Sightings - Tunnel Vision: Massachusetts, 1973

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

The historic Hoosac Tunnel is over five miles long, with a list of ghost stories to match. Venture into the depths as one man realizes he’s very much not alone in dark. Thanks RAYCON EVERYDAY EARBU...DS for sponsoring this episode. Help Sightings out and check out ⁠⁠buyraycon.com/sightings⁠ ⁠to get 15% off their awesome Everyday Earbuds! Sightings is a REVERB and QCODE Original. Find us on instagram @sightingspod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:00 Sometimes the shortest path between two points leads through the Heart of Darkness itself. In one centuries-old tunnel, the weight of history presses down as heavily as the rock above and daylight becomes a distant memory. And what happens when that tunnel starts calling your name, and you realize that some passages don't just connect places, they connect the living to the dead? Welcome to Sightings,
Starting point is 00:00:36 the series that takes you inside the world's most mysterious supernatural events. Each episode brings you a thrilling story that puts you at the center of the action, followed by a discussion that dives into the accounts that inspired the story and our takes on them. I'm McCloud. And I'm Brian, and I've got a few quick announcements before we dive into today's story. First, we want to welcome all of our new listeners. We hope you love this episode as much as you loved last week's crossover with My Victorian Nightmare.
Starting point is 00:01:03 That was so much fun. I can't wait to do something like that again. Well, that actually leads me into my second announcement. We've got a lot of really fun things on the horizon, especially for spooky season this fall. So to give us some time to work on all that, plus we honestly just need a little bit of a vacation, we're going to be releasing new sightings episodes every other week for the next few months.
Starting point is 00:01:26 That means we're going to be taking next week off. – But if you're a Q Code Plus subscriber, we will be releasing an extra listener story episode just for you next week, plus more in July and August. – That is right, Q Code Plus. Check it out with a free trial on Apple Podcasts, and you can get our episodes ad free, plus those really great bonus episodes. But bonus content aside, I wanna dive into today's episode.
Starting point is 00:01:51 It's our last week of June gloom, so I hope it's extra spooky. Oh, it is. Today, we are heading to the Hussick Tunnel in Western Massachusetts. When it opened in 1875, it was the longest tunnel in North America, and it has a long
Starting point is 00:02:05 list of ghost stories to match. So venture with us into the dark, if you dare. As we explore the Husak Tunnel, will we make it to the other side? Find out on this episode of Sightings. things. Gee whiz, this is not how today was supposed to go. I am... Well, I'm stuck. Somewhere in this five mile fricking tunnel. How far I can't tell really because I can't find the exit. And weird
Starting point is 00:03:05 as it sounds I can't find the entrance either. I've been walking for what feels like hours now though my watch stopped working some time back. My flashlight's long gone and I honestly God don't know what way to go anymore. And that... yeah that scares me. Terrifies me. Right to my bones. My reason for being here is simple. My wheels don't work and my sister's having a baby in North Adams. But that's on the other side of the ridge, 23 miles by road. In other words, a hell of a long way to walk, not counting all the snow. Then I remembered the Huysic Tunnel. It cuts right through the heart of the mountain, straight as an arrow to North Adams.
