railroad. On a chilly November 4 in 1880, while Engineer Lawhead was heading through southern Ohio, the dispatch failed to notify the eastbound train of the westbound’s route and time. The trains collided on a blind curve just a half mile from Moonville Tunnel, and Lawhead and his fireman, 25-year-old Charles Krick, died instantly. The tragedy of this accident left a deep scar on the community.
After the wreck, many trainmen feared going along that stretch of the railroad. They said they would see the flicker of candlelight when they came along a particular section of the tracks near the tunnel in Moonville where Lawhead died. As they got closer and slowed, believing that someone was signaling an emergency ahead, a white-robed, translucent figure appeared carrying a lantern floating down the hillside with wide, bulging red eyes and a halo of tiny lights twinkling around its head. Then the ghost would vanish!
Listen to the story on my Lone Ghost Writer Youtube Channel: https://tinyurl.com/MoonvilleGhost
Follow me on a paranormal investigation-Moonville Tunnel’s most famous haunting began on a cold November night in 1880. I returned to the site where it all started, on the anniversary of that fateful journey that left behind restless spirits. And what I found were more spirits than I expected to encounter!
