The 1925 Church Hill Tunnel Collapse and Richmond’s Enduring Folklore
Every October brings out a familiar appetite for ghost stories, but Richmond’s most persistent urban legend has roots sunk deep into an actual 1925 industrial tragedy. As VPM reported, the tale of a supposed vampire lurking in the city’s historic Church Hill neighborhood traces back to the catastrophic collapse of a Chesapeake and Ohio Railway work train beneath 18th Street just below Jefferson Park.
The disaster unfolded when the ground above the tunnel—made of mud and clay ill-suited for underground boring—suddenly gave way. The cave-in trapped a steam locomotive and a work crew, killing at least four people, including the engineer and a fireman, alongside a Black day laborer whose body was never recovered from the wreckage.
From Industrial Tragedy to Gothic Myth
Decades later, elements of that dark day fused with local folklore to create one of Virginia’s modern legends. According to Haunts of Richmond President Beth Houlihan, early witnesses at the 1925 site reportedly encountered two men outside the collapsed tunnel. One lay on the ground filthy and exhausted, while another impeccably dressed gentleman bent over him.
When the well-dressed man stood and turned toward the crowd, witnesses claimed to see pointy teeth and blood at the corner of his mouth. As the story goes, the panicked crowd screamed “vampire,” prompting the figure to flee across town to Hollywood Cemetery in Oregon Hill, where he vanished into a mausoleum.
That tomb belonged to William Waltham Pool, a man who had died a decade earlier and harbored a distinct fear of being buried alive. He had commissioned a trick door on his vault so he could escape if he ever woke up inside. Over the decades, the initials W.W. carved above the heavy stone door took on the appearance of fangs in the local imagination.
Student Journalists Connect Urban Legends to Cemetery Graves
The urban legend did not solidify overnight. Christina Vida, curator at The Valentine, points out that the narrative gained significant traction during the 1970s as Virginia Commonwealth University students populated nearby neighborhoods like the Fan and Oregon Hill.
By April 1976, student journalist Garry Curtis wrote about Hollywood Cemetery in The Commonwealth Times, planting the first in-print connection between Richmond’s supposed vampire and Poole’s grave. Curtis noted rumors of Medical College of Virginia students visiting the site to disturb remains, cementing a dark counterculture fascination around the tomb.
“Mr. Poole is alleged to be a vampire,” Curtis wrote at the time, helping formalize a local piece of folklore. As Vida notes, the city embraced the eerie prestige: “You’re not a real city until you have a vampire, right?”
Filmmaker Researches Locomotive Fireman as Myth Inspiration
While the exact lineage linking the 1925 cave-in to the vampire myth remains murky, local filmmaker Ryan Pace is working to document the real history of the disaster. Researching the event for an upcoming project, Pace points to the locomotive’s fireman, Ben Mosby, as the likely inspiration for the initial figure crawling out of the debris.
Mosby was heavily scalded when the boiler exploded and bricks rained down inside the dark passage. Historical accounts show he managed to crawl out under flat cars nearly a mile to the opposite end of the tunnel, emerging burned and bruised before ultimately succumbing to his injuries.
More than a century later, the physical reality of the site remains unchanged. A train, and the human remains of those who perished, still lie entombed beneath Church Hill. Whether local folklore chooses to see a monster or honor the victims, the bricked-up tunnel endures as a permanent monument to a forgotten disaster.
