Appalachian Folklore & Myths Series – Sensabaugh Tunnel: Ghost Tourism, Urban Legend, and the Real Sensabaugh Family Along the Holston
North of Kingsport, Tennessee, the land folds into low ridges and narrow hollows along the North Fork of the Holston River. Farmhouses sit back from the road, the railroad keeps to its own bench above the creek, and narrow lanes carry locals through places that do not make most highway maps. One of those lanes is Sensabaugh Hollow Road, where the pavement narrows, the trees close in, and a concrete tunnel slips under the railroad and hillside.
By daylight the tunnel is a one lane passage streaked with water and graffiti. After dark, it becomes one of the most talked about haunted places in East Tennessee. Stories about Sensabaugh Tunnel promise crying babies, stalled cars, ghostly footsteps, and the angry figure of a man locals usually call Ed Sensabaugh. Over the last half century those stories have moved from whispered dares among teenagers to city tourism blogs, ghost hunting websites, podcasts, and national lists of haunted roads.
As with many Appalachian hauntings, the tunnel sits at the intersection of real geography, everyday family history, and legends that say more about community fears than about anything that can be documented in a courthouse file.
Building a shortcut through the ridge
Sensabaugh Tunnel is a relatively modest structure: a curved concrete bore under the railroad embankment on Sensabaugh Hollow Road, just off Big Elm Road west of Church Hill and north of Kingsport. It carries local traffic and a shallow stream through a cut in the hillside. Modern guides usually date its construction to the 1920s, when road builders and railroad crews were busy reshaping this corner of Hawkins County.
The tunnel takes its name from the Sensabaugh family, who owned adjoining land along the hollow. Property records, local histories, and genealogy works point to several branches of the family in Hawkins County during the twentieth century, including a line that placed farmers, mill workers, and small landowners around Church Hill and Mount Carmel. A self published genealogy, The Sensabaugh Family Lineage: The Chronicles of Edward Sensabaugh, traces African American members of the name in the county and underlines how deeply that surname is rooted in this part of East Tennessee.
In most versions of the tunnel legend, however, “Mr. Sensabaugh” or “Ed” is not just a landowner whose name ended up on a road sign. He is the central figure in a tragedy that supposedly turned an ordinary underpass into a haunted site.
The baby in the tunnel and other stories
Today visitors who search online for Sensabaugh Tunnel quickly meet a cluster of grisly tales that repeat many of the same scenes. In the most common version, a homeless man or drifter comes to the Sensabaugh home asking for food or shelter. When he tries to steal money or jewelry, Edward Sensabaugh confronts him with a gun. The intruder grabs the baby from its crib as a shield and flees into the tunnel, where he drowns the child in the shallow water before escaping. The baby’s cries, the story insists, can still be heard echoing through the tunnel.
A second often repeated version shifts the blame onto Ed himself. Here he is not a strict but ordinary farmer, but a man who “went mad,” murdered his wife and children, and threw their bodies into the creek that runs through the tunnel. Drivers who pull into the darkness, turn off their engines, and sit in silence are told that their cars will refuse to start until footsteps sound behind them and a figure appears in the rearview mirror.
A third set of stories keep the crying child, but move the central figure to a stranded mother. In one widely circulated account, a woman’s car breaks down inside the tunnel during a storm. She stays with her infant rather than trying to walk out for help. In the morning, locals supposedly find both mother and child dead in the passage. Later tellings add details of strange tugging sensations on children carried through the tunnel and of unseen hands pressing on strollers or car seats.
These tales share a few common patterns. They place domestic tragedy in a liminal space between home and road. They use children or infants to heighten the stakes. They end with sound, not sight, emphasizing cries, footsteps, or engines that refuse to turn over. And they treat the tunnel as a place where a private story has spilled into public space in such a violent way that it leaves a mark on the land.
Ed Sensabaugh, the man behind the name
Folklore tends to turn ordinary people into symbols, and over time the real people behind those symbols can be hard to see. For historians trying to untangle the Sensabaugh story, that means asking what can actually be documented about any Edward or Ed Sensabaugh tied to this part of Hawkins County.
