The Silver Run Tunnel

I first heard the story of the haunted Silver Run tunnel about 20 years ago, but it's taken me this long to visit it.

The Silver Run tunnel (#19, about 1376 feet long) is located on the North Bend Rail Trail, not far from the town of Cairo, West Virginia. The North Bend Rail Trail has 10 tunnels included in its 72-mile length, with two abandoned tunnels close by and another 10 places where old tunnels were opened up into cuts, called "daylighting." Mark Twain once referred to the original railroad line as the "Appalachian Subway" because there were so many tunnels.

So far, my husband and I have been through 5 of the remaining tunnels, and explored one of the abandoned tunnels, as well as Eaton Tunnel (#21), a collapsed and sealed tunnel which has a ghost story of its own. You can read the story of Eaton Tunnel in this blog post. There is one more tunnel with stories of a haunting, and another that should have a story because of a horrific train wreck that occurred there.

Here's the general story, and as usual with such folk legends, there are several versions. Basically, there was a young woman who waited at the Silver Run station for her young man. They were to be married, so she was wearing a long white dress. She was beautiful, the story says, with long black hair. Her young man never arrived. Perhaps she jumped, or perhaps she was so upset she just stepped in front of a train without looking. But ever since then, engineers have reported seeing a woman at the mouth of the Silver Run tunnel. She appears when it's too late to stop the train, try as they might, and just before they hit her, she shoots up and over the train. The website West Virginia Haunts and Legends gives a slightly different version, along with an added story about an engineer who scoffs at the story, only to later find that she'd ridden his cowcatcher all the way to Parkersburg.

To get back to Silver Run: we had vague directions from Park staff at North Bend Lodge, and the map they gave us made it look simple enough. We drove into Cairo, found a trail entrance and started walking. It was a chilly but beautiful morning, and we were enjoying the walk when I noticed that we were walking east--and the tunnel was west of town. We turned around and headed back, fortunately before we'd gone too far. We asked for more directions, got some more vague, hand-waving instructions and tried again.

We also dead-ended up here on top of a hil at the old abandoned high school. I bet there are stories here too.

This time we drove a little ways out of town, found a road marked Silver Run Road, so we were sure we'd found the right place. But when we dead-ended in someone's yard we found out we were mistaken again.

The nice lady who lived there came outside and hollered directions over the barking of several dogs (one, a huge mastiff, jumped up on the van door and gave Larry a BIG facelick! Too funny).

Third time was the charm. We found the right parking area and were at the tunnel within minutes.

I was glad that we had it to ourselves for a little while, just to feel the atmosphere. Soon some young men and children arrived, and it got a little noisy. And soon after them, a large group of teenagers came, and they were having a blast whooping and hollering and scaring each other.

Which gave Larry an idea. All along the length of the tunnel are "manholes", which are alcoves just big enough for a man to get out of the way of a coming train.

He tucked himself into one near the western end of the tunnel, and waited.

I was outside the tunnel's western portal entrance at the point, and decided to help him out by staying visible to the approaching teens. I took photos and generally meandered around.

As I waited, I heard some of the teens saying, "Look! There's a black figure up there! What is that?" 

Eventually they came to where Larry was hiding. They were looking at me, probably wondering what I was doing, when Larry jumped out with a loud shout. Those poor kids cleared the ground be several feet! It was so funny--most of them laughed although a couple of the girls gave  Larry some dirty looks. Ah well, they wanted a scare, and they certainly got one! I am just glad Larry didn't get punched. They were very good sports about it.

Larry standing inside the western portal, as these entrance are called.

It was time to leave, although I could have stayed longer--we wanted the kids to have the place to themselves for a while, just as we had.

There is always a good breeze coming out of these tunnels, and it's a cool--or cold one, depending on the outside temperature. When the trains were running through them, the tunnels often got very hot, especially the longer ones like this one, and complicated ventilation systems were put in place to cool them down. (info from WVNCrails.com)

Of course we saw no ghost, and with so much noise from other people there wasn't much chance of hearing or seeing anything, but we enjoyed the walk and finally getting to see this storied place.

Read more about this tunnel and others on the North Bend Rail Trail at WVNCRails website. It's an amazing resource.

Copyright Susanna Holstein. All rights reserved. No Republication or Redistribution Allowed without attribution to Susanna Holstein.