Starting point is 00:03:47 Five miles underground, a two-hour walk, and with no snow, mind you. I'd walked it before, mostly when I was a kid. So I grabbed my heavy jacket, my flashlight, and set off. Now standing at the entrance seems like a lifetime ago. The things 24 feet wide and 20 high carved like a mouth right into the side of the mountain. A mouth that seems to have swallowed me right up. The tunnel's wide enough for two train tracks, but there's just one now. Makes for easier walking, but a train can still take your head clean off if you aren't
Starting point is 00:04:22 careful. Otherwise, what can I say? It's a tunnel. Brick walls, industrial feeling, everything slick with moisture, and the stone ceiling, that's 500 feet of mountain pressing down right on my head. But I crossed the threshold of the entrance
Starting point is 00:04:37 and started walking. I mean, I'd done it before, and when there were a lot more trains going through. But I walked right along those old railroad ties, old enough that I think they'd been here since the tunnel opened in 1875. By a few hundred meters it was dark enough I needed my flashlight, and soon enough the daylight was gone completely. And that's when I really felt the weight of the place, the silence of it. There's this, ugh, there's a smell too. Old stone, stale air,
Starting point is 00:05:09 and something else I can't quite nail down. Something like turn to earth. Walking deeper, I couldn't help thinking about the stories. You grow up around here, you learn them whether you want to or not. Century-old tales, the kind you're not inclined to hear in the dark. But before about two hours ago, I wasn't a man who believed in ghost stories. Not one bit. Apparently, the tunnel took over 20 years to build. They called it the greatest engineering project of its time. But that ambition, well well it came at a price. The worst story is that one about Ringo Kelly. Back in 1865 or something like that,
Starting point is 00:05:50 nitroglycerin was new on the scene and all the miners were still figuring it out. So Ringo, hell of a name yeah, he was working with these two other guys, Ned something and Bobby something, or wait Billy something or wait Billy something yeah Billy something and they were down here setting charges when everything went wrong and when the smoke cleared Ned and Billy were buried under tons of rock but Ringo he survived problem was he was never the same word was he started acting strange nervous he claimed he saw things in the shadows of the tunnel, heard voices calling his name. Then one day he disappeared. As in vanished completely.
Starting point is 00:06:33 And no one saw Ringo Kelly for a whole year after that. Until one day, two miles into the tunnel, right where Nat and Billy died, they found Ringo's body. Strangled. By who? Yeah, good question. The deputy investigated, but no killer was ever found. Workers whispered that Nat and Billy's ghosts had finally gotten revenge.
Starting point is 00:06:57 Or something like that. I thought it was all a load of crock. But the other big story, that one had me totally hooked as a kid. Apparently when you build a long tunnel like this, you need to build ventilation shafts along the way, and one of these shafts, the central shaft, was more important than the others. And in 1867 a bunch of workers were down digging the shaft when a gas explosion tore the pumping station apart.
Starting point is 00:07:22 Thirteen men ended up trapped at the bottom of the shaft in flooding water. They tried to rescue him of course, but the fumes were too thick. One man was lowered down in a bucket but came up barely conscious, gasping that there was no hope below. So they sealed the shaft and waited. When they drained it, they found the bodies of course, but what they didn't expect to find was a raft, because some of those men had survived the explosion, and turns out they suffered long after. That's when the locals started calling the tunnel the Bloody Pit, because all in, over 200 men died building this tunnel. But again, those
Starting point is 00:08:03 were just stories, and I just needed a way through the mountain. So, I kept walking. Which was a bad decision. A bad, bad decision. At this point, my watch said quarter past four. I'd been walking over an hour at a steady pace, and I should have reached the halfway mark. Like I said, I'd made this walk before. I know how long it took. Plus, you know you're at the middle because a gentle uphill slope suddenly changes to a downhill one. But I was still walking up. Walking with no end, it seemed. And that's when I heard footsteps that weren't my own. They were echoing from somewhere up ahead. And no, they weren't the clatter of train wheels. This was different, like someone walking with an uneven gait, and dragging something along the ground.
Starting point is 00:08:52 I called out and only heard my echo in reply, but the dragging sound continued, closer than before. I shined my flashlight ahead, sweeping the beam across the walls. The light didn't reach far, maybe fifty feet at most, but that was just enough, because there, just at the edge of the beam, I saw something. At first I thought it was a man standing beside the track, or better said working beside the track, hunched over as though he'd just done back-breaking labor. I called out again,
Starting point is 00:09:25 and this time the figure straightened and turned toward me. Then he stepped out of the light beam, and I tried to track him, but he was gone. Like he'd stepped right through the solid brick tunnel wall. I think my heart rate picked up right then, and I began to question whether I saw what I actually thought I had. The tunnel was full of shadows after all, or perhaps there was an alcove I hadn't seen. But when I reached the spot where I'd seen the man, the walls were solid brick. No alcoves, no passages, and no sign of anyone at all. Then the beam of my flashlight caught something sitting on the tracks, and it had to have been left there
Starting point is 00:10:05 recent because trains come through here multiple times a day. It was a pickaxe, and not a modern one. This thing looked ancient, the kind that miners in the 19th century might carry. I picked it up and found it heavier than I'd expected. The handle felt wrong in my hands, icy almost. As I stood there holding that thing, realizing I was somehow lost in a perfectly straight tunnel, I realized how bad my situation had become.
