27 replies to this topic

[Troy Burnique]

I recently moved here to Colorado Springs and I am investigating the 3 tunnels on Gold Camp Road and Helen Hunt Falls. The two are closely related and in the same area. Supposedly in the first 2 tunnels on Gold Camp Road if you stop your car in the middle of the tunnel at night time very freaky things happen. Ive found countless reports of children's fingerprints appearing on the car, trouble starting the car, hearing children's voices, chains clashing, laughter, and even one incident where a group saw a little girl outside there window. The extremely mysterious tunnel 3 I haven't found much info on, and it intrigues me the most because of my inability to find it so far. I found one account that said the only way to enter the tunnel was through a small passage that you had to crawl through (the tunnel collapsed many years ago and has been left like that). In this report they said that they heard blood curdling screams coming from the passage and there was not a chance in hell they were going to enter.
As for Helen Hunt Falls I have found some pictures where "things" showed up along with people feeling, seeing, and sensing things in this area. I am doing a video documentary on both these places and would greatly appreciate any info I can get to help me out with this. If you have heard anything, experienced anything, or can help my anyway please to so. You can reach me at troy@xsmovies.net

Thanks,
Troy Burnique
xsmovies.net

[Amanda21]

Having been there several times myself i can tell you a bit of what i have heard and experienced. In the first tunnel, our car started pulling very hard to the right ( when there was nothing wrong with it before we went in) and just before we hit the wall we all heard ( there was 4 of us) screaming children and a screeching of tires and our brakes all of a sudden slammed and we were able to avoid the wall. The legend i have heard about this tunnel is that a school bus full of children went out of control and crashed into the wall killing them all ( i only heard this AFTER we went through the tunnel. The second tunnel was a little stranger. In this tunnel we had planned to stop to see if anything would happen. Unfortunately in this tunnel, the brakes stopped working. Something would not let the car stop. As we were about to exit the tunnel we saw a very bright light ( and yes we checked, we were alone up there that night.) and thought that we hit a young woman that popped up at the end of the tunnel as we were driving through the exit ( yes we got out and looked, there was no one) As soon as the nose of the car got through the tunnel, the car immeditly stopped. I was driving the entire time. We never were able to get any information about this tunnel. As to the third tunnel, the reason it is so hard to find is because it is above the other two. They say that they colappsed this tunnel because too many people were getting hurt when they went in it and that is why it was never fixed, because it was done on purpose. After the other two tunnels we were a little too nervous to try to get into this tunnel. The only story i have heard on the haunting of this tunnel is that a rapist took a young girl into this tunnel and proceeded to rape and murder her. After he killed her, he chopped her up and spread her into the walls, that is why they say that this tunnel is so violent. As we drove down the road on our way back into town, we saw several red balls of light bouncing in the trees.. and at the very last moment we all looked back up for some reason, and we all saw a man hanging from a tree at the very top. I hope that any of this helps you, and its nice to have an interested party to share this all with.

If you have any questions, please feel free to email me

Amanda Greer
psychodrummergurl1@yahoo.com

please excuse the email address, its very old

[robertwr]

i do not know of ghostly events on gold camp road. i have walked from the parking area out to around the first major hill after tunnel 3 afew times in the day and it's a very pleasant walk. some would say the haunting is a reason for the fire in tunnel 3 back in 2006. but i would guess eco-terrorists like the group that burnt down a lodge in vail, co within the past decade did it to try to stop the forest service from giving the planned announcement to seek the finances to restore tunnel 3 for atleast forest fire fighting and leave the portion of the road closed to vehicles. if you do like getting SPOOKED i'd recommend another place in the same region called tunnel 7 at the south end of the closed portion of gold camp road and it is very easy to acces on foot. tunnel 7 is closed due to one extemely large boulder and a bunch of smaller ones that fell from the ceiling of the tunnel(when it happened i do not know) and can be walked all the way through safely if you have a flash light and decently treaded footwear like hiking shoes or similar. you can then walk along the old roadway (which is mostly flat, covered in afew areas by rock slides and also has alot of young vegetation growing in it now) for about a 1/4 of a mile then you reach the collapsed side of tunnel 8 which is a very steep slope now since the tunnel looks to have collapsed from a landslide. to reach the partially open side of tunnel 8 drive up old stage road to the look out point where it becomes the open portion of upper gold camp road and head down the road to the right of the look out and go till you see a road closed sign(whats left of one due to redneck activity) and walk til you reach the open end of tunnel 8.

like i said i haven't been in these areas at night but i believe some would say it's possible to hear or see the ghosts of railroad workers at these sights since gold camp road was originally a railroad going from cripple creek to the colorado springs area.

