The Death Tunnel at Fort Tabor

The graffitti on the wall when you first go in

There is a tunnel at Fort Tabor that kids like to go in and explore. It is rumored to be haunted for a couple of reasons. For example, one of the reasons is that when you go in you hear a lot of strange noises, but the thing is that there are no rats, or other animals that go in there. So where do the noises come from? Another reason that it is rumored to be haunted is because there is a little alley that people go in and think that it gets darker the further you go in. The last and most popular reason that people think the tunnel is haunted is because people have died in there. The people that died in there were soldiers from long ago and also a 10 year old boy.

My story begins on a regular summer day when I was with my friends Tysean, Alex, Jeo, and Joshua. We were all talking and Alex says out of nowhere to me and Joshua “have you ever been in the tunnel?” I said to him “what tunnel?” He told me the one at Fort Tabor. I said to him “I have never been in that tunnel” and Joshua said “that he doesn’t even know what tunnel we were talking about.” Then Tysean started telling me about the tunnel and how it is dark and haunted. So Alex said that if we go in we are going to have to get flashlights. After a while I asked my mom to take us to the store and get flashlights and we all got one at the store. Then my mom drove us to Fort Tabor. However, I didn’t tell her that we wanted the flashlights to go and explore the tunnel. I told her that we were just going to walk around the beach and go to my friend’s house.

When we got there Alex and Joshua were rollerblading and Alex stopped at a bench and took off his rollerblades and put on his shoes. But when Joshua reached in his bag, his shoes weren’t there. He said, “I left my shoes at home.” Then Jeo said, “Are you serious? Are you still going to go in the tunnel? because if not we came here for nothing.” Joshua still went in even though it was hard for him to walk in there with all the rocks and trash.

To get into the tunnel we first came to a fence and had to climb through a hole to get in. We stood there shocked to see that there was graffiti covering every inch of the walls. Then when we looked straight ahead there was a light and we started walking toward the light, when we saw a place where we had to turn right. When we turned it got really dark so we turned on our flashlights and started walking down the tunnel. We were walking down the tunnel and we were looking for stuff like dead bodies and old objects. We were looking for dead bodies because we had heard a rumor that a ten year old kid had died in the tunnel. We were going in rooms looking around and kept scaring each other. After exploring for a while we all met up and we heard a noise. We knew that it wasn’t any of us making the noise because we were all together. We all decided it might be time to leave and Joshua and Jeo started running out. All of us were scared, but they were more scared then the rest of us, so when they saw the light they both ran towardd the light. Joshua was on rollerblades so it was hard for him to run and then Jeo either tripped on a rock or on Joshua’s rollerblade. No one knows exactly what happened, but either way Jeo tripped on something and hit his head on a rock!!! Me, Alex, and Tysean all ran to Jeo because all we saw was him fall to the ground. When we got to him he sat up and we saw a lot blood dripping off his face. We knew we had to leave quickly and we couldn’t go back through the tunnel because it would take too long. So all of us followed Alex on a path over the tunnel. When we got off of the path we got back to the front of the tunnel where the hole in the fence was. We started walking around looking for someone to gives us a ride to Jeo’s house. In the meantime we told him to take off his sweater and to cover the hole that the blood was coming from on his head. We helped him wrap his sweater around his head. We finally came across a complete stranger that we didn’t even know and asked him to give us a ride back to Jeo’s house. We started to get nervous because when we were in the car Jeo started dozing off to sleep! I actually had to keep on shaking his body so he could stop dozing off.

When we got to Jeo's house his mom saw all the blood on his face and started screaming. We didn’t want any of us to get in trouble, so we had to lie to his mom and tell her that Jeo hurt himself jumping on the rocks when he tripped and hit his head. Luckily his mom believed our story and she took him to the hospital. He ended up having to get 5 or 6 stitches!! He even had to wear a wrap around his head for a whole month.

Today Jeo is doing well. So that’s my story behind the Fort Tabor death tunnel. I have never been in the tunnel since that day, but I still hear kids telling rumors that it is haunted. There is also a new rumor that that little right turn that we took gets darker every single day. Maybe I will take a chance and go in the tunnel again….just to explore one more time. Hopefully nothing bad happens this time. I’ll keep you posted!!

Kenny M.
Roosevelt Middle School.