Moonville Tunnel 04 24 2025
Way back in the day when I Was in my late teens and early 20's I was big into ghosts and aliens and all that jazz. One of the best websites to ever grace the internet was Forgotten OH
which cataloged urban exploration locations, hauntings, ghost towns and cool cemeteries. It was pure web 1.0 style and incredible for someone with my interests who happened to live in Ohio. One of the coolest locations and ghost stories was the Moonville Tunnel. A brakeman fell off of the train and was killed in or near the tunnel and now haunts it at night. Adventurers report seeing a ghostly lantern shining in the tunnel at night.
The roads down were gravel and in he Appalachian-lite foothills of Southern Ohio which was kind of exciting until I saw a Tesla navigating them with ease. When we got there there was this parking lot which all things considered was pretty nice but full of some pretty serious potholes like some maniac dug them out with a shovel just to be a butt-hole.
The parking lot is basically right there. From right outside of my truck where I parked you could see the tunnel. You can't make it out very well in this photo but it's at the end of that trail just over that bridge.
Right at the trail head there is this mysterious sign that says FREE SUDAN. What does it mean? I also found a Swiss Army Knife at the trailhead. I wonder who lost it? Surely a mystery.
The bridge has a chainlink fence that people have started putting locks onto symbolizing love or something? IDK. This is also part of a bicycle trail so there was a couple of bicycle weenies cruising around. I didn't get any pictures of them later but we crossed paths with them several times at the different sights we saw. It was spooky.
My brave little adventurer with his adventuring SHARK BACK PACK. He packed it himself with some small binoculars, a tiny flashlight and some juice pouches. All the things a little adventuring man needs.
Getting close to the tunnel. It's finally happening.
Someone wrote Fat Body on this tree.
Here it is in all it's glory.
It looks easy enough to climb in pictures but those step like stones are much larger and much more rickety looking in person. I guess some goobers have fallen and either been injured or died as a result of attempting to climb up there. Or maybe they just don't want to rack up any lawsuits.
Someone painted this gross wiener with a magical portal or possibly flesh eating leprosy. It's gross even for a painting of a PENIS.
I believe this is a shared use trail and these are possibly horseshoe prints. I'm from the suburbs dude I wouldn't recognize HORSE prints in the mud. Most of the time I see horses it's Amish families cruising around in their cool buggies with their horses BLASTING turds all over the road.
This was pretty neat, a marker indicating repairs.
We made it to the other side!
My Kids spotted this grafitti and were excited because it looks like Bill from Gravity Falls. Good catch kids!
So I think we caught a proposal and ended up in the video LMAO. As we were letting the kids explore the area there were dog walkers passing by. This couple walking some kind of shitbull mix stops and I assumed he was tying his boots. Suddenly the woman with the white top and black pants appears and stars filming them doing a full 360 loop around them meanwhile another couple walking their small dogs is passing by. The kneeling man holding the shitbull is trying to stop it from FREAKING out and eating the smaller dogs, the shitbull mix is jumping up on the camera woman. After this trainwreck of a proposal the other lady in Daisy Dukes is showing the camera her new ring. It was when she was flashing the ring to the camera that it clicked what was happening. I thought at first the guy was just tying a boot and messing with his unregistered assault dog. If that was indeed a marriage proposal almost my ENTIRE FAMILY is in their video.
My kids found a few tiny chunks of coal which was pretty neat to me. I'm sure the folks out here see it all the dang time but in Western Ohio where I'm from there definitely aren't just pieces of coal hanging out in the forest.
This water looked gross and stagnant and reminded me of that scene in the Lord of the Rings in the Dead Marshes.
On the way out we went down to the water and it was pretty neat. That's a cool looking bridge.
I don't think I would swing from a rope into that river, it looked pretty shallow. Or was this a HANGING TREE because it's super spooky and haunted all over these woods.
My daughter slapped her hand right on these leaves. I'm no jungle explorer but I thought that might possibly be poison ivy. We got her hand cleaned up and she never had an outbreak of itchies so who knows maybe it wasn't. Write me an Email and let me know!
Our next stop was the Hope Furnace. This was from the olden times when this area was bustling with industry and people were mining coal and smelting iron. These were giant furnaces. The pictures reall don't tell you just how collosal these were. The trip over to them was fraught with mud and boggy fields from all the rain we've had this spring. I found some other spectacle viewers told us the other side of the parking lot was less swampy and I also found some sticks to make a crude bridge. I hate getting my toes wet.
There was writing on a lot of the stones. I think one even had a dudes name. That was pretty cool.
The iron forged here was made into train tracks and even munitions for the civil war. NEAT.
An older historical marker.
For scale here are my kids irresponsibly climbing the rubble. It was really cool and made me think of Lord of the Rings style dwarf furnaces. It was here that my BB remarked on how quit it was. And boy was it quiet the only thing that could be heard was a slight breeze and a few birds. There was no background highway noise off in the distance. It was cool to just chill here and not hear the buzzing of a billion buttholes you don't really want to live around.
Company towns sound like slavery with only the vague illusion of freedom. I think I would have just wondered off east and built a cabin and ate deers and racoons and shit. I don't know man.
My kids found what appears to be some obsidian in the area. Not sure if it's actually obsidian or if it's some kind of byproduct from IRON SMELTING but I thought it was cool and added it to my collection of awesome SPOILS OF WAR.
On the way out we stopped at the town of McArthur for dinner at Mama Renie's pizza. It was a small town sports bar with the local little league baseball teams jerseys all over the place. I liked the pizza. I really need to start taking photos of the food when I go on these journeys. They were also selling Killer Brownies which are a Dayton original which I thought was neat as a Dayton native. I mean it's only like two hours away but that was neat seeing something from the Gem city creeping out into the world.
When we first pulled into town some ol fella was crusing into that gas station on a lawnmower. I tried to get a picture for my kids as my BB was getting them out of the truck but I think I missed it.
I scanned the QR code on this sticker I saw near where my truck was parked. It was some heifers OF page. You're not missing much and she's not getting any free advertising on my COOL HOME PAGE.
Here's the decor of Mama Renies. I love this style of dining establishment. After supper we loaded up into the truck and headed home. After decades I finally have seen the Moonville tunnel. It was a pretty awesome day trip and I honestly wish I made it an overnighter. I tried to find some other iron furnaces but google maps and lack of cell phone signal made it hard to track them down. I would love to go back and check out the state park and some of the other ruins of industry. We stopped into another town and found some fliers promoting their very small town it was adorable. They showed off their volunteer firemen and were proud of their sewer services. I actually need to get some pictures of that flier. It was wholesome and I love this town.
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