This Paranormal Life - The Moonville Tunnel - The Midwest’s Most Haunted Ghost Town

Episode Date: May 19, 2026

LONDON LIVE SHOW⁠⁠⁠ https://www.tickettailor.com/events/cheerfulearful/2084541 On the freight line between Cincinnati and Marietta lies a dark paranormal secret, a secluded ghost town where many souls have met their end, if the stories are true, haven’t passed on to the other side… In Moonville Ohio lies a tunnel in which countless ghosts have been seen in the last 150 years including three prolific spirits: the Brakeman, the Lavender Lady, and the ‘Bully’. All souls who met an unfortunate and disturbing end on this railway line during a dangerous time in American history. But are the stories and sightings real or just urban legends? Kit and Rory investigate to find out! Become a commune member to get access to bonus episodes: ⁠https://thisparanormallife.com⁠ Follow us on ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠, and ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our Secret Society Facebook Community⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Buy Official TPL Merch!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Edited by Philip Shacklady Researched by ⁠Ewen Friers Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In 1880, a freight train was rattling through rural Appalachia when tragedy struck, just as the train neared a secluded tunnel deep in the woodlands of rural Ohio. The train's engineer Frank Lawhead spotted something at the other end of the tunnel. My God, where's the signal man? There's another damn train coming right at us! A tragic signaling error had created a truly deadly situation, and the two trains hurtled towards each other on the single line. But despite Lawhead's best efforts to break,

the train couldn't be stopped in time and the two smashed into one another just outside the tunnel. Six people were injured in the accident and two killed. Fireman, Charles Crick, and the engineer Frank Lawhead himself. While the accident rocked the community nearby, it was only one chapter in a long story about this location, about a ghost tunnel in Moonville, Ohio, that many would enter, but not all would leave.

But why did people abandon the nearby town and railway? What ghosts are said to haunt this location to this very day, and is it cheaper to get two singles or one return ticket on the ghost train? Answers to these questions and more on this episode of This Paranormal Life! Hello and welcome back to This Paranormal Life. Oh my God! rest in peace frank and what's your name charles um a heavy start to this week's episode by the way this is the weekly comedy podcast where every tuesday we investigate a different paranormal tale deciding by the end of the episode whether our case is paranormal or not how you doing today rory what are we doing today the moon town ghost train the the moonville moonville ghost tunnel okay i was close um wow that's insane that's now that's a sentence

That's how you want to start a podcast. Two trains colliding like it's a Mr. Beast YouTube video. That's insane. I'm going to drive this train. I've been drinking for six hours. My name's Frank Lloyd, and I'm going to drive this steam train into this tunnel when there's another train coming through. But before that, we're going to fill this town in Ohio with dynamite. This is not what you want as a train driver.

you know, because if there's one thing I know about trains, it's you're on the rails. You're going forward. You can order and take a nap. Yeah, yeah. Because it's on rails. It's fine. It's fine.

And you're going pretty fast too, so if anything does get in your way, a sheep, a car. A human, splat. Right, but another train. That is the only thing you can't have happen. Yeah. Or a brick wall. Like you run out of train track. That's a problem.

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. For sure. So, wow. I mean, for this to happen, this is a catastrophic amount of mismanagement. Where's the signal man, for Christ's sake? I guess we're going to read on to find out what happened to the signal one. That was the splat 20 yards ago. Splat. Where's the signal? Where's the signal? He's on the windscreen.

Against the front of the trade. He was the windscreen. I can't see anything past this red mist. Where's the signal man, for God's sakes? It's like, God, I must have nodded off and missed him a while back. Pass me some more moonshine. I need to wake myself up. Rory, it is an unprecedented mystery as to what happened along the way here for this tragedy to occur.

But clearly it's not the only thing that has happened here in Moonville. Let's get into the investigation, but not before I say, hey, why not think about, because Come and a member of the commune and joining at This ParanormalLife.com. Maybe you've been listening to This Paranormal Life for a long time. Maybe you've just joined us. And this is the first ever episode. Hopefully you love this episode. There are hundreds, hundreds more where that came from over at This Paranormal Life.com.

That's where the episodes go off the rails. If you catch my drift. Too hot for TV, I sometimes like to say. It's pretty cool stuff. We've done some big investigation. We show Nip. I haven't been showing Nip. You've been showing nip.

Yeah, whenever you're like really deep in like a bit of storytelling. You go, whoop, raise your shirt up. Yes. But only when I have my papers up. And then as soon as I take them down, whoop, shirt down, whoop, whoop, whoop, nipple, nipple.

As long as that's legal to do, if that's illegal, then I didn't do that. But this paranormal life.com to get access to all those bonus investigations the weekly behind the scenes after party where me and Rory shoot the shit right here in the studio. Or sometimes when we're traveling around the world.

It's all available. at our website, links in the description, for as little as five bucks a month. And the patrons also got first dibs on tickets to our upcoming live show. That is the only live show that we are doing in 2026. It's right here in London, in spooky season, Sunday the 11th of October. Grab your tickets. Links in the description and over our website. Be there. We're going to travel through time. Too much information. At the live show, because the show is called We bought a time machine. And we did. Well, we don't know. We might have already. we might have already

John with your time for being honest. Do you think maybe we came back to record this episode? Yeah. How's that for mind-blowing shit?

Buy stocks in Build a bear. Yeah, that's all I'm saying. This is not financial advice. Sorry, sorry, this is not financial advice. Let's talk groceries,

specifically, your groceries. With Instacart, you want your groceries just the way you like them, right? Well, the Instacart app lets you do just that.

