Tunnelton Tunnel aka "Big Tunnel" - near Bedford, IN

by pearl edwards
(kokomo, in)

You have only a little tiny blurb on Big Tunnel, located about thirty minutes away from Bedford, IN. The locals refer to this place as "Tunnelton Tunnel", partially because an actual town called Tunnelton, was established in the area for the purpose of housing the massive numbers of workers it took to build this huge, almost half mile long, train tunnel through the area's native bedrock. As far as I know, Tunnelton the town no longer exists, although a road of the same name takes you through where it once stood, and toward Big Tunnel. (You need a local guide or you'll never find it, though. You have to do some pretty tricky back-country driving followed by a difficult hike just to get to the entrance.) The legend about "the man who lost his head" mentioned in the little bit you posted is actually told by the locals much differently. The locals say that, as was the custom back in the day, a man with a lantern was walking the tracks, checking them. In the tunnel, you can see little alcoves every so many feet, and these were also customary in the day, as the man who was assigned to walk the tracks was obliged to duck into one of these or be swept away if a train passed him in the tunnel. The story goes that one night, the man with the lantern didn't make it to one of these cubbies. He and his dog were both swept under a train and killed. Now, you can supposedly see the man, the lantern and the dog at various times, pacing down the tracks of the abandoned tunnel. There was also a young girl who entered the tunnel and was swept under a train, the locals say, and she can be heard laughing and occasionally be seen when she materializes right in people's faces from the darkness. Other, less mischevious but more menacing entities have been reported, one being a shadow of a large man who will pace with you, footsteps ringing out, once you enter the curve of the tunnel where no sunlight or moonlight will ever go. This tunnel and tracks, it is said, were not abandoned because they were structurally unsound, btw, but because of the number of unexplained deaths that eventually began to build up in the tunnel.