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A Tale of Two Tombs: The Church Hill Tunnel and the Convoluted "Creature"

Strolling through the city of Richmond, Virginia means taking a walk through one of the oldest cities in America and being able to visit sights and structures that saw countless chapters of the earliest parts of American history. Visiting Jefferson Park, located on Union Hill, offers visitors walking paths, a playground, and a picturesque view of the modern city skyline. It’s a pleasant scene, and one that does not at all hint at what lay hidden underneath the earth of Jefferson Park.

Skyline of Richmond, Virginia. Image via Bruce Emmerling, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Church Hill Tunnel of Richmond, Virginia was built with a purpose of advancement, looking to leave behind the aftermath of the Civil War and bring in new progress. Completed in 1872 by the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O), the railway was built as an extension in order to reach a new coal pier located in the city of Newport News, bringing a new logistical connection to the exportation of coal from the area. The plan sounded good, and upon completion the tunnel was one of the longest in the country at nearly 4,000 feet in length, but the initial victory of completing the tunnel came after multiple problems that should have been seen as a warning.

The first issue with the Church Hill Tunnel was the very earth it was being constructed from. Unlike other tunnels carved through bedrock, Church Hill was created through layers of limestone and soft clay, deeply unstable soil that would shift and swell up when exposed to any moisture and shrink back again when dried. With the volatile soil structure there was no way to ensure the safety of the tunnel and during construction there were multiple instances of portions of it collapsing, taking the lives of the men working inside. Land around the work area began to react to the construction and in one instance the ground gave way, toppling the house of a minister and breaking a gas line. The marvel was also a menace and upon the completion of a new viaduct in 1901 the Church Hill Tunnel was closed and fell into disuse. It should have stayed that way.

While the city of Richmond grew and flourished in the early part of the twentieth century the Church Hill Tunnel lay dormant, looming like a great void out of the earth. That is, until 1925 when after over twenty years of non-use the city decided it was a monster worth bringing back to life.

Given that the tunnel had been left dormant for decades there were extensive repairs that needed to be completed before it could be used once again. These repairs were underway on October 2nd 1925, a cold and rainy day in Richmond that seemed ordinary before the Church Hill Tunnel experienced something that was both unthinkable, but also tragically familiar. The tunnel was bustling with activity and engineer Tom Mason was guiding a train with ten additional flat cars into the west entrance of the tunnel on his first day as an engineer. Then, the bricks began to fall. The collapse of the tunnel was as fast as it was terrible with bricks, debris, and clay falling all around the workers and the train, burying it under the weight of the earth. Electric wires were cut plunging everyone into darkness and some of the trapped men took out their knives and started slashing wildly into the dark, trying to cut through anyone who stood in their way of getting out. Workers scrambled to escape, most miraculously making it to the eastern entrance a mile away and walking from the site with their lives. But others were not as lucky, 190 feet of the tunnel had fallen in on itself and the entire train was buried along with the bodies of Tom Mason and at least two other workers. Fireman Benjamin F. Mosby was hard at work shoveling coal when the locomotive was crushed. He was able to escape but when he staggered out of the east entrance he was horrifically scalded from the steam from the engine and his teeth were broken. He died later that night at Grace Hospital.

The Richmond Times Dispatch reporting on the tunnel collapse.

In the aftermath of the tunnel collapse there were questions, but unfortunately the reason why it happened was known, the tunnel’s history was marred by multiple collapses, and this was not even the first time it claimed human lives. The bigger question now was how to proceed. The body of engineer Mason was able to be recovered but finding the other workers, later identified as Richard Lewis and H. Smith, was impossible. After nine days of efforts to recover their bodies (and after more sections collapsed) it was determined that any further activity in the Church Hill Tunnel was simply too dangerous. The next year the entrances of the tunnel were sealed off, with a giant “1926” inscribed on the mossy, wet stone covering the western entrance. The train and bodies remained entombed inside.

Over the decades since the collapse the tunnel has continued to cause problems, in 1962 another collapse swallowed a house and another worker lost their life to the tunnel. There have been multiple plans to recover the train and the bodies, but the continuing collapses and state of utter disrepair halted further efforts. In 2006 the Virginia Historical Society proposed trying to get into the tunnel once again, but upon drilling a hole in the seal and peering at the inside with a camera it became clear that it would not be possible. The tunnel is filled with water and sand and manipulating it in any way could result in further collapses and severe damage to homes currently standing on Church Hill. Any recovery plans are indefinitely on hold.

