Blurs

In 1847, railway workers in northern England began hearing the sound of a pickaxe coming from underground — apparently from the very place where a navvy had recently been killed. Then one man was lowered into the tunnel to find out what was making the noise. There are railway ghost stories that seem to have been invented decades after the event. And then there are stories that appeared in print while the railway age was still young. One particularly strange example appeared in an 1847 newspaper under the wonderfully understated heading “A Railway Ghost.” It concerned a railway construction site near Stockham, where a worker had recently been killed when part of a tunnel collapsed. Not long afterwards, the men working nearby began hearing something that should not have been there. It sounded like someone working underground. A pickaxe striking rock. Again. And again. And again. The disturbing part was where the sound appeared to be coming from. It seemed to originate from the precise lo...