[earth_spirit]

I lived in Divide and worked in Cripple Creek for many years, so I've heard the stories about the tunnels of Gold Camp Road, as well. Unfortunately, the truth is usually a lot less exciting than the legends that spring up around many so-called "haunted places."

Here are some links to a site that sheds some light on the mysteries of Gold Camp Road (plus my own personal site):

Gold Camp Road
Some Great Gold Camp Road Pics
The Imperial Casino Hotel

[Luront]

Ok I've been up to Gold Camp Road several times in the past two months with my friends. I've heard some noises in the first tunnel and seen some questionable things while sitting there. Well out of all the times I've been up there, I'm going to tell you the most exciting yet creepy of stories that I guarantee no one will believe and I don't blame them. But let me tell you anyway. And I can assure you that this story is 100% true. No exagerrations, no BS, just the facts. After reading it you can believe if it's true or not but I just know what me and my friend saw.

About a month ago I went up to gold camp with my friend Yoshi (yes that is her name). We are both really close friends and she remembers me telling her the "lengends" behind Gold Camp since Freshman year. I personally was skeptical at first and even though I heard noises in the first tunnel before, I still didn't think anything was there. So at about 11PM I picked up Yoshi and we headed up to Gold Camp. We drove up to the first tunnel, drove about in the middle of it, stopped and turned off the car and lights and just waited. We started to hear faint noises as if someone were walking on wood very slow and another person was banging on metal. Well those were the noises that I hear every time I go there. So we figures "oh yeah, let's go to the second tunnel to see if anything happens." So we are sitting in the second tunnel, car off, lights off, and nothing is really happening. So we just sit there for a bit more and Yoshi yells "Oh my god! Turn the lights on Zack!". At this point I thought see saw something but there was nothing there. Then this truck started coming at us from near the end of the tunnel. I start up the car, go out of the tunnel about 75-100 feet and pull to the side to let him pass.

After the truck passes I turn my car around and stop for a minute and Yoshi says "I think there is something on your car." I said "Ok let me take a look." I look in my rear view mirror and my side mirror and nothing is behind me so I open my door. Right about when I'm gonna step out this car comes out of nowhere and just comes to a very slow stop about 50-60 feet behind me. I think to myself "Where did this guy come from?" So I close my door and drive through the second tunnel and pull off to the side to let him by. This guy was driving extremely slow (about 5-7 mph) so we had to wait for a bit. He stopped in the second tunnel for about 3 seconds and continued to keep driving. As he was driving through the tunnel Yoshi said to me "Uhhh...Zack...there's something not right about that car." Of course I just said "Relax, this happens all the time. It's just a normal car Yoshi." The whole time Yoshi kept looking at the car the whole time and never took her eyes off it. Since it was her first time up there I just thought she was being paranoid but right when the car started to pull up beside me, I knew something was wrong. I got a very curious yet cold feeling inside of me and I started to look at the car as he started to pass.

I look in the driver seat and there is a bald man about in his late 20's-early 30's but he was deathly pale. And as I saw him, he slowly turned his head and looked at me and Yoshi. Both of our stomachs dropped at this point and it became extremely cold. The car pulled forward about 5 feet or so and the guy looks over his shoulder about 3 or 4 times at my car like he saw something but he wasn't quite sure. At this point I was freaking out inside because I knew that I saw something out of place. The car just keeps driving at a slow pace and right when the road curves, the car disappears. It didn't even look like he turned, it looked like his just vanished. Yoshi and I were both like "WTF!" and I put my car in drive and started to haul BAD_WORD to see if I could catch up with him. We went around the corner and he wasn't there. So we flew down the mountain at about 40 MPH looking for this guy. We even checked the parking lots but he was nowhere to be found.

Now remember, this car was going extremely slow and we would of caught up to him within 20 seconds at the most. But we hauled BAD_WORD all the way down the moutain and he was nowhere to be found. At this point, we were both freaking out because we saw a ghost but it looked like a normal person in a normal car. If you were to see this guy on the road driving, it would look like a just another Joe. In perspective it may not seem that exciting but when you actually see a ghost when you don't believe in them, it is exciting. Especially when you expect to maybe see a figure or an outline of a person if you did ever see a ghost. And I can tell you, if I ever saw that car again I could recognize it in an instant. It looked like an early to mid 80's car but I couldn't tell the model because it was just generally odd looking. The feature that stuck out the most on the car was, the glass of the right rear tail light was broken.