Starting point is 00:10:38 But not bad enough, I guess. Because right then, my flashlight started flickering. Its battery was dying. And if that light went, I'd be in a whole heap of trouble. Groceries delivered to your door from No Frills with PC Express. Shop online and get $15 in PC Optimum Points on your first five orders. Shop now at NoFrails.ca. Shop with Rakuten and you'll get it. What's it? It's the best deal, the highest cashback, the most savings on your shopping.
Starting point is 00:11:19 So join Rakuten and start getting cashback at Sephora, Uniqlo, Expedia, and other stores you love. You can even stack sales on top of cash back. Just start your shopping with Rakuten to save money at over 750 stores. Join for free at rakuten.ca or download the Rakuten app. That's R-A-K-U-T-E-N. Rakuten.ca After seeing my flashlight sputter and flicker, I'm not gonna lie, I got scared. But I kept walking, using the light only when absolutely necessary to check my bearings. After another hour or so, I was still walking at that ever so slight uphill angle that told me I still hadn't reached the middle, which of course was impossible.
Starting point is 00:12:04 Had I turned myself around? I checked my watch again and its display was also flickering, barely clinging to life. Was something down here corroding the electronics? Or worse, corroding my mind? I tried to remember what I knew about enclosed spaces and toxic gases. Coal mines trapped methane that killed you, but maybe this tunnel concentrated other fumes or chemicals leaching from the old brick and mortar. And then I remembered Frank Webster. I'd heard this story growing up, just like everyone else in these parts. A long while back, he'd gone hunting near the tunnel and disappeared for three days. When they found him, he was stumbling along the Deerfield River in shock, claiming that
Starting point is 00:12:48 voices had called to him from the tunnel. He said he'd followed him inside and seen ghostly figures wandering around. Worst of all, something had taken his rifle and beaten him with it. He had the bruises to prove it, but no memory of how he'd gotten out. Then there were McKinstry and Owens, the drilling expert and the doctor who'd entered the tunnel just before it opened. About two miles in, they saw a dim light approaching from the west. At first they thought it was a workman with a lantern, but as it grew closer, it took on a strange blue color and morphed into the shape of a human being. A human being
Starting point is 00:13:23 without a head. I shook off the stories trying to clear those dark thoughts from my head. I didn't believe in ghosts after all. Never had. Even that pickaxe I'd found earlier, there had to be some rational explanation. Then, finally, the ground beneath my feet began to level out. I stopped walking and shined my flashlight ahead. The beam was so weak that it barely illuminated ten feet in front of me, but I could see that the tunnel floor had indeed flattened. This was it, the midpoint, the highest elevation in the tunnel, where the grade changed from a slight uphill to a slight downhill. So I wasn't losing
Starting point is 00:14:00 my mind after all. I'd simply misjudged the distance. And from here, it would be a steady downhill walk to the western portal and North Adams. I'd be out within the hour. And that's when my flashlight died for good. I fumbled with the light, shaking it, hitting it with my palm, nothing. I unscrewed the top and tried shuffling the batteries, but it was hopeless. The thing
Starting point is 00:14:25 was dead. Panic crept in as I realized my situation. I was standing in the middle of a five-mile tunnel with no light, no way to tell which direction was which. I decided my best way forward was to run my hands along the walls. The bricks were cold and slick with moisture, and my arms were soon soaked and freezing. But there were rumors of a room somewhere near the middle of the tunnel, a maintenance space carved directly into the rock beneath the central ventilation shaft. The old timers called it the Husuk Hotel, and if I could find it, there might be a flashlight inside, maybe even a telephone.
