Moonville, Ohio

Ghost town

Moonville is a ghost town in southeastern Brown Township, Vinton County, Ohio, United States. Little remains of this former mining community except a few foundations, a cemetery, and an abandoned railroad tunnel which is the subject of numerous ghost stories.

In the mid 1800s, the Marietta and Cincinnati Railroad (M&C) was pushing through southeastern Ohio to reach Cincinnati. Along its route and in the more remote sections were the towns of Zaleski, Hope Furnace, Hope Furnace Station, Ingham Station, and Kings Station. Central to these small coal mining towns was also a small community mainly made up of two families, the Coes and Fergusons. It was called Moonville. Nearby, the railroad company built two trestles over the winding Raccoon Creek and gouged a tunnel, called Moonville Tunnel, through one high hill. Walking the tracks was incredibly dangerous, and was made even more hazardous by the trestles and tunnel. One trestle stood over Raccoon Creek less than away from the tunnel mouth. Over 21 people were killed on or near the tracks here. The last fatality was reportedly in 1978 when a 13 year old girl fell off the trestle as a train passed over it. By the turn of the century, the coal mines slowly started to be used up and closed down. The last family left town in 1947; by then the town itself was abandoned. By the 1960s all the buildings were gone and there was little to mark the site, other than Moonville Cemetery, the tunnel, and foundation stones found near the tracks.

With the town long gone, the train traffic continued to increase on the single track line. In 1973 the B&O merged with the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway (C&O) and the Western Maryland Railway (WM) to form the Chessie System. Train traffic doubled, with as many as 14 trains per day. Railroad workers called the line the most lonesome, desolate eight miles (13 km) of track between Parkersburg, West Virginia and St. Louis. They hated the area because it was isolated and trains seemed to show up without warning. The line was "dark" (unsignaled) between Parkersburg and Cincinnati, and traffic was governed by train orders.

There is a Halloween and ghost themed festival known as Midnight at Moonville located on the old railroad bed and in the tunnel.