Sensabaugh Tunnel is off of Big Elm Road in Church Hill, Tennessee. Dr. Nancy Hamblen Acuff explains that the original tunnel was cut by Sensabaugh Branch and was widened to make a 348' long tunnel that was never intended for driving. An episode of Haunted South TV explains that 16 men died when the Clinchfield Railroad was widening the tunnel in the 1920s.
Long ago, slaves from Hawkins County would hide in the natural tunnel and wait for a ferryman to come down the Holston River and signal it was clear to come aboard by waving a lantern.
One lave and mistress to a Hawkins County man escaped with their three children and was waiting in the tunnel when the slaveholder found them. He smashed one baby against the wall, killing it, then shot the two other children and his mistress.
The youngest baby is allegedly the mournful crier of this tunnel.
[Note: This tunnel is often confused with the nearby Click Tunnel, so much so that the stories have become irrevocably intertwined.]
