PENNSYLVANIA, April 16 ― Valley Creek Road is a picturesque lane that runs alongside the creek from which it takes its name, near the small borough of Chester County, Downingtown Pennsylvania. If you were to take a scenic drive along this charming stretch of road, one of the most striking features that you would come across would be the so-called “Twin Tunnels” that pass beneath the railroad tracks just outside of town.
Also known as the “Downingtown Tunnels”, the name “Twin Tunnels” is somewhat misleading, as there are actually three tunnels, all of them lined up side-by-side. The road only passes through one of them.
The creek flows through the one furthest from the road, while the middle tunnel is little more than a dirt-floored cave. Taken together, the tunnels have become fixtures of local lore, where they are tied to strange happenings, unquiet spirits, and unsolved murder.
Partway through the first tunnel — the one through which Valley Creek Road passes — there is a shaft cut straight up to the railroad tracks above, to let in air and sunlight. Many of the stories that circulate about the area focus on this shaft, with one popular iteration claiming that years back — possibly as long ago as the 1800s — a young woman in town became pregnant out of wedlock. Driven out of town with her baby, the story goes that she hanged herself above this shaft, and that when she died the baby slipped from her arms to plunge to its death in the tunnel below. Some say that you can still hear it crying in the tunnel at night.
In fact, if all the stories are to be believed, the tunnel at night must be a pretty noisy place. Other accounts tell of a man who hanged himself from the wire that connects the tunnels to one-another. It’s said that if you stand or park in the tunnel and turn off your lights you can hear footsteps in the next tunnel over, followed by the sound of the wire snapping taut. Some people even claim that if you drive through the tunnel at night, you may catch a glimpse of the ghostly apparition of the man’s hanging body.
Most of these stories are the kind that have worked their way into local folklore, and as such are almost impossible to prove or disprove conclusively. But there’s one particularly grisly tale associated with the tunnels that is absolutely true, and of comparatively recent vintage.
On July 11, 1995, a maroon suitcase wrapped in a green garbage bag was found in the creek near the tunnels. The suitcase had been taped shut and bound with wire. Inside was the nude, dismembered torso of an unidentified woman, wrapped in a sheet and placed inside a quilt bag. Her legs had been severed at the pelvis and were nowhere to be found. Cause of death was eventually listed as “homicidal violence”.
To this day, the woman has never been identified, and is referred to simply as “the woman in the suitcase” or the “Suitcase Jane Doe”. Her fingerprints weren’t in the system, and the horrifying events that must have led up to her remains being crammed in a suitcase and left near the tunnels remain unknown.
Stories have, of course, sprung up surrounding the discovery of the mutilated body, with one of the most popular variants holding that the woman was brutally murdered by a biker gang in the area. They say that her voice, crying “help me”, is one of the haunting things that you can sometimes hear in the tunnels at night.
The graffiti that often appears on the tunnel walls now serves as a sort of unofficial memorial for this particular episode in the area’s tragic history, and at various times the supposed location of the macabre suitcase has been marked with the words “dead girl” or with a crude drawing of a suitcase with an arm sticking out of it and the words “help me”.
On January 29, 1996, a full six months after the gruesome discovery of the torso in the suitcase, a pair of partially skeletal legs were found wrapped in garbage bags near Middletown Township, some 20 miles away. Unfortunately, time and decomposition made it impossible for DNA evidence to confirm that the legs belonged to the same woman, though when the bones were placed together they seemed to match, and many people assume that the legs were the missing piece of this grisly puzzle. Even if they were, the identity of the woman and the story of her murder remain a mystery more haunting than any local legend. ― The Line-Up/Reuters
* This story was originally featured on The-Line-Up.com. The Lineup is the premier digital destination for fans of true crime, horror, the mysterious, and the paranormal.
