**URBAN EXPLORING/PARANORMAL POST** Visit to Wachusett Reservoir/Abandoned Clinton Train Tunnel

 

I took a day trip to the Wachusett Reservoir in Clinton, MA, which is actually the site of the Wachusett Dam. It impounds the Nashua River, creating the reservoir. Construction started in 1897 and was completed in 1905, and at its completion it was the largest public water supply reservoir in the world. It was the largest gravity dam in the world at that time as well. 

During construction, churches, factories, homes, and schools within the valley had to be knocked down or moved. Roads and rail lines had to be relocated, a railroad tunnel and trestle had to be built in order to relocate the Central Massachusetts Railroad, and over four thousand bodies had be dug up and moved in the local Catholic cemetery. 

As part of this rerouting, a .2-mile long tunnel was built that ran underneath a hill to the northeast of the reservoir. In the 1930s, freight traffic along the route began to dwindle, and by the late 1950s, both freight and passenger service had ceased. By the end of the 1970s, the railroad bridge that crossed over Route 62 and the Nashua River was taken down. The tunnel remains intact in the woods along route 62. In the years since its abandonment, it has been covered in graffiti. The inside of the tunnel is said to create an optical illusion, by which it seems to go on forever when you walk through it.

I will say that when you first stand at one of the entrances of the tunnel, you can easily see the other end and the light coming through, and it seems like the tunnel is not very long. But as you enter, and go deeper and deeper into the tunnel itself, it really does seem like it never ends. The middle of the tunnel was as far as we got, and the walls and ceiling turn into just straight up jagged rock. It would've been pitch black in the middle if we shut off our flashlights (and if there weren't two other people in there at the time with red flares). I started to feel slightly uncomfortable at that point and didn't want to stop and stand still, nor did I want to keep walking to the other end. The Reservoir has a closing time (around 7 pm EST, or "sundown") and the area is monitored after hours, but I would be interested in trying to go back to the site at night. I think it would probably be really creepy...maybe another trip will be planned soon?