Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve held my breath going into a tunnel. I don’t know how I got the idea to start doing it; all I know is that it’s absolutely necessary to make a wish before entering the darkness, and then hold my breath all the way to the other end to ensure that my wish comes true. (This would pose a major problem for me should I ever choose to take the Chunnel.) Where do these tunnel superstitions originate, and why do we believe them so readily?
Honk the Horn or Hold Your Breath?
Like the roots of many common superstitions, the reasons we hold our breath and make a wish when entering a tunnel are nebulous. Even though both practices seem to be widespread, neither Cassell’s Dictionary of Superstitions nor The Dictionary of Omens and Superstitions mentions either of them. The closest recorded superstition is that of railway tunnel builders who would touch metal before heading down into the tunnels and wish for a safe return. Some people still touch metal in place of holding their breath when making a tunnel wish, so this may be a different version of the same superstition.
Levette J. Davidson, who wrote the article “Superstitions Collected in Denver, Colorado” for Western Folklore in 1954, offered a different version: when passing through a tunnel in a car, put your hand on the ceiling, honk the horn, and make a wish. That sounds a lot easier than holding your breath.
Tunnel Air Cures Whooping Cough?
In addition to wish fulfillment, other superstitions began with the very first railway tunnel. A Dictionary of Superstitions offers these citations:
- (Recorded in 1954): If you walk under a tunnel while a train is going over it, it’s bad luck and you should cross your fingers.
- (Also recorded in 1954): If you speak under a tunnel or a bridge, you must touch a green object or you’ll have bad luck.
- (Recorded in 1883, 1962, and 1982): The air of railway tunnels cures whooping cough. People believed this so strongly that women used to hang their children out of train windows when they were sick.
What’s curious about this last superstition is that it persisted for so long—well into the 1980s. Whooping cough is a highly contagious bacterial disease, so the last place you’d want to take someone who has it is a tunnel, unless you want to make everyone else in the tunnel sick.
The Ghost of Silver Run Tunnel
It’s no mystery why we have so many superstitions about tunnels. They’re dark, scary places, and when railway tunnels were just being built, in the early to mid-nineteenth century, before adequate lighting and other safety equipment, fatal accidents happened in them all the time.
The most famous tunnel-related ghost story is that of Silver Run. According to the North Bend Rail Trail Web site, around midnight one August, a train was making its way toward the Silver Run Tunnel in West Virginia, when the engineer saw a young woman standing in the middle of the tracks. He blew his whistle to warn her, but the woman just turned and stared at him. And right before the engineer thought the train was going to run her over, the woman disappeared into the night.
This happened several more times over the years, until an engineer named O’Flannery declared he didn’t believe in ghosts and called the other engineers who’d encountered the Ghost of Silver Run fools and liars. He laughed and vowed that no woman was going to stop his train, because he’d run her down first.
About two weeks later, as O’Flannery was pulling his train into the Silver Run Tunnel, he noticed a flutter of movement along the tracks. Much to his surprise, he saw a young woman standing there, and when she made no effort to move, the train struck her.
