By Stephen Rex Brown
Brooklyn Eagle

Deep in the bowels of downtown Brooklyn, an abandoned tunnel forged in blood, steel and stone lies shrouded in mystery. The history of the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel is rife with death, deception and nefarious deeds. Might the actors caught up in the macabre drama of the tunnel’s short-lived existence still stalk the subterranean tomb, awaiting someone, or something, to set their restless spirits free?

Bob Diamond, 50, who rediscovered the tunnel in 1980, and his friend Greg Castillo have been given ample reason to speculate about the spooky inhabitants of the tunnel.

While working in the tunnel in 1983, Castillo, 49, saw a sight that boggled his mind: A green orb with a “sickish color� hovered at the opposite end of the tunnel where there should have been nothing but darkness.

Castillo, who is vice president of the Brooklyn Historic Railway Association, shouted “You’re dead, go away!� at the orb, and it vanished into the back wall.

But he is far from the only person to see the mysterious light. A year before, Diamond and a friend had seen the same orb and actually worked up the courage to approach it, only to see it disappear into the wall as well.

“I did a double-take, I couldn’t believe it,� Diamond said.

For having only been in operation from 1844 to 1861, the Atlantic Avenue Tunnel has quite a bloody history, a fact that has not gone unnoticed by local paranormal investigators. Sleuths from both the Long Island Oddities and Paranormal Society and the Long Island Society for Paranormal Research have taken their voice recorders, electromagnetic field detectors and cameras into the tunnel, hoping to capture concrete proof of the haunting.

Laura Cummings, a paranormal investigator with the Long Island Oddities and Paranormal Society, led a group last year into the tunnel to try to capture evidence of a ghost.

Cummings and her cohorts stood in the darkness for an hour and a half, snapping photos, taking readings of electromagnetic activity and asking questions to any spirits that might be listening.

Shortly after entering, Cummings experienced an encounter with the light, albeit a different color. “It was a blinding blue flash, brighter than a camera flash, and it traveled from the back of the tunnel,� Cummings said. “I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, maybe that’s what everyone is talking about!’�

Though Cummings’ crew came back with photos that captured mysterious globes of light, the results — like most paranormal investigations — were inconclusive.

Identifying the ghost possibly haunting the tunnel presents quite a conundrum for Cummings. Numerous souls have met an unpleasant demise there.

Even the tunnel’s construction was spurred by violence. Demand for an underground route for the Long Island Railroad surged in the early 1840s as Brooklynites grew tired of the aboveground line that regularly ran over helpless pedestrians in what is now downtown Brooklyn.

According to Diamond, trains going 25 to 40 miles per hour would come careening out of the woods at Boerum Place and Atlantic Avenue, unable to stop for roughly 800 feet. Brooklynites, still growing accustomed to the sight of locomotives, would end up dead on the tracks.

Blood continued to spill once construction of the tunnel began.

A demanding British foreman was apparently one of the first to die in the tunnel. An issue of the Brooklyn Evening Star from May of 1844 details “the most atrocious murder� provoked by the British foreman insisting that an Irish laborer stop leaving work to visit his priest. The Irishman, outraged at the demand, “thereupon drew a pistol from his pocket and shot the overseer through the body. He died instantly,� the Evening Star wrote.

Rumor has it that the foreman’s body was chopped into pieces by the laborer and buried in the tunnel wall.

“He tried to impose his Protestant work ethic on a dedicated Catholic and got shot for it,� Diamond said. Shortly thereafter, in August of 1844, John Denman was crossing a bridge above the freshly dug tunnel which was still under construction when he lost his balance and plummeted to his doom. The Brooklyn Eagle published a petition by the carpenter’s widow, who wrote she was “in an insecure condition and asking relief.�

But these two deaths are only the most likely suspects in the haunting of the Atlantic tunnel. Another man, attempting to change cars on the train, fell off and was run over. “The unfortunate man was cut in two, the upper portion of the head being completely severed,� the Brooklyn Eagle reported in 1854.

Prior to the tunnel being sealed, it served as a hideout for numerous shady characters who had something — or someone — to hide. Diamond and Castillo found clear evidence of an illicit moonshine operation in the tunnel. Beyond that, rumors abound of the tunnel serving as a stop on the Underground Railroad, a hideout for pirates, and a place where the mafia disposed of bodies.

As with any ghost story, fact and fiction seem hopelessly intertwined.

Still, one of the paranormal investigators’ findings confounds Diamond. Besides Cummings’ team, Doreen Bartholomew of the Long Island Paranormal Society also investigated the tunnel in late May of this year. Both teams observed huge spikes on their electromagnetic field detectors attributing the powerful EMF readings to interference from the utilities that run the length of Atlantic Avenue.

Yet Diamond insists interference from electrical wires is unlikely: The walls of the tunnel are six-and-a-half feet of solid stone.

The key to the mystery of the Atlantic tunnel may lie behind the same wall where the mysterious green orb tends to linger. Ever since rediscovering the tunnel, Diamond has dedicated himself to gathering the funds to knock the wall down.

Behind it may be the urban archaeology find of the century. Diamond and others have reason to believe an abandoned locomotive from the 1840s may be on the other side of the wall, and possibly even the missing pages from John Wilkes Booth’s diary.

For now, there are still more questions than answers when it comes to the haunting of the Atlantic Avenue tunnel.

Despite so many close encounters, Diamond does not know for certain whether the tunnel is haunted. He only knows that when he steps into the tunnel, where the ruckus of downtown Brooklyn gives way to complete silence and the weight of history seems palpable, that the sight of a figure in the shadows does not seem that out of the ordinary. There, in the tunnel described by Walt Whitman as “a passage of solemnity and darkness,� the surreal is almost to be expected.

“When you’re alone in the tunnel for a while and there isn’t a sound to be heard, sometimes you might see what looks like shadows moving around. Of course, this could just be your eyes playing tricks, or maybe it’s something else,� Diamond said.

The next tour of the Atlantic Avenue tunnel is on November 15. Call (718) 941-3160 or visit www.brooklynrail.net for more information.

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