Starting point is 00:15:02 Minutes passed, Or maybe hours. Time basically lost all meaning in this black void. My fingers started to bleed as they scraped the ancient mortar, but found no opening. No doorway. No sign that anyone had ever worked in this section of the tunnel. Worse, I was losing my bearings entirely. The wall was still on my right side, but I couldn't remember what direction I started facing. Had I been walking east or west, up or down? In the absolute darkness, the gentle
Starting point is 00:15:31 grade of the tunnel floor was impossible to detect. I started worrying I'd end up in here forever. Even though trains ran this tunnel several times a day, I had yet to see one. That couldn't be right. Then, miraculously, my hand brushed empty air. A doorway. I explored the opening with my hands. It was narrow, and the room inside was small enough to be a closet. My fingers found what felt like shelves along one wall,
Starting point is 00:15:59 and on the shelves, various ancient objects, tools of some kind, a coil of rope, and then, incredibly, the unmistakable shape of an old lantern. I lifted it carefully. It felt heavy and metal with glass panels and what felt like a wick inside, but I had no matches or any other way to light it. The thing might as well have been a paperweight. So I set it down and kept exploring the small room, hoping for matches or a lighter or batteries
Starting point is 00:16:28 or anything. Instead, my fingers only found rotted wood and an old metal chair. Nothing that could help me see. And that's when I heard it. A voice calling from somewhere in the tunnel. Distant but clear. And unless I was going completely insane, it was calling my name. I froze, not even breathing.
Starting point is 00:16:50 It didn't sound like any voice I recognized. Not my sisters. Not anyone from town. It was eerily flat. Emotionless. It said my name again. Maybe I was hallucinating. Maybe I'd finally cracked.
Starting point is 00:17:06 I pressed myself against the wall, trying to make myself as small as possible, praying that whatever was out there would pass me by. But it called out again, and this time, I saw something. The faint glow in the distance, but not the warm yellow of a flashlight or orange flicker of a flame or something. This was something else, something blue. And I immediately thought of the story of McKinstry and Owens. But this couldn't be that. It couldn't. But as the glow grew closer, I could make out a figure silhouetted against the glow. A human shape, but wrong. Because where its head should have been, there was nothing but empty air. So I turned and ran. Which direction, I don't
Starting point is 00:17:53 know, and I don't care. Away from that thing was all that mattered. I tripped on the railroad ties as I sprinted through the dark, but I kept going. I had to. Because behind me, I could still see that blue glow and hear that awful voice calling my name. I ran into my lungs burned and my legs threatened to give out. And when I finally did stop, that blue light was gone. The voice was gone. But I still felt like I wasn't alone. That was more than an hour ago, I think. I'm still walking, trying to find an exit, running my fingers along the wall,
Starting point is 00:18:31 but the bricks all feel the same. Everything feels the same. I've walked enough to have crossed this tunnel's entire length multiple times over. That, I know, but I still can't find a way out. Maybe I'll become another story for the locals to tell. Another ghost to haunt the bloody pit. And yet I know I said I don't believe in ghosts.
Starting point is 00:18:53 But things change. Because I started hearing that voice in the distance again calling my name. And it's getting closer. Louder. And now? I'm afraid I have nowhere left to run. Sightings will be back, just after this. Oh summer, more warmth, more light, more time to spend outside, enjoying every moment from sun up to sun down.
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Starting point is 00:21:30 Oh boy. Jump on the train. Jump on the train. Train to nowhere it sounds like in this case. The train to nowhere. I'm sorry everybody. I'm fired again. Seriously, welcome back. This was a cool episode.
Starting point is 00:21:46 Trains are awesome. Train tunnels, even better. Spooky train tunnels. I'm all in. I was shocked that someone getting, you know, smacked by a train wasn't part of this story. I'm amazed too. Apparently it's a wide tunnel, so I think that's part of it. It's a really cool tunnel to kind of...
Starting point is 00:22:04 Oh man, I just was going to do the pun. It's a really cool tunnel to kind of Oh man, I just was gonna do the pun. It's a really cool tunnel to dig into Because there's a lot of history That goes with this particular tunnel In western massachusetts So let me kind of lay all that in the line real quick Yeah, please tell me more about this place because it's a real place, right? It absolutely is a real place. And I think we're probably going to butcher the pronunciation, so we're sorry.
Starting point is 00:22:29 I can't tell if it's Husek or Huzak tunnel. Yeah, we found people saying it all sorts of ways. But the gist of it is that this tunnel runs through the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts. They basically needed a way through these mountain range, and they chose this path between Florida, Massachusetts, the town of Florida in Massachusetts and North Adams, Massachusetts. And I guess the problem with building this tunnel is that that's five miles of solid rock.