They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe you want your bananas. Shoppers can see your preferences up front, helping guide their choices. Instacard, get groceries just how you like. Rory, today we are talking about the Moonville Tunnel. First up, Moonville is an awesome name for a ghost town, isn't it? Like, I would watch a Netflix series called Moonville. Yeah, what were you expecting?

Yeah. Digging a tunnel in Moonville? Totally. Absolutely. Absolutely. You're going to find some ghosts. Now, the site we're talking about and is in question today was on the main freight line between Marietta and Cincinnati, opened in the 1800s. It passed through various small coal mining towns, including this one we're talking about today, deep in the wilds of Vinton County, Ohio. The route passed a creek over a trestle bridge and then cut straight through a hill in this 250-foot long tunnel.

A tiny community named Moonville was established along the line, made up of little more than two main families and a few miners. I feel like this is the town that you start off in and like Red Dead Redemption with zero items. Yeah, oh absolutely. And you have to like walk into one of the houses to get your first mission. Yeah, there's like old soup with with bugs in it on the stove, bathtub full of weird stuff and you're like, what the hell happened here? Oh, that's going more Resident Evil, I feel like. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

And within a few years of the collision, I mentioned at the start of the episode, people started telling ghost stories, reporting sightings of figures seen in the tunnel at night. Became part of the folklore. Railway workers and conductor spoke of a robed figure that would appear on the line, swaying a lantern before disappearing. Whoa. One such ghost encounter was described in an Ohio paper, the Chillicothe. I don't know how to say that.

Daily Gazette in 1895. The ghost of Moonville, after an absence of one year, has returned and is again at its old pranks, haunting freight trains and their crews. Monday night the ghost appeared just east of the cut. The ghost was attired in a pure white robe and carried a lantern. It had a flowing white beard, its eyes glistened like balls of fire, and surrounding it was a halo of twinkling stars. Whoa.

News was weird back in the day. Yeah. As the train approached, the lantern was swung across the track. Engineer Washburn gave the proper whistle signal and stopped the train. As he did so, his ghost stepped off the track and disappeared amidst the rocks nearby. This is not the first time the same ghost has stopped and delayed trains. It has been at that business, off and on, since the frightful collision at that point in which Engineer Lawhead lost his life and Engineer Walsh Walters was injured.

Damn, okay. I don't like the phrase, They're saying the engineer of the train. Like, that is kind of crazy that he actually stopped the train in its tracks. Yeah, yeah, because he thought there was a person there. He stopped it and then the ghost disappeared. But I don't like how they were like his ghost stepped off the track. That makes it sound like there's a new ghost in play.

Like his ghost before his death. Rory, why do ghosts and trains go together like peanut butter and jam? I don't know. I don't know. I think the weird thing is, I think probably we're familiar with the phrase, ghost train, probably more from the popular amusement ride, the ghost train. We've investigated some ghost trains before, but you'd be surprised how rare it actually is. Like there are ghost trains, but no more than there's ghost anything else, ghost ships.

Yeah. You are right. The phrase ghost train is more synonymous with the amusements. Yeah. And yes, the train being a ghost is relatively rare. I seem to remember there was, was it like Abraham Lincoln's funeral train? I think is a goate ghost train. Yeah, I had their first album. I think that's a real ghost train. But yeah, I think ghosts and trains, maybe that's why I've worded it that way. Is it not even just the train being a ghost, but it's like people that die on the tracks, their ghosts hang around.

Yeah, yeah. I even know back home, I did research it quite recently in Ireland. And there's, I was researching a woman who died on a train track and it's like, did she fall from the carriage onto the tracks and was killed? Or did she, was she pushed? Oh, okay. This kind of thing. I guess there's some low hanging fruit answers that it's like, it's just the era. Trains have been around for a long time. Sure. There's, we haven't had enough time to have a lot of ghost Teslas. Yeah, yeah. Or ghost hummers, you know, whereas, yeah, trains have been around a long time. And they're relatively dangerous between Christ. crashes, people being run over on them, maidens and Westerns being tied to the train tracks themselves. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's a big thing in the popular culture and history. I mean,

even just hearing the phrase ghost train sparks so much fear inside of my body because where we grew up in Ireland, there's a popular amusement's called Barry's. And when we were growing up, it was a big thing that you would go to Barry's and ride the ghost train. And nowadays, I feel like there's a lot of rules and regulation as to what you can and can't do on one of those rides. Back then? I don't know if that's true. Is there EU laws? Well, I think you're not supposed to touch the kids.

That should be rule number one. Dude. The ride I went on, no one got touched, bro. So I don't know who was hiding in the tunnel when you did that shit? Or who was with you on the train? And you were like, damn, that was 3D. I was like, they weren't wrong. That was the scariest ride of my life.

Your hairs will stick out. Jesus Christ. Brother, that ghost train, because it was so shit, it made it so much scarier. Because you were like anything could happen. Anything could happen. There's like rusty blades hanging from the ceiling. And it would be like, you just go around a corner and something would just blow wind in your ear. And then something would pop, like a cardboard mummy would pop out and just go, ah!

Just make a horrible noise. But you're describing classic ghost train, I'd take? And then a man's hand grabs your neck. Just a human hand. Come on. No, that's different. It was... You stepped out of the remit of the ride.

People were getting slapped around in the dark. It was wild. Well, yeah, because they... It should be a relatively easy ride. Because the point of a ghost train is for teens to have their first sexual experience on the train in the dark with no one looking. So you can't distract them too much. Yeah, that noise was actually me mid-ride.

