Author: William M. Cullen
Published 2013 by Xlibris LLC
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Several weeks ago, my boyfriend and I attended the third annual Midnight at Moonville festival, a fun celebration of the history and the hauntings of a small Ohio railroad community and its infamous haunted train tunnel. This was my first visit to the haunted Moonville Tunnel, and while a festival setting wasn't really conducive to experiencing the tunnel's paranormal activity for myself, we had a wonderful time. One of the souvenirs I picked up from the Vinton County Tourism booth was the book, A History of Moonville, Ohio and a Collection of its Haunting Tales! If you know me, you know I love to pick up a volume of local ghost stories any time we go out of town. There were a couple of options available, but I chose this particular book because I thought it would be a pretty comprehensive look at both the history AND the ghost stories.
And, it was. At only 80 pages, this book was a short, quick read but it was stuffed full of information. As the title would reflect, it is basically broken down into two parts---the first being a history of how the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad came to build a line through this rural, desolate woodland and the early families that lived and worked in the area. Being a native West Virginian, I was personally interested in how closely the history of Moonville could be linked to the history of what is now West Virginia (then still part of Virginia at the time of the railroad's inception). The ability to have railway access from various points in Ohio to places such as Parkersburg and Wheeling was one major reason for the rail line to be built in this area, and there were a couple of families of note who moved to the region from West Virginia. However, the overwhelming reason why this isolated area made such a great location for the railway was simply because the Coe family who owned a huge chunk of the land where Moonville would sit 'donated' the property. I use the word 'donated' in quotation marks because the Coes received quite the personal benefit of having the railroad come through that area.
To a history buff, this section of the book was pretty interesting to me, and I learned a lot about the area. If you don't allow yourself to be bogged down by the potentially confusing genealogy and string of birth/death dates, there are some really great stories, and some pretty useful information (such as why the town was named after the Moon family and not the Coe family) that would especially be of interest to those wanting to conduct a paranormal investigation at the tunnel. Speaking of paranormal....
The second part of the book is dedicated to the plethora of ghost stories and haunting legends surrounding the area of the tunnel and what used to be the town of Moonville. This is the part of the book that I found the most fascinating. Obviously, I LOVE a good ghost story, but I think the author did an excellent job in sorting out the legends of Moonville. For YEARS, the area around the Moonville Tunnel has had a reputation for being haunted. As far back as 1895, a Chillicothe based newspaper ran a story about the Ghost of Moonville:
"A ghost (after an absence of one year) returned and appeared in front of a freight at the point where Engineer Lawhead lost his life. The ghost is seen in a white robe and carrying a lantern. "The eyes glistened like balls of fire and surrounding it was a halo of twinkling stars" - Chillicothe Gazette, 17 Feb 1895"
Stories from actual railroad employees witnessing an apparition and/or a phantom lantern were still being reported through the mid-1980s---all the way up until CSX stopped running trains through the area and tore the tracks up. Obviously, there were also plenty of experiences being reported by local residents, hikers, kids partying in the area, and paranormal investigators starting in the late 1800's and still going on today! Some of these stories and experiences deal with 'other' ghosts of the tunnel---a lady who shows up as a blue orb, another lady in white who appears as a solid person walking along the area where the tracks once stood, and the laughing of a little girl who was allegedly hit by a train in the mid 1980's.
But, there appears to be one main, or as some call him, one TRUE GHOST of the Moonville Tunnel.
This is where things get REALLY confusing. There are a ton of stories of a phantom haunting the area around Moonville Tunnel that share some striking similarities. However, the variations in these stories are unlimited, as are the alleged back stories for how this ghost came to be. Sometimes this apparition is seen as an 8 foot tall African-American man with piercing red eyes. In some stories, he is wearing railroad attire and in others, he is dressed as a miner (there was also a coal mine in the Moonville area). He is often seen with a flowing white beard, and in some variations of the tale, is wearing a doctor's white coat (or a sheet?!). Once in awhile, he is seen without a head! However, in nearly all variations of the story, he is seen waving a lantern, desperately trying to get passing trains to stop.
Theories abound as to who this ghost could be. Was he a doctor trying to flag down a passing train in order to save the smallpox ravaged village? Was he a drunken miner who stumbled in front of a passing train? Was he an employee of the railroad, either a brakeman, an engineer, who suffered an accident or was murdered? Or was he someone else entirely? Like most ghost stories, I think there is no real clear answer. Based on historical documentation provided by the author, it seems as if there are kernels of truth embedded in each of these different tales. As stated earlier, the area is extremely rural and for people living there in the latter half of the 19th century and early 20th, there wasn't a great way to travel. The easiest and quickest route to the next town over was to walk along the railroad tracks. However, this was an extremely dangerous endeavor because between Moonville and the next town over, there were four trestle bridges and two tunnels. If you were caught on a trestle or in the tunnel when a train approached and couldn't get out of the way fast enough, you were done for...and that's exactly the fate of at least 34 people the author could confirm.
So maybe there isn't one true ghost of Moonville, but several, whose stories have intermingled and have been added on to throughout each new re-telling over the past 100 years. However, that still doesn't explain, exactly, the ghost mentioned in the 1895 newspaper. According to the author and several other sources I've seen, the ghost mentioned in that article...the one who would probably qualify as Moonville's True Ghost....is an engineer named Theodore Lawhead. Lawhead, and his fireman, Charles Krick, were killed in a horrific head-on train collision in November of 1880. Based on Lawhead's fate, and the dates of the accident and when the first ghost stories began circulating, it would make sense that the ghost is in fact Lawhead. Is Lawhead still trying to warn others of the dangers of the Moonville Line? There are plenty of people out there who believe so!
So maybe there isn't one true ghost of Moonville, but several, whose stories have intermingled and have been added on to throughout each new re-telling over the past 100 years. However, that still doesn't explain, exactly, the ghost mentioned in the 1895 newspaper. According to the author and several other sources I've seen, the ghost mentioned in that article...the one who would probably qualify as Moonville's True Ghost....is an engineer named Theodore Lawhead. Lawhead, and his fireman, Charles Krick, were killed in a horrific head-on train collision in November of 1880. Based on Lawhead's fate, and the dates of the accident and when the first ghost stories began circulating, it would make sense that the ghost is in fact Lawhead. Is Lawhead still trying to warn others of the dangers of the Moonville Line? There are plenty of people out there who believe so!
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