Weird Island

18. ABANDONED: The East Side Train Tunnel

Episode Summary

Underneath Providence’s East Side is a tunnel that has been abandoned for the last 40 years, and very few people know it’s there. In the early ‘90s, a party in the tunnel got so out of hand that police responded, thinking it was a Satanic gathering.

Episode Notes

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Episode Transcription

Hi, I’m Sara! And you’re listening to Weird Island. Each week, I’ll be telling you about the strangest stories I can dig up from my tiny, little state of Rhode Island. And this week, I’ll be taking you into an abandoned and forgotten tunnel that runs deep underneath Providence’s East Side.
If you’re a local, you’re probably familiar with the East Side Trolley Tunnel - now the bus tunnel that cuts through College Hill from South Main Street to Thayer Street. Maybe you even walked through it when you were younger, like I did, one night during college. Friends and I stood at the bus stop outside the entrance on the South Main side, then looked around guiltily and raced inside, giggling, feeling like we were real rebels. I remember running down the middle of the street, shouting and listening to the echoes bouncing away, and then dashing out of the way when bus headlights would appear, to cower inside grungy, damp little alcoves spaced along the walls to let the buses pass. And when they passed, they were almost close enough to reach out and touch, if not for the fact that they pushed you back against the wall with a wave of wind. It felt like we were in there forever, even though the tunnel is less than half a mile long. And we came out the other end like heroes, having survived the dark and the imagined horrors darkness hides--and the buses.
There’s something about a tunnel that fascinates and terrifies. You can picture tunnels below ground as these separate worlds, far removed from the reality that exists above ground. Inhabited, perhaps, by unusual animals or terrifying bugs or monsters of some sort - maybe even ghosts. Tunnels are favorites of urban explorers who seek out these otherworldly spaces hidden within bustling towns and cities. And okay, so maybe the East Side bus tunnel isn’t exactly one of these dark, mysterious, creepy-yet-inviting tunnels that demands exploration. It’s a little too well-used for that. But what if I told you there's another tunnel--running 100 feet below Providence’s historic and beautiful east side--that is? One that was there before the trolley tunnel cut through college hill? One that very few people know about. Today, I’m not talking about the Trolley Tunnel, but the East Side Train Tunnel.
Today, if you were to step inside this tunnel that has been unused for 40 years, abandoned and largely forgotten, you’d step into a world where it is always raining. Every day rain drizzles from the damp, precipitating ceilings that are reaching down with stalactite fingers towards the sulfurous, stinking pools of water inches deep on the floor. The sound of the droplets falling reverberates like soft drum beats, and those who are familiar with the tunnel’s rumored satanic history wonder if the sounds might actually be created by something more sinister.
An abandoned skeleton of a car rusts away amongst trash and empty cans of spray paint, left behind by those who have lived in the space or filled the walls with artwork and streaks of color that are almost impossible to see in the near complete darkness. At its most shallow, the top of the tunnel is 30 feet below ground. At its deepest, under Prospect Street, it’s 110 feet below. The whole thing is just under a mile long. It’s dark. It’s cool. It’s wet. It’s.. really dirty. It’s a place the average person doesn’t really want to be.
But at one point, hundreds of people traveled through this tunnel, which provided passage for both freight and passenger trains running through the city to Bristol, RI and Fall River, MA.
The tunnel was conceptualized in 1903 as a more direct connection to the old Union Station in the center of Providence--making obsolete the Fox Point Railroad Station that had operated for 73 years. But construction didn’t begin right away, of course, and for two years local residents wondered where the tunnel would start and end and how it would impact them. On December 30, 1905 the Boston Globe reported that the east entrance or “jumping off spot” had been selected, in the vicinity of Gano Street and Amey Street. 40 families in the area had been notified that they would be displaced by the project, and most left with few complaints. All except one woman, a Mrs. O’Neil, who had prayed that she might always live and die in the same house, which was located on the future site of the tunnel’s mouth. The article relates that, “She was strongly sentimental, for her family had lived and died there before her. The old lady was encouraged with an offer of $1000 extra, and this is the single instance, it is related by the railroad representatives, of any unusual figure being paid.” So poor Mrs. O’Neil moved, along with the rest of her neighbors. And the NY, New Haven and Hartford Railroad company was off to the races.
They kicked off construction in May of 1906 with two crews working at once. Taking what I think seems like a risky approach, one crew worked east from the Benefit Street entrance, while the other worked west from the Gano Street entrance. The two crews worked independently for two years until they met in April of 1908 beneath Cooke Street - exactly one day ahead of schedule. And the alignment of the tunnel, that was built from both ends working in - like two kids working on a Happy Birthday sign and starting on opposite ends of the paper--well, it was only off by an amazing ⅜ of an inch.