You touched your first boob It was scary, dude And I popped like the mummy I felt a hot breath in my ear And I went off It's true It's true And look, have I grown up since

And gone back to the ride Which still exist by the way You can go do it It's not as scary as I remember But as a kid I remember it being terrifying Probably because there's rules now where you can't touch the people on the ride. Rory's like, I went on the ghost train,

and this borderline seven foot tall skeletal figure attacked me in the night. It's like, yeah, that's Abby. She's a netball player. She's had a crush on you for the last three years. He's like, oh. She's tried to kiss you, dude.

Well, getting back to Moonville, accounts of a lantern-waving ghost have been reported at this tunnel for years. Some believe that Lawhead, now presumably dressed in his white funeral shroud, has been condemned to re-watch the collision unfold over and over in ghost form. Ah. His frantic signaling from the tunnel is a desperate attempt to avert disaster again and again. His ghost is often seen inside the tunnel or moving down an embankment outside it.

As we heard, this location was extremely dangerous for those trying to move around the village. By the time the railway was finally decommissioned in the 1980s, as many as 21 deaths had been recorded in and around the tunnel. Our many were not recorded. Bloody hell, put up a fence. You said there was like 20 people living there. I said there was two families. There's two families.

And all 20 people have died? Who's left? I'm starting to think the families are tying strangers to the tracks. They're luring people to it. This is insane. Stealing their wallets. I think it's about time that we see the tunnel itself.

Phil, can you bring up evidence number one? This is... Oh my God. That's a tunnel back in the day. Guys, get off the tracks! There's two people standing on the tracks. Okay, I need to... A lot of people will be listening to this podcast,

not watching the video feed. For those people, I need to tell you right now, this is a bridge. it's a tunnel this if you were thinking of what I was thinking of when Kit was explaining tunnel

this ain't it chief it's a it's a thick bridge well it's not a bridge because it's a tunnel going through a hill or a mountain we've I think we talked about

the haunted Hoosack tunnel before on the podcast and I don't remember the length of that thing but it was you cannot see the other end from the first end.

You know, it goes on for a very long time. This one is, I could run through this in about 25 seconds. I said earlier, and sure it doesn't look at it in this photo, it's 250 feet long. 250 foot long.

250 feet long. Yeah, it's small. I'm not trying to put it on blast or anything like that. Then stop talking about it, for sure. But it is smaller than you think. But the time... How are people dying?

in that thing. The tunnel itself though, actually the structure around it is quite big. It's beautiful. It's very pretty. And yeah, I'm being, I'm exaggerating here. It is a tunnel technically. I don't call it a bridge. Just a different thing that it isn't.

A bridge goes over something. This goes through something. Okay. I think, Phil, I believe there is another image. Let's see the second one. Please. This is it today. That does not look like 250 foot long.

It ain't don't look like a tunnel either. That looks really like a bridge. What do you think a bridge is? What do you think is happening? It's a bridge for bunny rabbits to run up the top of the hill and run over the top of the tunnel, I guess. It's small. Roy's like, that is a boat.

That's a boat. It is not a tunnel. It's a boat. It's not. It's just a tunnel. You might have an issue with the length of the tunnel. Yeah. It's small. It's thin. But it's there.

Okay. It doesn't look as romantic now in the modern setting where it's kind of covered in... Well, thanks to graffiti. It's covered in graffiti and overgrown. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much, Phil. We can keep it pushing. I just wanted to give you a little visual representation of what we're dealing with here today. As I said, as many as 21 recorded deaths. Who knows about vagrants who weren't recorded? With such a high death count, could there be other ghosts haunting them? Moonville Tunnel. Hmm.

According to local lore, yes. As well as Lawhead, there's at least three more distinct spirits known to haunt this location. Let's look at them now. First up, we got the Lavender Lady. Walking through a dank and damp tunnel, the last thing you'd expect to smell would be the sweet smell of lavender. Yet time and time again, this phenomenon is reported by people who visit the Moonville tunnel and it's associated with sightings of a woman known as the lavender lady. Ah!

These encounters begin with the strong smell of lavender perfume, followed by the appearance of a woman in a, you guessed it, lavender-colored dress. Some investigators believe this is the ghost of an Irish immigrant called Mary Shea. Mary was thought to have arrived in the area post-Civil War and fallen in love with one of the railway workers. he was killed in an accident. We don't know where. Could have been anywhere.

He could have stepped on a nail and got Tennis. She took her own life, jumping from the adjoining bridge. Wow. The bridge? Or the tunnel? They must mean, but then that's not tall enough to kill someone. No, it's not. It's not. So it mustered. Oh, oh, the bridge, because I said earlier, the tunnel, the railway track does go over a bridge. I said that earlier. It goes over Raccoon Creek. That's the bridge.

Did you say that? I said that earlier. Okay. It goes over a bridge and then it, then it has to go through a tunnel. It's going to go through the tunnel. Okay. Sorry, Phil, you could take out all my crying just then I don't know what's happening. Keep that in. It's great. It's like bridge I don't know. I don't know. What the hell is happening here?

Oh Lord. I went dog whistle mode. I'm not finished. People have been smelling her ever since. And not just in the tunnel, but also in the nearby abandoned cemetery. Oh, yikes.

Did I mention there's an abandoned cemetery in the town? There had to be because everyone died. Yeah, I assume so. I assume the train just runs right through it. It's just, last stop at the cemetery. I feel like if I knew people would be smelling me forever after I die, I'd take more care with my personal hygiene. Right, because what if you die on a stinky day?

Like, I'm very... Not that I have any of those. Yeah, because I am clean, but I do cook a lot, and I feel like they'd call me garlic man. Right. Like, people would be visiting the place I died, and they'd be like, yeah, like he smells like hell of garlic. Yeah, we'd like,

Like maybe he was French or something. I don't know if you want that. Was he a vampire slayer? That could be cool. If you smell like garlic. Yeah, of the tail. Yeah. What do you think like your, what do they talk about with perfume?