Starting point is 00:22:55 Wow. Yeah, so they started in 1851 and the tunnel itself took 24 years to build. And when it opened, it was the longest tunnel in North America. Oh, just the longest tunnel. The longest tunnel and the second longest in the world. And it was really cool the way they built it. They had crews start on either end of the tunnel, on either side of the mountain range, and work inwards basically.
Starting point is 00:23:17 And when they came together, they were one inch off. Which is impressive, I think. I got to say, I think that's super impressive. But all of that came with certainly a cost. It cost almost a billion dollars in today's money to build this tunnel. Oh, wow. But I think as we kind of discovered in the course of reading this story, there was also a cost of a lot of lives as this tunnel was built.
Starting point is 00:23:39 That's the thing that I found really upsetting about this story actually, just that all these people were putting their lives at risk for a buck. And I think it's upsetting because unfortunately, I think that still happens around the world, certainly, but even in the US. Yeah, and in this case, all these people who did die, probably under not great conditions,
Starting point is 00:24:00 probably angry, probably upset. Understandably so. And you can understand why they probably stuck around and are haunting this tunnel. But general backdrop aside, like I'd love to kind of get a bit more context of this particular story itself. This character I read, I don't think he even was named in the story. He was not, no.
Starting point is 00:24:19 I'm assuming he was made up. He was not made up actually. Really? He's based on a man named Bernard Hestaby, who was a local from the area who wandered into this tunnel in 1973, which is when the story was set, and he was never seen again.
Starting point is 00:24:33 Oh. I, of course, had to kind of make up what happened to him inside that tunnel because no one actually knows. Sure. But all the spooky stories that he tells while he's inside the tunnel and all the things that he sees when he's in there are based on actual encounters that were reported by others as they had encountered those in the tunnel.
Starting point is 00:24:52 Okay. And do we know anything about Bernard, his life, or? Not much. There's some newspaper articles that mentioned that he was missing and was last seen walking into the tunnel. And all I know beyond that is he was apparently living in one of the hotels in North Adams. So that's all we have to run on, basically. Okay, so we don't know a whole lot about him, so there's not much to really dive into in terms of like what might have really been the cause of his death, if not the supernatural tunnel or whatever. So let's just focus on this tunnel, which man, tunnels are just such a perfect setting for spooky stuff.
Starting point is 00:25:30 They're dark, they're long. Your imagination starts going crazy because you don't know how close you are to the end. Like truly you don't, especially with one that's five miles long. Absolutely. So this is just, all this is to say is it's an awesome setting for a story like this.
Starting point is 00:25:45 Well, especially when you have one, well, this isn't an awesome fact, but like when you have a place that's kind of rooted in all these disasters that happened when they were building it, it's natural that there would be this negative energy and kind of this vibe around the place almost. So I wanted to dig into a few of those that were kind of hinted at in the story, but I want to kind of flesh them out a little bit more here because they're really cool historical stories that I think have a lot of, you know, resonance. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:26:11 So, the first one that was mentioned in the story was about Ringo Kelly. He was a miner who was working in the tunnel with two other guys, Brinkman and Nash were their names. And in 1865 when this happened, cool fact, this was the first construction project potentially in America that used nitroglycerin. Really? Because it was brand new to the country at the time. And so no one really knew quite what they were doing with it, it seems like. And that might be why a lot of the people
Starting point is 00:26:40 ended up dying building this tunnel. Yikes. But in this particular case, Ringo Kelly and his two coworkers were in the tunnel. They planted a charge and they ran. Only Ringo ended up surviving, though, because it blew up too early. And the other two guys ended up buried in the rubble
Starting point is 00:26:56 and died, unfortunately. But Ringo, he seemed to have had some guilt over it. So I don't know if he actually is the one who personally messed up. But a few days later, he went missing. No one saw him for a year. And when they found him, one year later, his body was found strangled in the exact spot where Nash and Brinkman had been buried in the tunnel wreckage.
Starting point is 00:27:21 So ultimately, Ringo didn't make it out. Ultimately not, no. And I think people have said because of that, could he have been strangled or killed by the ghosts of his former coworkers? Or I will posit potentially just one of his living coworkers who were friends with the ones who died who knew that Ringo was the one who effed it up
Starting point is 00:27:42 and were like, I'm gonna kill you. You, my good buddies are dead because you're not good at your job. That's valid, but no one had seen him for an entire year before that happened. So it is a big question mark as to what could have happened there. You can really see why they called it the bloody pit.