So after this whole exciting experience, I went home and told my brother about it. Surprisingly enough he believed me. He told me a while back (6-8 years ago) someone commited suicide in his car outside one of the tunnels. Surely enough, I think that's the ghost we saw. Believe it or not.

Edited by DukeofBoogie, 30 December 2007 - 09:24 AM.

[Chikadee77]

We have investigated the tunnels in Colorado Springs many times and have found nothing paranormal so far however there are a lot of teenagers up there getting drunk and causing trouble and basicially vandalizing both tunnels and breaking bottles all over the road. (Word of warning, there are 4 police officers on our team and if they catch anyone driving drunk (or drunk underage) or vandalizing they will be arrested ) Which is really upsetting and hard to get anything done with all that going on.

Now Helen Hunt Falls we've gotten quite a bit of activety from there, quite a few good EVPs (one with QUITE the attitude, lol. The guys were asking whatever was there to move something and we captured a voice saying "I don't WANT to move anything!") and a very strange experience (quite frightening too) that we're still talking to a few people (local native americans and a couple other people in the paranormal world) about trying to figure out. But not ready to share that here yet, made that mistake on the TAPS message board and got ripped apart by people saying we were on drugs and whatnot, so yeah. :/

And then there is the Gold Camp Road up in Victor, CO that we are working on a case with Victor PD with our sensitive in our group. They believe one of the spirits she may be communicating with from there may be the vicitim of an unsolved murder. I do not recommend anyone without 4 wheel drive going up to that road because it is quite rough, especially if you take it all the way back to the Springs. We even have problems with it in our Jeep and can't get to it right now cause of the weather so that investigation is on hold at the moment.

Anyway, not saying that there can't be anything up at Gold Camp Road in the Springs, just that its really hard to do any serious investigations with all the commotion up there all the time. We've had nights where the 3 of us girls had to sit in the car with all the equipment while the guys spent all night with CSPD doing arrests, nights were kids were just messing with us (making noises, pretending to be ghosts and stupid things like that) nights standings outside the tunnels while cars zipped through the tunnels at 40mph one after another, people stopping us and asking if we were filming for TV and if they could be on it, lol, we've had it all. Ugh....

[earth_spirit]

Thanks for the update on that, Chikadee. I have seen countless tales online about the tunnels on Gold Camp road, but I've yet to talk to anyone local who can confirm any of these stories. Nor can I find any historical references to back then up. I suspect many of them are urban legends created by teenagers with active imaginations

Has your group done any investigations in Cripple Creek?

[Chikadee77]

Not Cripple Creek, but we've done quite a few private homes in Victor, can't share any info on those due to privacy issues. But we will be investigating the Victor Hotel soon and will share our findings there

[earth_spirit]

Bravo! I remember reading an article in The Gold Rush about the Victor Hotel back in 1996, and the sensitive the reporter interviewed at the hotel told some incredible tales about what she felt. We'll be waiting patiently to hear about what you find!

Did I mention that I used to live in Divide and worked at the Imperial Casino and Johnny Nolon's in CC?

[Chikadee77]

Oh really? Anything interesting there?

We've heard alot about many of the casinos being haunted in CC, but have been so busy with the community in Victor lately that we haven't really had time to move that way yet, but I'm sure we'll get to it sometime next year. One of our memebers is a Victor PD officer and the CC PD backs them up a lot so we should be able to make some friends over there and ask about getting into a couple of the casinos for investigations

The Hotel we should be doing sometime in early-mid January, we've already got the green light from the owner, just gotta wait for a night whenever the entire group is free. (work schedules are a nightmare right now with the holidays!) No one wants to miss out on it, can't say I blame them!

[alluringsellout]

I've been recently becoming more and more interested in the three tunnels up at Gold Camp... I have been up there several times with friends throughout the last three months or so and only once have felt something out of place, but nothing too out of the ordinary has ever happened to me. Does anyone know how to get to the third tunnel? We're wanting to find where it is.. during the day.. and then maybe after a couple times we will walk up there at night. I don't know exactly where it is though... is it even visible from the road during the day?