It's like top note, base note, you know, the different scents that are involved. I would smell like hot dog water. Let's face it. Let's face it when I die. Just pickles. You're just pickled by all the monster energy you've drunk in your life. Probably. Okay, that was additional ghost number one.

Let's get on to the second one, known as the break man. Rory, as a Londoner, you're constantly being told to, quote, mind the gap. Well, our next ghost is a cautionary tale. A local brake man, which is exactly what you think it is, is said to have got drunk on the jaw and fallen asleep on the track somewhere around the late 1850s. Some accounts say he drunkenly curled up for a sleep on the tracks. God's sakes. Some suggest he fell from a perch or lookout post on the carriage.

And one account even suggests he was placed there by a sinister force. Whoa. Whatever way it happened, he ended up in this extremely dangerous place. And you can imagine the outcome. Another Ohio newspaper, the MacArthur Democrat, wrote, A brakesman on the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad was fatally injured, when the wheels passing over and grinding to a shapeless mass, the greater part of one of his legs.

That's unnecessarily graphic. That's horrific. He was taken. On the train. That's good. To Hamden, and Doctor's Wolf and Ranels sent forward to perform amputation. But the frustration of the vital energies was too great to attempt it. The man is probably dead e'er this.

Nothing quite like having your legs ground to a shapeless mass. That's horrible. Oh my God. What was that ending bit? Why was it futile? His vital energy was gone. Okay. I don't know.

Because he's dead. Yeah, he bled out, dude. Yeah, he has to have. His legs were run over by a steam train. How you survive in that? I don't know. A steam train. I'm surprised he didn't hit him in the head with a shovel.

Yeah. Maybe a steam train, though, going over your legs is so quick and impactful. that it's just like, swing, it's over with. They're crushed to a bloody. Right, you don't even like notice for a second. The shock just kicks in and you're like, oh, well, that's done. How did he, you know, the sinister force placing him on the tracks seems very far-fetched, but how do you fall asleep on the railroad tracks?

Right, when presumably around you is 30 miles of safety in any direction. Christine forest. There's just one place you can't fall asleep and it's right on the rails of a train. You're looking for somewhere soft to lay your head. You're like, oh, a steel bar. Oh, lovely. The only metal around. Well, in what we'll see is a recurring theme for this time and place,

the paper said that the accident resulted from too free a use of liquor. Of course. The guy was, forgive the pun, legless. Well, it would be hard to find a more tortured soul connected to Moonville than that. and indeed the brake man is condemned to inhabit the dark of the tunnel also for some reason waving a lantern for eternity the brake man is associated with disembodied voices often heard echoing through the very very short tunnel

does he have his legs genuine question you know the answer to that he doesn't there's no way he does it's a question that's been posed before when you go on the afterlife are you wearing your fly-a-shit? Are you wearing your nicest, crispiest outfit? From what I've heard, it's what you die in. Yeah. And apparently what you smell like. You take it all with you in that moment. Yeah. So I guess, yeah, he died with no legs or not in any good shape.

And you're gonna die with no swag. Well, no, because I do have swag. So unless I somehow die and take on your identity, I don't see why that would work. But before we move on, there is, I did promise one more of the three ghosts associated with the Moonville Tunnel. This one is known as bully. Known through life as Baldie Keaton. Is that his legal first name, Baldi? That feels mean. I mean, sometimes you do call a baby Baldi.

You're like, oh, little Baldi baby. I don't? You bully? Because they're all bald. Well, they're actually not all bald. Sometimes you call them like Baldi or Four Eyes or Point Dexter, you know. Well, it's like our parents, they're like, sometimes be like, it's like, we're our unique little nickname for our little baby when they were

in. It's mummy's tummy was bean. It's like, yeah, everyone calls the baby fucking bean. Because everyone does that thing where like when you're pregnant, you have an app that tells you this week, the baby is the size of a bean. And then all parents are like, oh, that's so cute. They're the size of a bean. I'm going to call a beanie. And then, because when they get bigger, this stuff isn't as cute. It's like, neither the size of a melon. neither the size of a papaya whatever it is maybe has entered the territory

of forest badger maybe is roughly the size of a forest badger and you're like our little badgie I don't that is hard your child is currently

the size of a sewer rat it's like okay could you have picked a different animal like a cuter one or something nope it is completely proportionate this week it's the size of a human shit

last week it was a rabbit shit. Why is it all shit? Well, you may make fun, Rory, but we actually all know a Baldi, someone in life that after a few drinks gets hostile. Baldi

Keaton was an aggressive drunk. In fact, he was known to bear hug those he took a dislike to when drunk. Well, one evening, Baldi got in a frog with a group of men at the local saloon. He was kicked out, but it didn't end there. Somewhere on his drunken walk home,

Baldy was intercepted, maybe by the group from the bar. Either way, his body was found on the tracks by Moonville Tunnel the following day. Yikes, poor Baldi. Many visitors to the tunnel report pebbles being thrown from above the entrance. This is thought to be the bully himself, Baldi Keaton. A truly tragic story, of course, you know, in modern day times, if he was around today, could have just flown to Turkey, get the transplant. the transplant.

And we would now be just referring to his ghost as Keaton. Yeah. Of course. But he, like we said, died bald, stays bald. Shout out to the old gender affirming healthcare that is available in 2026, guys. Hell yeah. But, Rory, for a story that took place as many as what 145 years ago, excitingly, sightings haven't just stayed in the past.