Starting point is 00:27:56 Yeah, absolutely. And that wasn't even the big one. The big disaster though, involved this central ventilation shaft that we heard about in the story. And in 1867, there were a bunch of men at the bottom of this. There was an explosion up above. All of the debris came falling down on top of them, including a building that was up there that fell down into the shaft and fell on top of them. And the wreckage buried them alive,
Starting point is 00:28:19 essentially. And to make matters worse, the water pump that was in there was destroyed, and the tunnel filled up with water. So... I mean, I guess it's kind of like what happens when cave divers get stuck. I can't think of many things more terrifying. No, absolutely not. And unfortunately, these guys were essentially left for dead. They tried to send a guy down to see if they could, before the water line, to see if they could discover any sense of people being alive down there.
Starting point is 00:28:45 But there were gases and fumes and things like that that were so bad, that he's like, no one could have survived there. Bring me back up. End of story, basically. Unfortunately, though, a year later, when they finally drained the shaft and ended up pulling all the wreckage out, they found not only the bodies of the guys who were buried there, but they found a raft that the guys had built, which implies that they were alive for at least long enough to build a raft and survive. Hoping for someone to save them. Which is really unfortunate,
Starting point is 00:29:11 and I think that seems more like the bloody pit vibe to me. You know what else I think about tunnels like, and why I think this is such a great format for telling stories about them is, by nature, like this potentially most horrific and terrifying harrowing experience is not visual because there's no light. Yeah. And there's nowhere to go.
Starting point is 00:29:34 You can't like make a movie about it. You can't really make a TV show about it very well. It's interesting you bring up just the lack of being able to see anything. A lot of the spooky stuff that people have encountered in this tunnel have been things they've heard. Hmm. Interesting. So hearing weird just sounds of miners and sounds of workers and sounds like that all throughout the tunnel, even up to today. People have of course seen things too. In the lit
Starting point is 00:29:59 parts of the tunnel, they've seen miners carrying pickaxes and shovels. Then they vanish a few moments later. We hinted at it in the story, but there were a couple of really esteemed locals, a doctor and a superintendent of the construction site who ventured into the tunnel one time a few years before it opened. And that's when they saw this eerie blue light in the distance that as it grew closer revealed itself to be a headless man walking towards them. Oh, wow. So that was actually a real account that is written down that I drew from in shaping this story. And of course, to back this up as well, we've all these books, articles,
Starting point is 00:30:34 lots of written material to kind of corroborate the experience that a lot of people have had in and around this particular tunnel. So those were fairly old sightings. Are there contemporary sightings? Do people continue to report seeing stuff in this tunnel? Also, why are people allowed to just keep walking into this tunnel? That is a really good question. From what I uncovered, it sounds like the tunnel is not used very often these days.
Starting point is 00:30:59 Only five or six or seven trains go through in a day, which honestly does not seem like a lot for a major throwaway like this. But to answer your question about more modern occurrences, yes, there absolutely have been. I mean, Bernard Hestobie was certainly one of them. That was 1973 where he just vanished. Although we don't know for sure what he saw or didn't see, or even actually if he died in the tunnel.
Starting point is 00:31:19 That's very true. Well, I think if he had died in the tunnel, he would have found his body. Right. It's a real head scratcher. What could have happened to him? But beyond that, there have been other reports, more recent ones. That's very true. Well, I think if he had died in the tunnel, he would have found his body. Right. It's a real head scratcher. What could have happened to him? But beyond that, there have been other reports, more recent ones.
Starting point is 00:31:28 There was a professor who went into the tunnel in the 1980s for some kind of research project. They said that they felt an unseen entity walking behind her in the tunnel for the entire time they were walking. They didn't see anything in that case, but it was still a creepy vibe. And this one's cool. I don't have dates on this one, but there are people who have said that either one, they've felt someone try and push them in front of a train when they've been in the tunnel. Whoa.
