Dark waters: Terror in Standedge Tunnel
There’s no escaping the horrors of the past in Standedge Tunnel
The sides of the canal barge thumped against the tunnel wall in complete darkness as icy-cold water dripped down my cheeks. I was travelling along a canal that was taking me right into the black depths of one of Britain’s most haunted hills – the place where me and the Soul Reaper Paranormal spirits investigator team were going to speak to the dead. Terrified already, I hoped that they weren’t going to answer back...
At five kilometres long, the Standedge Canal Tunnel in Marsden, West Yorkshire is the UK’S longest canal tunnel. It was built in 1811 so that wool could be transported cheaply between Leeds and Manchester. Just as cheap were the lives of the poor souls who dug the tunnel using pickaxes and dynamite to cut through granite-like stone. Considered disposable by their cruel masters, many were crushed, drowned or blown up digging their perilous way into the hillside. In the 17 years it took to build the tunnel, at least 53 men were killed, with many more dying from their injuries outside the tunnel.
Vengeful
It’s no wonder their spirits are said to be angry and vengeful – and it’s not just their lost souls that have been spotted inside the tunnel. Devil worshippers have been seen on ledges inside, carving terrible drawings on the walls and even sacrificing sheep to the Dark Lord. One night, a man taking a short cut home through the tunnel was stunned to see a masked figure racing towards him in the dark. The figure scratched his face before running off.
The Soul Reaper Paranormal team are a group of around 10 individuals led by Kyle Thompson. With the latest in ghost-hunting equipment - light detecting, radio wave and spirit monitoring devices - I was honoured to be one of the first members of the public invited along to one of their spiritual investigations.
Kyle told me that he’d recently seen the apparition of a child at Wentworth Woodhouse, a 17th century building near Rotherham.
‘We were filming in a corridor,’ he explained, ‘and when we watched the film back, the shimmering outline of a child could be clearly seen moving towards us then suddenly disappearing.’
As he told me this, the wind whipped through the tunnel,
Satanic art has been found in the tunnel
screaming through the gaps around the boat. I couldn’t help but shiver. I could almost be listening to the terrible cries of the desperate, injured navvies as they breathed their last breath. Murder Many bleak occurrences have happened here, not least the gruesome murder of two gamekeepers who were butchered on the moor in 1913. The murderer’s identity is unknown to this very day. ‘In 1971, the body of a 15-yearold girl was found face down in the water, inside the tunnel, with her throat cut,’ Kyle told me. Again, nobody was ever caught for the crime. In the dark, the hairs on my neck began to prickle. I could feel something staring at me…. But before we scoped out the tunnel, we examined the older buildings around the entrance. Here, too, locals have heard strange noises at night and seen the shape of a figure moving around, even though no-one calls this place home. Mark Gallagher and Dave Sanders of the Soul Reaper team set up their EMF Electro Magnetic detector and ghost box radio kit. The EMF has flashing lights which flicker if any presence floats across it, whilst the radio machine picks up anything said on AM or FM frequencies, the idea being it could get ghostly voices trying to communicate from another plane. We sat there in the blackness, waiting nervously. Suddenly, a red light flickered on and off on the EMF receiver and the radio crackled. ‘Can you flick the light again, spirit?’ Mark asked.
Ghostlyfigure
At this, the light started going absolutely crackers. On a motion sensor - which outlines shapes in the dark - the screen began to pick out the outline of a figure near the wall, away from where anyone else was stood. I couldn’t believe it. A Aghost! ghost! ‘Are you one of the workers who were wwere killed here?’ asked Mark.
The light shifted and went off. Had we got too uncomfortably close to the truth?
Keen to find out more about this presence haunting us, we made our way towards the edge of the tunnel, where an old cottage stands that now forms part of a visitor centre. In the attic of the building, Mark gave me some some divining rods to hold.
‘They can be pushed and pulled by any spirits present,’ he explained to me.
‘M-move inwards for yes, out for no,’ I told the spirits. At once, the dowsing rods began to jerk wildly in my hands.
‘Are you a male spirit?’ I asked. The rods swung inwards for ‘yes.’
‘Did you die a natural death?’ I continued. The rods swung markedly outwards - a ‘no.’ Shaking now, I asked, ‘Did you die within the Standedge Tunnel?’ The rods swung back in again, pulled out of my hands by an unseen force. A resounding ‘yes.’ I breathed in sharply, my heart almost stopping. ‘May I ask, are you angry about your death?’ The rods gently rolled outwards for a clear ‘no,’ almost forgivingly. Back inside the tunnel, my heart thumped inside my chest as we moved in complete silence. The only sounds were the occasional garbled word from the radio monitor, barely distinguishable among the crackling feedback. Through the white noise on the radio, a voice said, ‘ Here.’ The air noticeably chilled and I pulled my jacket more tightly around me. On the way home, I studied some of the pictures I took in the cottage attic. One features an old blackand-white photograph of some men about to enter the tunnel. No-one knows if they made it out alive. Zooming into the corner of the photograph, I suddenly spotted a human shape reflected on the glass pane. A face, an old jacket from another time and the outlines of arms and legs. Yet no-one was in the attic but me. Could a ghost of Standedge, a long-dead navvy, have come back to visit one final time….?
A ghostly face had appeared in my photo