As recently as the 1990s, sightings were even being reported in the media. One blog, Forgotten, Ohio has a record of a news article in the Athens Messenger, the story of David in 1993, an Ohio University student who went to Moonville to swim in Raccoon Creek with some friends. Now, the friends on their way back through the tunnel say they saw a light halfway down it. So they split up into two groups because they had been drinking beer. and two of them were underage. Okay.

It sounds like two hung back and then the other two headed towards the light. Ben came immediately sprinting back out of the tunnel, screaming, there's no one carrying the light. Whoa. David went to check it out for himself. He wasn't kidding, he reported.

It was just a swinging light with no one holding it. I high-tailed it back to the car and haven't been there since. Holy shit. That's a pretty cool folklore story to be actually found in the newspaper. That is very cool. I'm not having a go, I promise. Were they all drinking? Well, hey, they had to be sober enough for at least one of them to drive drunk.

That's true. So that means they weren't completely paralytic. Right. They could still operate heavy machinery. Yeah, of 90s Volvo. Very cool. Cool. So there was just a lantern floating in the tunnels? Yeah, I'm kind of interested in this that it seems like the story always comes back to a lantern. This is over 100 years of sightings

that involve lantern swinging. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And presumably there is no lantern there anymore, at least when these kids were here. No, you saw the thing, dude. It's a friggin bridge. Sorry, tunnel. Tunnel, obviously. Proudian slipped there. Okay. That's pretty wild. That is wild. A wish. Come on, guys, where's the photos? Let's see this thing, you know? But I guess maybe you don't want to document your underage drinking. So bringing a camera wasn't on your mind. You know, I think this element of the story of like getting to like a modern human story of like some teens, underage drinking, you know, it's very classic American horror bee movie vibes. Hey, let's hike down past the old tunnel and go skinny dip in the creek and have a few.

few beers, ha ha ha ha. Yeah. One of them gets fucking stabbed in the neck. Oh yeah. By a serial killer or they see a ghost or whatever. It's very classic all-American horror movie stuff. And it got me kind of curious about like, we have researched stories in Ohio, but it's somewhere I don't know very much about. Do you know much about Ohio?

I mean, we've probably covered ghost stories and crypted stories from there, but I don't remember any off the top of my mind. Yeah. which I feel like is the vibe of Ohio that even people from Ohio kind of make jokes about how it's kind of like, there's nothing going on. It's a liminal space. It's the backrooms of US states. Yeah. And so I wanted to try and understand the Ohio mindset by like looking up like what it means

to live in Ohio. Maybe it would give us an insight into the world of the paranormal there too. Well, we do, you know, understand a bit of the Ohio mindset apparently because we also did a lot of underage drinking growing up. So there are similarities. You might have more in common than you think. Mm-hmm. Well, looking it up, I did find a Reddit post discussing this very topic.

This is posted by a Reddit user Local Finger on the Ohio subreddit with the title Ohioan cultural identity. Hi, Reddit. I used to live near Cedar Point right between Toledo and Cleveland in a small time. What marks Ohio culture? I'm not trying to throw shade, but I currently live abroad and I have no idea how to describe Ohio to people and what it's like. Ohio has become memeified and everyone's asking me to explain it.

In my perspective, Ohioans are generic. People just work, party with friends, do family events. And when I hear other people talk about other parts of the country, their culture sounds different. In Colorado, people love fitness, the great outdoors. I thought that leaving Ohio would give me better perspective into what Ohio is. The only thing that really stands out is that I say pop instead of soda. and that Buckeyes are delicious holiday food. I used to think we loved football more than other people,

but now I've realized that it's not a uniquely Ohio experience. The response is not especially encouraging about Ohio being a completely unique place, one of the top comments underneath saying people in Ohio say Reese's instead of Reese's when talking about peanut butter cups. Oh. Some people pointing out some of the very nice things which Ohioans should be proud of, like their Midwestern values and politeness that they bring to the world, a general balanced attitude towards life, or it being a general kind of microcosm of America itself, just having all the weather, all the races, all the creeds,

and all the stuff. But maybe my favorite is someone saying, Ohio culture is Neil Armstrong. He went to the moon. Then when he got back to Earth, he returned to suburban Ohio and lived a quiet life for the rest of his life. Love that. Which is Loki the best review for a state you could kind of ever have?

Yeah. You know, I went to the moon. It was pretty great. Now I want to go back to Ohio. He looked at the pale blue fragile marble of Earth, the only ecosystem in the known universe that can harbor life in all its beauty and forms. And he said, get me to Ohio. Take me home. Country roads.

I mean, Kit, we don't have to look any further. There are people who listen to this podcast who are from. Ohio. Yeah. You know, I'm sure they can let us know in the comments some notable uniqueness that comes from their home. Drop it in the comments, guys, whether you're on Spotify, whether you're on Patreon, whether you are on YouTube.

Let us know on a comment. What does it mean to be from Ohio? Drop a heart in the comments for Ohio. And to our Ohio listeners, I say, Ohio gozimes. Well, look, whether these four different ghosts, that is to say, the three I just mentioned, and the guy who got splatted to a million pieces at the start of the story, whether these ghosts are distinct or whatever's happening in the Moonville Tunnel is a combination of all the above. Something supernatural, at least in the past, was definitely happening.

And as you might expect, paranormal investigators have descended on the scene, believe it or not, before me and you, Roy, before we even got a chance. Wow. To investigate it themselves. And they claim to have experienced, lot of paranormal phenomena, very, very classic stuff, temperature drops, strange growls, bizarre EVP activity, electronic voice phenomenon. One paranormal investigator, Pete Prez, described how when we did our EVP session and reviewed it, we could hear someone forcefully telling us to get

out. Another described their campfire being extinguished in an instant saying, quote, Once, while in the tunnel at night, something blew out our campfire, literally snuffed out the entire blaze and won a go. I assume they recorded all of this before being obliterated by a train. A campfire in the tunnel at night? The tunnel is not in use anymore. What did I say? I think it would stop being used in the 80s. Right.

