If you’ve ever heard of a mysterious place in Ohio called Moonville, you should know it really does exist.

Little remains of the abandoned mining town except for a few foundations, a nearby cemetery and an old railroad tunnel—a tunnel supposedly haunted by ghosts of locals who died from being struck by passing trains.

The abandoned coal mining town of Moonville near southeastern Ohio’s Brown Township (in Vinton County) was founded in 1856, when the Marietta and Cincinnati railroad ran through the area’s woods. At its peak, the town was home to about 100 miners and their families.

One structure of the town that remains today is the Moonville Tunnel; a haunted tunnel where legend has it the ghost of a man who was killed instantly by a train passing through the tunnel wanders along the track bed near the old tunnel at night.

In 1856, the railroad was the only route to Moonville. Throughout the years, many people have died near the tunnel and train tracks. Because the tunnel was so narrow, it was not possible for pedestrians to walk alongside the tracks in the tunnel while a train was passing through—which resulted in numerous deaths.

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Piers just outside of the tunnel along Raccoon Creek also remain. The railroad once ran along a bridge over top of them—a bridge which created another accident-prone area where multiple people died over the years as well.

The town also worked with the nearby Hope Furnace, which is supposedly haunted by a watchman who stumbled and fell into a large vat of molten iron, as well as ghosts from the neighboring town of Moonville.

Today, little remains of Moonville and its abandoned surroundings. Trains passed through the area until the mid-1980s, even though the last family left the town in the mid-1940s.

For more information about the ghost town of Moonville, watch the video below:

What do you think of this town? Have you ever explored it for yourself? If you haven’t, would you?

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