The tunnel opened on November 15, 1908. All in, the project cost $2M dollars and that included the iconic Crook Point Bascule Bridge--you might recognize it as that permanently stuck up bridge over the Seekonk River. Originally, the tunnel had two tracks - electrified for heavy electric passenger trains. But passenger service was relatively short lived--only running until 1937. Electrification was then removed, and from 1937 on, the tunnel was used for freight traffic only, with just the occasional chartered passenger trip. By the 1950s, even the freight service dwindled, as highways took over day-to-day transportation, and the second track was removed. By 1981, there was really little need for the tunnel at all. Ownership transferred from the Providence and Worcester Railroad to the State of RI, and the last train ran on the tracks that year. It’s been unused and abandoned ever since, and many East Side residents - especially younger or newer ones - have no idea that the tunnel exists.
After abandoning the tunnel, the state actually left it completely open and accessible for the next 12 years. And anyone who wanted to walk in and explore the dark, almost 1 mile long stretch could--and many did! Online comments sections on pages dedicated to the tunnel are mostly filled with memories of visits inside, both when the tunnel was still active and after it stopped being used. Many noted that they didn’t think to bring flashlights or appropriate footwear. Some remember running into people living inside the tunnel. For many years, the tunnel attracted college students, who saw the entrances as the perfect location to throw parties. But that all ended after May 1, 1993, when the tunnel hosted its last big party.
That night, between 200 and 300 people, mostly Brown and RISD students, gathered around and within the tunnel’s west entrance in what was said to be a celebration of Beltane - or May Day. Students lit a massive bonfire just outside the entrance and smaller fires within the tunnel, illuminating the dark within and casting ominous, flickering shadows on the tunnel walls. Some wore costumes or face paint, others had papier mache masks. Some beat drums. A few carried torches. Others just idled around, drinking and chatting.
Around 1AM, two RISD campus security officers showed up and attempted to break up the party, concerned both about the noise and the safety of students inhaling smoke in the poorly ventilated tunnel. But when security asked students to leave, they dug in their heels. What jurisdiction could campus security have within this tunnel that wasn’t actually on campus?
Seeing that they had very little power as two campus security officers up against the nearly 300 now-combative students, they left the scene and flagged down a Providence Police cruiser that happened to be driving by on Benefit Street, and asked the cops to help tame the unruly mob. When the cops arrived, the party had grown even larger. The flames danced, and the students danced, too, glowing red in the light. Drummers beat their drums loud in defiance. And the scene smouldered with rebellion and rage and a faintly demonic air. What did those masks mean, anyway? And what was the drumming about?
One drummer became the focus of the two police officers’ efforts. When a cop moved in to take away the drummer’s sticks, a fight broke out. The cops eventually arrested the drum-player and another student, and both were ushered into a cruiser. But when the police tried to drive away, the mob surrounded the cruiser and began rocking it back and forth, preventing the police from driving off with the suspects. Rumors would later claim that a cruiser was actually flipped, but it seems as though that may have been urban legend. But the cops were shaken. They called in reinforcements. All officers on duty--30 in total--were sent to respond to the escalating confrontation.
Police came in wielding billy clubs and pepper gas. Students responded by throwing bottles and rocks. An officer was taken down with a chunk of asphalt to the eye. And a cruiser’s rear windshield was shattered. A student who was filming and trying to leave was clubbed from behind. Anyone who showed even the slightest resistance to the police was gassed.
After the event, the Providence Journal reported that 8 students were arrested on misdemeanor charges of assault and disorderly conduct. Seven police were injured and three police cars were damaged. Buddy Cianci made a statement, expressing disappointment in Providence’s student community. And an officer made a statement that the police had been responding to a Satanic Gathering.
A Satanic gathering? Come on, right? It seems a little far-fetched. Obviously these were just college kids having fun. But the thing is, the US and other parts of the world were troubled by this fear of Satanism and the occult that started really taking shape in the 1980s and lasted into the 1990s. I’ve talked about “panics” before on this podcast--Like the vampire panic that swept through rural Rhode Island in the late 1700s and early 1800s.
Well, the late 1900s saw a new panic--the Satanic Panic. I won’t go deep into the full history of the Satanic Panic, because there are a lot of pieces to the puzzle. But a Vox article summarizes the rise of fear of the occult and satanic beginning in the ‘60s and ‘70s with the Manson family, the publication of Anton LaVey’s “Satanic Bible,” and the release of the movie “The Exorcist.” There were the serial killers of the ‘70s - the Zodiac Killer, the Alphabet Killer, and the Son of Sam all had elements of occult-like symbolism.Then there was the Jonestown Massacre, in 1978. And then the Satanic Panic really kicked into gear in the 1980s with high-profile allegations of “satanic ritual abuse” of children in daycare centers, allegations that would later be proven false. By the early 1990s, the idea that satanic ritual abuse was perpetrated in daycare centers was fading, but fear of Satanism was still very real. Only now the focus of those fears were teenagers--and the godless music and media they consumed.
Oprah had segments dedicated to the dangers of satanic cults, 20/20 ran a segment on Satanic worship, describing animal mutilations, rock music associated with the devil, satanic graffiti and backward messages in pop songs. And in 1994 a VHS called the “Law Enforcement Guide to Satanic Cults” was released. If you still really aren’t convinced that people truly believed, right around the same time as the Tunnel Incident--actually just days later--three teenagers were accused of homicide based on little more than suspicion over their goth lifestyles. During the trial of these men who would later be known as the West Memphis Three, prosecution asserted the murders were part of a Satanic ritual. These three men spent 18 years in prison before being released in 2011.