Because human life started having value somewhere around the 70s or 80s. So then they were like, oh, can't keep killing people here. While I do not have lots of physical evidence to show you of the temperature drops, you know, photos, screenshots, da-da-da-da-da-da-da. We can get a really good sense for what it feels like to be in that tunnel by watching some investigators from YouTube. Okay. Investigate this firsthand. All right. Phil, cue up the clip, please.

Okay, Devin and I are going to start sweeping the tunnel. We're going to use train sounds and whistles as a trigger device. We're going to roll on our audio recorders to see if we capture any EVPs We'll also keep an eye out for any EMF fluctuations, cold spots, any strange sounds Anything that might suggest that there's something else

in the tunnel with us So they're now trying to tempt the ghost By playing train sound effects In the tunnel To freak them out and make them think there's a train coming? They've got lots of cameras set up This is pretty good stuff It's a high-tech investigation, yeah

Something really gets me about playing these Thomas the Tank Engine ass sounds. There's someone here with us in this tunnel. Baldi Keaton, are you here? Don't call Baldi. Wow. You can hear somebody walking over there. Anybody out there? They're not getting much.

Let me tell you, they've got what looked like, uh, infrared cameras set up on either side of the tunnel. Yeah, we're getting nothing so far. It seems as if they've been hit with the pebbles from the... from Baldi. I hear this rock fall behind me. From above? Yeah, from like, I don't know. It just sounded like it fell right here.

Baldi Keaton, are you up there? Did you feel like somebody was watching you? No. And I went up around that corner. Wind came up around the corner, wafted right into my face, push me back a little bit. It felt like this.

I went up there and it was like, it was like, get back. And then it stopped. It's been quiet for a couple of hours. Let's leave the cameras running and clear out. clear out. The same guy just described

wind. Okay, feeling like we can pause the video. He was like, it was like this invisible force and just like

it shook the branches of the trees and it wafed me right in the face. She looked at him like, what the fuck you're talking about?

He was like, it was like this. He like pushed her back. I was like, well, it didn't push you. One thing that is bugging me

is that there were steps up to the top of the tunnel sure and then a path kind of meandering cut across the top of the tunnel and then presumably steps down the other side of the tunnel which would technically make it a bridge

which did kind of fuck me up for a second but I don't know there's something about these two that really makes me a lot of hey it's a high-tech investigation I respect it they're taking it seriously kind of we don't we're not going to go through

we're just going to piggyback someone else's investigation here. I just wanted to give you a sense of what it's like to be there. Yeah. What it's like for people who have spent the night there and have set up all the equipment. I believe from watching the rest of this, I don't think there came away with much. I think we saw it. The wind. There was the pebble. There was the pebble, which is what we heard. But to anyone who's not watching this video, if you're listening along, yeah. So it's a tunnel, which is through a hill so there is like a grassy hill

embankment on top of the tunnel. Yeah. So a rock falling loose is not really that crazy of a thing. No, it could happen. Yeah, if you're standing in the... It depends. It depends.

Like, I feel like you could tell a difference between someone throwing a rock at you and it just falling on top of you directly. Okay, look, in terms of paranormal explanations for what's happening, clearly clear-cut. As I said, this is classic as American pie ghost logic. Guys die here in tragic circumstances on the train track. It's dangerous. People die. And then their ghosts are doomed to haunt the tracks forevermore because of the injustice of it all. We kind of know what the paranormal

explanation for this is. Is there any skepticism, any logical explanations for what people might be experiencing. We should mention that one of the recurring themes in today's story is Grumpa's old medicine. Bamboozle juice, the devil's nectar. You guessed it. Alcohol.

Right. Got it. Presumably around the time that a lot of these people were going missing and seeing ghosts, there wasn't many restrictions on the percent and the strength of that alcohol. Most of the men were blind from drinking moonshine. No, not really.

So they called it Moonville. Most of the people were shining. It is fortunate or unfortunate, whatever way you look at it, that even the teens in the 90s were all so drunk. That's kind of weird. Yeah. We never really bring that up that often, or at least since the early days of TPL,

that like how can drunkenness affect a paranormal story? Yeah, yeah. We haven't really tackled that much since we did our investigation into Atlantis. Where we got drunk on the podcast. Yeah, we gave it a yes. To put our minds in the place of the Atlanteans. Right, underwater. Of course, this is kind of a triple threat

where the people who died in the first place were drunk, the people seeing the ghosts also drunk, and then the people seeing the ghost 100 years later are also drunk. Thankfully, we are breaking the cycle of drunkenness by researching this sober. A little buzzed. A little buzzed, yeah. I had a couple of whiskeys at lunch.

So one really weird potential explanation around this paranormal case is that it could have been a publicity stunt. Stay with me. All the rail crews at this time were in direct competition with each other and they wanted to stand out. While a haunted tunnel where people keep dying doesn't seem like very good marketing, skeptics argue that the myth might have been created to keep the Marietta Cincinnati line alive in people's imaginations, Really pushing the limits of no publicity is bad publicity or whatever. Yeah. It seems bizarre, but allegedly men from a rival railway line, the North and Western, were envious of all the attention.

And the newspaper at the time printed, the North and Western men say they will have to scare up a ghost somewhere. It won't do to let the Ohio Southwestern have all the glory. Ah, a bit of friendly competition. Very interesting. They're just pushing homeless people onto the tracks. Hoping one of them comes back as a ghost. Dude.