Starting point is 00:31:54 Or they've also felt hands try and pull them back as if to save them. Interesting. So it's kind of hard to know in that case then if this is like a malevolent spirit or a... Well, it's a lot of different people died in there, so you probably got some good ones and some bad ones. Absolutely. And interestingly, I think a lot of the accounts that I uncovered suggested sightings of more
Starting point is 00:32:12 than one spirit at a time, which is kind of unusual. When you see a group of people walking through the tunnel, that's a little unnerving. Yeah. You know the thing about this story that I just keep coming back to, and I think it's something inherent to passageways, hallways, tunnels, is the feeling that I think we've all experienced where time loses meaning. It becomes impossible to gauge time, and the more scared you are, the slower time seems to go.
Starting point is 00:32:42 That thing of the going out is always scarier and feels longer than the coming back because your senses are more alive. You're watching out, you're listening, you're just sucking in more information. And that feeling that our character has of just not knowing when it's going to end. I love that aspect of how we mentally map time and experience and our emotions within that.
Starting point is 00:33:06 And it's like whether it's a hallway or a dark house where you can scare yourself because of just by nature of how much space is between you and where you're going. And how much of that space can your imagination fill? And I think what makes it elevates it in a way for me in a tunnel is that logically, there are only two ways in and out. Yeah, logically, you should be able to get out. You're not trapped. You keep walking and you will find a way out.
Starting point is 00:33:29 End of story. Yeah. But what happens when you can't? And that's what I think terrified me the most as I was writing this and trying to put myself in the head space of what could drive someone crazy walking into a tunnel that might be haunted. Absolutely.
Starting point is 00:33:43 So we're gonna end the discussion just a little bit early today, just because we have those reminders for you that we're going to move to bi-weekly through the summer, just to give ourselves a chance to make some more cool stuff for you guys and get ourselves ready for spooky season, which is coming right around the corner, McCloud. Well, aren't we in spooky season? When does it end?
Starting point is 00:34:00 We're in June gloom. We're in June gloom. There's still July, August, September before we get to spooky season. So get yourselves ready for that. But as a reminder, if you're a Q Code Plus subscriber, you're gonna get next week a very special, extra long listener story just for you. They'll show up on Apple Podcasts
Starting point is 00:34:18 or wherever you're subscribed to Q Code Plus. And just as a reminder, you know, Q Code Plus really is the best way to support us directly. Your support really does help keep Sightings rolling and help us prepare for all the cool stuff that we have coming down the pipe. All right. And Brian, I'm going to take your line this time, since we know where we're going next week already.
Starting point is 00:34:36 Say, listeners, if you have any experiences in tunnels, train, or otherwise that you want to share with us, hit us up on Instagram, at Sightings Pod. That's the one. You did it. That's right. Or you can, of course, leave the comments for us on Spotify. We love reading those.
Starting point is 00:34:54 Absolutely. Or leave us a review on Apple podcasts or, you know, wherever you're listening. Absolutely. We love seeing those and are excited to start sharing some of those in next month's episodes. So speaking of next month, for those of us who don't have Q Code Plus, where are we going in two weeks, Brian? Yeah, so we're heading in July. We're going to be putting the ghost stories behind us
Starting point is 00:35:17 for a few weeks, but we're going to be staying in New England. We're going to head to New Hampshire for a really cool UFO sighting, widespread UFO sighting story that I think you're going to head to New Hampshire for a really cool UFO sighting, widespread UFO sighting story that I think you're going to love. So. Okay, New Hampshire. There you go. That's the accent we're going to use. That's the accent.
Starting point is 00:35:34 That's the one. So listeners, we'd love if you'd come back and visit us in two weeks for our next regular episode. Same time, same place, right here on Sightings. See you in two weeks, everybody. Sightings is hosted by McLeod, Andrews, and Brian Sigley. Produced by Brian Sigley, Chase Kinzer, and McLeod, Andrews. Written by Brian Sigley.
Starting point is 00:35:57 Story music by Madison James Smith. Series music by Mitch Bain. Mixing and mastering by Pat Kicklater of Sundial Media. Artwork by Nuno Cernatus. For a list of this episode's sources, check out our website at sightingspodcast.com. Sightings is presented by Reverb and Q-Code. If you like the show, be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform so you're first to hear new episodes. And if you know other Supernatural fans, tell them about us. We'd really appreciate it.
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