So all of this is happening during a period of time when people were truly afraid of Satanism. And in addition to that, there was one other event getting a lot of media coverage leading up to the Tunnel Incident that might have resulted in both the cops and the students feeling a little edgy. Just over a week earlier, the infamous Waco Massacre had taken place, after a tense 51-day standoff between the FBI and the so-called cult of the Branch Davidians, led by David Koresh. The event began in late February, when the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives attempted to raid the Branch Davidian site in Waco, TX due to alleged possession of illegal firearms. The raid resulted in a gun battle that killed five ATF agents and five Branch Davidians, and resulted in the standoff between the religious group and the FBI. This all came to a head on April 18, when the FBI raided the Waco compound and a fire broke out, killing 76 people. This event was controversial then and now. The media legitimized the raid on Waco, characterizing the Branch Davidians as a cult and crazed religious fanatics and stoking the general fear of the occult society was already troubled by. But for some, the story of Waco was one of government overreach - resulting in mistrust of law enforcement.
I mention all of this because it could have played into both how the police reacted (or overreacted, as some argued) as a result of the larger environment of fear - there were flames and masks and people playing drums, and if you were primed to see signs of Satanism, well, these things might have seemed like signs.
But the Waco massacre may have played into how the students reacted as well. It’s possible students really lashed out at the police officers trying to break up the party in part due to that feeling that law enforcement was overstepping its bounds. In some footage from the tunnel incident, one student actually calls out, “Long live David Koresh.”
Probably at the end of the day, the whole event was just a party that got out of control. The students were just that--students, not Satanists. And the police were just trying to break up an unruly gathering. But it’s interesting to consider what might have been running through everyone’s minds while the event unfolded.
Unfortunately, this event resulted in the permanent closure of the tunnels. Today, both entrances are sealed off with corrugated steel, and the doors are welded shut. But brave explorers can still find their way in. It’s worth at least checking out the locations of both entrances, because it’s interesting to see how hidden in plain sight they are. The west entrance is right between Benefit and South Main street. If you park on South Main in front of Mill’s Tavern, there’s an entrance to a parking lot. And if you walk into that parking lot, you’ll see the massive, green painted corrugated steel wall closing off the entry to the tunnel.
The east entrance is essentially within Gano Park, but my recommendation is to walk out of the park and up Gano Street to where Amy Street ends. There’s a parking lot there on the right overlooking a little ravine, and if you look down into the ravine you’ll see a bunch of standing water and junk, and the entrance to the tunnel. It might have also green at one point, like the other entrance, but now it’s coated in colorful graffiti. And if you’re super brave, and don’t mind getting your feet wet, you can even find your way inside. I wasn’t brave enough, and I am certainly not recommending that you go inside. But if you’re curious and adventurous, someone has cut a little door into the east side tunnel entrance. You might find that it’s cold and wet and pitch black. You might even run into some people living in the tunnel--the space in and around it definitely seems occupied. But you might also find another world in there. In a beautifully written blog post, urban explorer Steve Duncan describes the tunnel as “a satanic underworld that reflects the church spires of Providence with inverted spikes of dripping stone; a dark, dank garden of earthly delights…” And he wasn’t the first to compare the tunnel to something of a church or cathedral. A contributor to the College Hill Independent describes students as taking inspiration from the tunnel’s acoustics, their otherworldly effect -- “Kind of like a chapel,” she writes.
The tunnel has been considered for rehabilitation in the past, but the consensus seems to be that the benefits don’t justify the costs. There are so many transportation projects in the state that need funding and attention, and there’s just not a great enough need to reactivate the East Side Rail Tunnel. But the area surrounding it may be getting some attention in the future. In 2019, the RI Department of Transportation announced plans to demolish the Crook Point Bascule Bridge. But the Providence Redevelopment Agency is proposing a way to save it. The Agency just announced the winner of an open call for designs to preserve and reuse the iconic landmark, and the Agency is working to transfer ownership of the bridge from the RI Department of Transportation and secure funding. And if the project moves forward, part of the area they’re proposing to redevelop would include the area just in front of the east side entrance to the tunnel. So the tunnel itself would largely remain unchanged, but the group has proposed doing something more interesting with the entrance. Perhaps turning it into a pocket park with interactive art pieces, seating and a mini skate park. So maybe more people will know the tunnel exists someday in the future. But for now, it remains hidden within the city, it’s own world deep beneath another, 110 feet below the historic houses on Providence’s east side.
Thank you so much for listening! If you like this episode, share it with family and friends! Or leave a rating or review wherever you get your podcasts. If you have a topic you’d like to hear about, you can email me at Weird Rhode Island at Gmail.com. See you next week as we dig up more stories about all things weird and wonderful in the little state of Rhode Island. Until next time!