I know, that's dark. It's very interesting. I like that wrinkle to the story, though. This makes it into a kind of Cludeau murder mystery. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now we've got motives suddenly in play. The floating lantern stuff, I do find interesting because we have covered essentially that phenomenon on the podcast before, floating lanterns going along railway tracks.

I don't remember exactly what the case was called when we did. talked about it, but I believe a big theory was swamp gas. You don't think. Or like ball lightning. There was some like natural phenomenon that. Crystals in the earth? That was one of the things I think was like crystals rubbing against the earth. It was very strange, but there were some logical conclusions. I'm not saying that explains baldy the ghost throwing rocks at people, like a goddamn gore on, but, you know, a floating lantern, possibly strange lights. I'm actually, I'm very glad you brought that up. that we, I was, ironically, I couldn't see the forest for the trees of this story, which is we're

dealing with, people are attributing the lantern to a ghost holding it. But actually, the teens only saw a light. They said no one's holding it. And you're right, we have covered a lot of disembodied light stories, be it that or Onibi, the Japanese folklore surrounding lights floating around. Yeah, yeah. What's the Jack one? Jacko lantern. That's actually way closer to you're talking about, yes. Yeah. Not the Japanese orbs. Yeah. You're right. Or the, or like a willow wisp. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. These are all things we've talked about before. And we've also talked about, you know, tunnels and this like era of construction and, and this time in America. And dynamite. And dynamite and how dangerous it was and how many people died just every day being

around these places. So yeah, you're going to make some ghosts. So that's a very interesting theory, but there is one more rational-ish explanation for what could have been happening, and that is also hoaxing. We used to say it all the time in the podcast, Rory. Back in the day, there wasn't much to do.

Yeah, it was a different time. There was no TikTok for you page. There was no TikTok. You had to go out and make your own fun. And at the time, I guess between the late 1800s and, I don't know, mid-20th century, ghost sightings as a craze kind of took off in general. And there was a fad for then supernatural pranks, kind of naturally. It said that impersonating a ghost was a popular form of entertainment.

The same way on Halloween, you throw a sheet over yourself and try and spook someone. The same newspaper wrote around this time saying, that on one occasion a search party had gone out to look for the ghost. The party was organized by Mr. Will Erdman. Mr. Erdman had a clever arrangement by which he essentially pretended to be the ghost, and he had a kind of contraption which made gas flow to alcohol lumps that he held in his hands. But the article goes on to say that a William Conrad and a Frank Webb unwisely undertook to impersonate this ghost that had been exciting,

superstitious travelers for weeks. Conrad jumped on Webb's shoulders and the two put a black cloak over themselves. They encountered a searching party. It was then that Henry Ryder opened fire with his revolver. And the men quickly made themselves known that they were not the ghost. Oh God, at least they didn't just get shot and die. Yeah, bringing up the kill count of the tunnel. Yeah.

To 20 friggin' three. So, as you can see, there is... something of a toxic combination that we didn't know in the beginning here of pranks, drunkenness and publicity stunts that captivated the imaginations of people who live nearby and beyond around this time. I got to respect the guy that essentially built an Ironman suit just to scare people in the tunnel. I mean, speaking of toxic combinations, what is he, do you say at one point he has, like, chemicals in his hands? There's a really long explanation of how he managed it.

Yeah, it's not just him. Because I guess it probably was at the time you had to have like a gas lamp. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So he's found ways to make himself glow. Yeah, there's no like buying an LED off Amazon. I thought you were going to say also have respect for the guy who

open fired. Well, also that. Also that. Insane behavior. Because of course, look, we're all going to call them silly because, oh, don't shoot a ghost a bullet. We'll go through him. Have you ever shot a ghost before? Because I haven't. And if I see one, it's going to be the first thing I try.

It might work. We just don't know. We just don't know. That thing could just keel over and die again in front of you. That's what I want to try on the port rush ghost train. Next time I might go back, I'm bringing two handguns. Let's see you tries to touch my dick then. The guy's like, all aboard tickets, please.

Oh! The Cootrain doesn't even started. He hasn't even gone on the tunnel yet. I'm going through the metal detector at Barry's amusement park like Neo in the Matrix. He's like, put all metal in the tray in front of you. I've got two oozy's. Holy shit, start firing. Well, Rory, whatever the cause, and we will have to decide what we think that is.

As I say, people have been captivated by the stories, by the legends. And while the railway is no longer in use, the tunnel is, open as part of a hiking trail and is host to a Halloween and ghost-themed festival known as Midnight at Moonville every October. Very cool. I like that. Paranormal enthusiasts and investigators can come and visit regularly, capture videos investigate for themselves.

Great stuff. Great stuff. Where do we end here? It's worrying that the kind of last few beats of the story where you're just telling me about the many people... People actively hoaxing? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I like that I teed it up as like, there's one possible explanation for what could have been happening.

Here's the names of three men who did it, who did it regularly. Yeah. It's a weird thing where you're like, it's like, this case is so popular and so believable and widespread that guys even started to hoax it. And it's like, okay, but couldn't the other sightings just have been more hoaxes? Like, I didn't think about that, actually. this is the problem with ghost stories. We call this in the trade a muddy waters. Right.

The waters get muddied by some bad actors, you know, literally. These guys are failed actors probably. And muddy waters was a man who died in the tunnel in the 1800s. We have time for that. That's on the after party this Friday only on Patreon. Yeah. There's no getting around it. that the story may well have been true in the beginning.

