Hempfield Tunnel

A historic railroad tunnel along the Wheeling Heritage Trail, originally built for the Hempfield Railroad in the 19th century. The tunnel runs beneath the streets of Wheeling and has a dark history of accidents and deaths.

The Hempfield Tunnel in Wheeling, West Virginia, is haunted by the ghost of a murdered man who has been appearing to terrified witnesses since 1869 -- making it one of the oldest continuously documented hauntings in the state. The tunnel was built in 1857 as part of the Hempfield Railroad, an ambitious project incorporated in 1850 to construct a seventy-six-mile line connecting Wheeling, West Virginia, to Greensburg, Pennsylvania. The tunnel carved through the hillside became a vital link in the railroad network, but it also became the site of a brutal murder that would echo through the decades.

On June 29, 1867, a German immigrant named Joseph Eisele murdered his fellow immigrant Alois Ulrich inside the tunnel. According to newspaper accounts from the period, Eisele killed Ulrich with multiple blows from a hatchet before dumping his body in a culvert near the northeast exit of the tunnel. Ulrich was not Eisele's only victim. The killer had murdered two other men as well, earning him the nickname the Hatchet Slayer. Eisele was eventually captured, tried, and became the last person executed by hanging in Wood County, West Virginia.

The haunting began just two years after the murder. On July 19, 1869, a group of men were walking through the Hempfield Tunnel when they heard eerie moaning and groaning sounds echoing off the stone walls. Suddenly, the ghostly figure of Alois Ulrich appeared before them in his mangled form -- his body bearing the horrific wounds inflicted by Eisele's hatchet. The apparition spoke, uttering the words: Let the dead rest. The men fled the tunnel in terror.

Since that first documented appearance, the ghost of Ulrich has been reported by visitors and workers for over 150 years. The descriptions are remarkably consistent: a rotting corpse covered in a greenish slime, as though awakened from a long sleep in the damp tunnel walls, descending from the ceiling and screaming at intruders to let him rest. The apparition has been described as so vivid and so horrifying that some residents of Wheeling refuse to walk through the tunnel section of what is now the Wheeling Heritage Trail.

The tunnel itself has survived into the modern era as part of the city's trail system, though its paranormal reputation has made it both an attraction and a source of local anxiety. The ghost of Tunnel Green, as the haunting is sometimes called, has become one of Wheeling's most enduring legends. The Ohio County Public Library maintains historical documentation of the Hempfield Ghost, including newspaper accounts of both the 1867 murder and the 1869 ghost sighting.

In recent years, the tunnel was closed for repairs, with Wheeling City Manager Robert Herron reporting renovation costs exceeding half a million dollars. Whether the repairs disturbed the ghost of Alois Ulrich -- or whether he continues to demand that the dead be left to rest -- remains to be seen. The Hempfield Tunnel is part of the West Virginia Paranormal Trail, and its story of a murdered man haunting the site of his death for more than a century and a half makes it one of the most historically grounded ghost stories in the state.