[Chikadee77]

 alluringsellout, on Mar 2 2008, 08:37 PM, said:

I've been recently becoming more and more interested in the three tunnels up at Gold Camp... I have been up there several times with friends throughout the last three months or so and only once have felt something out of place, but nothing too out of the ordinary has ever happened to me. Does anyone know how to get to the third tunnel? We're wanting to find where it is.. during the day.. and then maybe after a couple times we will walk up there at night. I don't know exactly where it is though... is it even visible from the road during the day?

There isn't a 3rd tunnel there, the original Gold Camp road isn't even in the Springs, it's in Victor, CO.

Hope that helps....

[alluringsellout]

Oh, really? Wow.. that's interesting. Just another myth then? hmmm.... I'm still curious, haha... I might need to make a road trip to Victor.

[Spiralstaircase]

First off...the third tunnel does exist. It collapsed in 1987 due to aging timbers supporting the tunnel. There is however a story about a school bus losing control/catching fire which is up to you to decide whether or not its true. Anyway to get to the third tunnel all you have to do is get on gold camp and go through the first and second tunnels. After that you reach a small dirt parking lot like area. If you turn right and do a U-turn you will find your self going up high drive which is only open during the summer due to extreme snow conditions prominent during the other seasons and is also known as a stoner hot spot given its name. And to your left is another road which leads you to Helen Hunt Falls and eventually the Broadmoor area. But is you go straight, you should see a gated off road which is a continuation of gold camp. The only legal way to get up there is to park your car near the gate and walk the road until you get to the third tunnel. This hike usually takes about 30 minutes or so and isnt too difficult. For some reason while walking there people get discouraged easily and turn back so try not to if you really want to see it. When you arrive at the third tunnel there is a large fence blocking the entrance and a sign with the ever popular "keep out" lettering. In order to get into the tunnel you must clime over the fence which is easiest on the left side. Its not hard to do because the fence is almost like a ladder near there. So once inside you can see the damage do to the tunnel by whatever and possibly big metal pieces of "bus". I mean ive heard that someone got a tv in there, for whatever reason, so the whole bus thing is if-y for me.

So yeah i have plenty of stories. Ive been up there almost every other day this summer so far. So ask and i will tell.

[Troy Burnique]

I guess I should have posted this a long time ago but I had not realized how many other people were looking for info on the gold camp road story too. I have the full story published on my website at http://www.xsmovies.net/gcr.html

Here are the basics of what I discovered:

-In 1987 the 3rd tunnel was closed to traffic due to rotting timbers and fear of collapse, therefore it would be highly unlikely that a school bus full of children would be driving through a closed tunnel.

-The "blood spots" that are found in all the tunnels, and especially the 3rd, are actually rust formed because of how iron rich the rocks are in this area. To prove it I took a rock from the 3rd tunnel and gave it optimum conditions to rust and within a day or two it looked just like the "blood spots"

The 3rd tunnel is actually a little tricky to find if you don't know exactly where to look as it was on old gold camp road. Now gold camp road takes a different route. At the trail head above helen hunt falls there is a closed road that takes you about a mile to the tunnel.

It is closed off with a large iron gate on both sides. The park department and I personally suggest that you DO NOT climb the fence and go in the tunnel. In 2006 there was a fire inside the tunnel that destroyed all of the remaining supports. It is considered dangerous enough that they did not even investigate.

I spent countless hours day and night exploring gold camp road and did not see or even hear anything rather than a lot of teenagers either looking for a scare or trying to scare someone else. As an experiment we played a little joke on some people that were parked in a tunnel. I was dressed in a white suit and had a rope tied around my neck. After making some noises with a walkie talkie we had planted in the tunnel earlier they exited the tunnel very frighted. As they were exiting they were being followed, by a tree limb tied to a fishing line that was looped to our side. By this time they were running and screaming. Just as they came out of the dark tunnel they saw me dressed in complete white jump off the side of the cliff. They where hysterically sceaming and jumped into their car and left very promptly. I am sure they had a great story to tell when they got home. We also put lots of finger prints on there windows to add some effect. The point of this whole joke, besides being very funny, is that sometimes what we think is happening is something completely different. Whether it be someone else messing with you, you imagining things or misinterpretation. I really do not believe that any of these tunnels are haunted, just creepy.

Despite my opinion I love hearing all your stories and am currently publishing more on the website about this. If you would like to talk to me or tell me your story please email me at projectone@xsmovies.net