Yeah. But then it became folklore. This is the beauty of folklore, is it takes on real events and extrapolates them and exaggerates them, and they become campfire tales and fun stories to tell children and everybody and travelers. But it leaves people like us in a very tricky spot when we have to decide whether we think something is really paranormal or not.

It's true. And as you said, if we can't go around it, then like the tunnel itself, we must go through it. Well, don't do that gesture. And that's, I think... Do anyone just not watching the podcast, Rory, just did a fisting motion? To say that we have to punch through... Stop it.

Punch through the walls of skepticism. Punch through and reach the other side. Reach a conclusion. Right. Well, Rory, I don't think we need to beat around the bush too much. At the end of every episode of this paranormal life, we have to decide with a yes or no, whether individually or together, we think a story is real or not. What do you think in the case of the...

Moonville Ghost Tunnel. I got a lot of time for this one. As a guy who recently hosted the Hussack Tunnel investigation, a tunnel that was constructed very early on in the development of the American rail system, a tunnel that claimed many, many, many, many, many lives, mostly due to dynamite, and then was home to many, many ghosts. You know, I understand where we're coming from today. Unfortunately, I loved that case, and it was also a double no.

And I think for me personally it's going to be a no again today. Yikes. Yeah. Well, well said, I think that's it. I think we just don't have enough concrete evidence to say to yes. And also, there's too many red flags. A lot of red flags. Like the average Gen Z males dating profile, full of red flags.

This one, you know what I'm saying? There's too many things that seem suspicious. This might have been more hoax than reality. Yeah. But still, a fantastic case to investigate. And an extra special thank you to Zeb, Rayburn, who sent in that suggestion along with many others. So thank you so much, Zeb. Really appreciate it.

Remember, guys, you can always send in your suggestions for episodes for us to cover, whether it be for a main episode, for a bonus or for an after-party episode. Send it in to This Paranormal Life podcast at gmail.com. Are we going to acknowledge the fact that that's clearly an alien? Zeb Rayburn It wasn't Zeb wasn't even trying with that one Yeah

It's like someone asked him And he did that thing Where he's just looking at the thing That's in front of him And he's like He's in the middle of abducting a human He's like Al death ray

Yeah I mean they clearly sent in this case Because we've been doing So many hard hitting UFO investigations recently That they're like We gotta take the heat Off of us for once

Start to suggest other cases. Look into this tunnel. There's definitely something there, guys. Although interestingly, Zeb, I believe, didn't send that to our email address, the one that I just shouted out. They did a secret third thing, which was send it to us as a member of the commune. Send it as a dream into my brain last night.

It might be an alien. Now that I'm thinking about it, it might be. Zeb is a member of the commune over at this paranormal life.com, where we have a lot of. thousands of beautiful, wonderful, patriotic this Paranoma Life listeners who are supporting us every single month and continuing to make this show. And they've been doing that for, in some cases, the better part of a decade. That's insane. We got Zeb Rayburn, Gabatron 9, Tring, Tring, Rangongong. All perfectly normal human. Not Tring, Tring, Tring, Rongong.

All normal members of the This Paranormal Life community. Wow. Wow, that's insane. And for their wonderful patronage for as little as five bucks a month, pending your local planet's currency, you get monthly, full-length bonus episodes. There are over 100 of them now. Holy shit.

And you're going to want to hear episode 100. It was awesome. It was a banger. There's also weekly behind-the-scenes after-party episodes where me and Roy just shoot the shit every single week in the behind-the-scenes of this part of my life and just whatever the hell we are up to in life. There's a bunch of stuff, including shoutouts at the end of a show, which we'll do right now.

Also remember to pick up those tickets for our live show in October. Do it, do it, do it, this paranormal life.com. Let's give a quick shout out to some of those patrons. So a special thank you to Jesse Dowd. Jesse, I never diaded you for a second. I always know you were human. A lot of people said, look how many arms they have. Yeah.

Look how many eyes they have. Nine. That's just a little unusual. Can you understand a word they're saying? And I said, I don't understand a word that half of these people are saying. You know, where's all the money going? Why isn't there enough food for everyone? Yack, yack, yack, yack, yack. In one ear and out the other. They're like, Jesse doesn't even look humanoid. You're like, when God sings with his creations, will Jesse not be among the choir? Exactly. I thought so. So, Jesse, glad to have you with us. Thank you, Jesse. And, hey, I know you had some doubts momentarily about Jesse there as to whether they were an alien. This next person?

The last person we're going to shout out? Not a chance. I vetted them in advance. So, a special thank you to Georges Bogart. Just a standard name. Z-J-O-R-S. Z-J-R-S.

Oh, yeah, of course. Georges. George. One of my favorite commune members, of course, when they joined, they walked up to me and said, brother, what's mine is yours. And I said, that's the kind of attitude that we like here. And we took him for all they got.

Just took everything immediately. So he might have expected you say that back to him. You go, what's mine is yours and like Mika says to Casa. You went, thank you. God, stick his stuff. I said, Mikaasa is Mikaasa. That's how I say it. My casa is my casa.

Okay? Comprehendé. So come on in and thank you for everything that you gave us. Welcome to Earth. Well... Not that you're an alien. Thank you, Zhears. Thank you, Jesse. Thank you to everyone who's supporting us at this paranormal life.com. Links in the description if you guys

if you guys. We're going to be back on Tuesday with a brand new paranormal tale right here, wherever you listen to podcasts. And we're going to be back on Friday before that with the after party. So tune in then. in then and in the meantime, have an amazing week. Bye-bye. The ghost of Moneville, the goose, the ghost of moonvooze. The ghost of moon- The ghost. The goose! The goose in the tunnel!