Sunfest came and went. The musicians played, the vendors sold, and the sun set and rose.
Monday morning, we were off to see a a Screaming Tunnel.
D.S. Barrick and I, as part of our research into our current book project, had to experience the tunnel, off a rural road in Thorold, Ontario. Along the way we pass a tree decorated with shoes. It's been there so long that it gets identified on some map apps, though no one seems to know its purpose.
The apps, too, mean that more people know of the tunnel and can actually find it. Years ago, a crew filming an ep of one of those dubious "supernatural events" shows got lost and filmed the wrong tunnel. Subsequently, the Screaming Tunnel's lore was transfered to this new "Blue Ghost Tunnel" and, for a time, online searches turned it up when people searched the screaming tunnel. The owners bricked it up, and that ghost seems to be fading, receding.
The Screaming Tunnel, more than a century old, is just getting started.
I've been there before.
A decade ago, my wife and I were in the area, and I convinced her to stop by. It's a local legend in Thorold and environs. Teenage thrill-seekers and sundry initiates flock there at night, especially near Halloween. Some people, crossing through, hear screaming and moaning.
Numerous stories exist, most of them involving some woman or girl-- victim of an abusive husband, an angry father, a band of rapists-- who gets set on fire. These stories flicker back to a range of eras, some tellers placing the incendiary event as far back as the 1700s, when the tunnel, a passage under a now long-discontinued rail line, did not yet exist.
None of these stories can be supported with historical evidence. The only known crime at the site took place in 2001, when a bunch of drunken idiots rammed a car into the side of the embankment through which the tunnel goes, spun out into a tree ,and then came to rest in a creek. The incident left one member of the party with serious injuries. They were, however, drawn by the existing lore.
The dare is a simple one. Enter the tunnel at night, preferably midnight. Stop midway. Light a match, or if you're more traditional, a candle.
Wait until the flame goes out, holding your place no matter what you see or hear or feel.
It's a creepy tunnel, and has been a setting in a couple of horror movies, including the adaptation of The Dead Zone (1983). The tunnel floor is muddy and wet and at times covered in shallow water. The century-old stone construction crumbles in places like blue cheese.
My wife remained outside that first time. I went in, with my cellphone camera on.
Midway through, the screaming started.
It sounded, to be honest, like some distorted external noise, but it left an impression. I can well imagine what such noises might sound like in the dark of night, by an intiate nervous or inebrieted or both.
The cell camera captured only the start and end of my journey. You can blame the spirits, if you'd like, but I rather think it was ten careless and nervous thumbs.
This time, Barrick and I went in with a camcorder, three cellphones, and the light of a comparatively bright day.
The tunnel's spreading fame means that graffiti covers much of those crumbling stones-- at least the ones that can easily be reached-- and the drainage pipe on the other side. You can hear a number of sounds, if you listen: birds, frogs, insects, and the passing vehicles on a highway not so far away, on the other side of some trees. But we experienced nothing much like screaming.
The tunnel features in one of the few chapters in the book that focuses on a location rather than a local monster, more cryptic than cryptid.
We have to wrap up the remaining research, writing, and art.
We found no embers of a ghost in that tunnel, but research the next morning confirmed our suspicion regarding one of our other cases, a potential lead overlooked (so far as we can determine) by everyone else.
And that, for now, must remain a phantom of our own to pursue.