Plans for recovery of the train and the bodies of those still entombed inside the Church Hill Tunnel is not the only thing that brings the collapse into present-day conversation. Then there is the vampire.

When twenty-eight-year old Benjamin F. Mosby staggered out of the east end of the tunnel he was the picture of pain and suffering. His teeth were broken, he was bloody, and according to people at the scene his flesh was hanging in ribbons, torn from his body after being blasted by the scalding steam from the locomotive. As the stories of the collapse spread one stated that a “creature” covered in blood and with a mouth of sharp teeth ran from the tunnel, eventually making it to the nearby Hollywood Cemetery where it disappeared into the mausoleum of W.W. Pool, a striking structure with a metal gate and an inscription only reading “W.W. Pool 1913.”

Article in the Richmond Times Dispatch about a tribute to Mosby after his death.

This “creature” which has become known as the Richmond Vampire, is a popular story, but the background is a messy jigsaw of events, rumors, and innocent people denied their eternal resting place. It is almost certain that the figure described as bloody and ghastly with a mouth of sharp teeth emerging from the tunnel was Mosby, moving away from the horror in a state of shock before other people at the scene lay him down on an embankment and began to pour water on him to try and soothe some of his pain. He was reportedly calm, asking that someone let his wife know he was alive and ok. As for the connection to the final resting place of W.W. Pool, there is a rumor that Pool found himself in the United States after being run out of England for practicing vampirism. This rumor is purely that. Pool was born in Mississippi in the 1840s, moved to the Richmond region in the 1860s, died in 1922 (on the same day as one of his closest friends) and had an elaborate funeral including Masonic rites given his membership to the Freemasons. So is the origin of the Richmond Vampire a case of tragic proximity? There are the accounts of seeing a creature emerging from the tunnel and the rumor of Pool and vampirism but the two became intertwined over time, carried into the future by word of mouth and sensationalist storytelling. It is a story of wildly convoluted origins, but it is a persistent one. Visitors to the Hollywood Cemetery regularly ask if there is a vampire buried there and more disturbingly, the remains of W.W. Pool and his wife were removed from the mausoleum due to vandals breaking in, drawing symbols on the walls, and allegedly trying to steal parts of their bodies.

Hundreds of people visit the Hollywood Cemetery of Richmond looking for the tomb of a monster, the physical remains of a real-life horror story. The true tale of terror though, can be found three miles away where a large stone wall inscribed with only “1926” stands between the visitor and a tragic scene where a train and at least two bodies lay frozen in the moment when the earth caved in and took their last breath from them.

The sealed western entrance of the Church Hill Tunnel. Image via Eli Christman from Richmond, VA, USA, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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Sources:

Branch, Ashley. “Starting with the Church Hill Tunnel Collapse, a Filmmaker Is Uncovering Virginia’s Buried History.” VPM, Virginia’s home for Public Media, 30 Sept. 2021, www.vpm.org/2021-09-30/starting-with-the-church-hill-tunnel-collapse-a-filmmaker-is-uncovering-virginias.

Castleton, David. “The Richmond Vampire - Virginia’s Tunnel-Haunting Nosferatu - David Castleton Blog - the Serpent’s Pen.” David Castleton Blog - the Serpent’s Pen, 21 Apr. 2021, www.davidcastleton.net/richmond-vampire-hollywood-cemetery-w-w-pool-church-hill-tunnel-virginia/.

Feather, Lauren. “This Richmond Park Is Home to a Sealed Tunnel (with an Unusual History).” TheTravel, 10 Dec. 2022, www.thetravel.com/church-hill-tunnel-in-richmond-virginia-history/.

Holmberg, Mark. “Mark Holmberg Shares the Story of How the Richmond Vampire Came to Haunt Virginia.” CBS 6 News Richmond WTVR, 31 Oct. 2023, www.wtvr.com/news/local-news/mark-holmberg-vampire-richmond-cemetery-oct-31-2023.

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