Genealogical records and cemetery databases show multiple men named Edward or Thomas Edward Sensabaugh in Hawkins County and neighboring areas across the twentieth century. One example is Thomas Edward Sensabaugh (1912–1983), buried at Ross Campground Methodist Church Cemetery near Mount Carmel, a reminder that the surname belongs to a long rooted regional family rather than a single ghost story character.
More directly relevant to the tunnel legends are accounts from Sensabaugh descendants and local researchers who have tried to verify the darker claims. A Knoxville based paranormal group that investigated the site in the early 2000s reported speaking to family members who insisted that the real Ed lived into old age, that none of his children died as infants, and that there is no record of a family murder tied to the tunnel. According to those interviews, Ed was strict about trespassers and may have gone to the tunnel at night to shout or mimic cries in order to scare off teenagers.
An essay on the “Haunted Spots Library” blog builds on those interviews and on references in the Kingsport Times Newsto argue that rumors about murder likely grew out of more mundane events: a gruff older landowner frustrated with vandalism, a hollow where sound carries in odd ways, and a generation of local young people eager for a scary place to test their nerve.
None of this proves that no crime ever took place near Sensabaugh Hollow. What it does show is that there is currently no archival evidence for the particular tragedies most often attached to the tunnel. No birth or death certificate has surfaced for a drowned infant whose body was recovered from the passage, and no court record has been found for a multiple homicide involving a man named Sensabaugh in Hawkins County. In this case, the written record leans toward ordinary family life, not spectacular violence.
From teenage dare to urban legend
By the mid twentieth century, Knoxville and Tri Cities newspapers were already printing Halloween features on haunted spots in East Tennessee. In that environment, a one lane, poorly lit tunnel under a railroad in rural Hawkins County was the kind of place that almost invited a dare. By the 1960s and 1970s, local young people were driving out along Big Elm Road and Sensabaugh Hollow Road to turn out their headlights, kill the engine, and see whether the tunnel lived up to its reputation.
Different groups added their own details. Some insisted that if you parked in the middle of the tunnel, placed your car keys on the hood, and waited, a “shadowy figure” would appear and start walking toward you before the engine suddenly roared back to life. Others claimed that handprints appeared in condensation on the glass, that gravel shifted under invisible feet, or that female voices echoed from the darkness.
Over time, student newspapers, local tourism blogs, and regional travel writers picked up the story, describing Sensabaugh Tunnel as one of the most haunted spots in Tennessee. An East Tennessee State University feature on “tales of the Sensabaugh Tunnel” treats the site as a classic college town dare, while a Crimereads roundup of “terrifying abandoned train tunnels” lists it alongside far larger railroad bores purely on the strength of its ghost reputation.
In the twenty first century, the tunnel’s ghost stories have moved even farther from their local roots. National “haunted tunnel” and “most haunted places in Tennessee” lists describe the site for readers who may never be able to find Sensabaugh Hollow on a map. Video creators film themselves driving through the passage at night and reacting to every echo or engine sputter. Paranormal tour guides in nearby communities sometimes mention the tunnel in the same breath as other haunted places around Kingsport, even if they do not bring visitors there in person.
River Tunnel, Rotherwood, and a haunted river valley
Part of the confusion surrounding Sensabaugh Tunnel comes from the fact that it is not the only tunnel or culvert in this stretch of the Holston valley. Local enthusiasts point out that some of the most vivid tragedy stories actually seem to belong to a different structure sometimes called River Tunnel on Big Elm Road, closer to the riverbank. A widely shared Flickr caption, for instance, tells a long story of a pregnant farmer’s daughter, a second mother and child killed decades later, and a hobo who drowns a kidnapped baby in a creek, then notes at the end that “these events” actually took place in River Tunnel and not in the railroad tunnel most visitors now call Sensabaugh.
Other writers link the tunnel complex to older haunted landscape stories along the North Fork of the Holston. Rotherwood, a historic plantation house upriver, has its own set of ghost tales involving enslaved people and a tragic white mistress. A Kingsport based blog that revisits Rotherwood’s history notes that local ghost hunters sometimes fold nearby culverts and tunnels into the same web of stories, even when the structures themselves were built decades after slavery ended.
Seen from that angle, the haunted reputation of Sensabaugh Tunnel is part of a longer pattern. The Holston and its tributaries carry layers of memory about Native displacement, slavery, Civil War skirmishes, industrial pollution, and uneven development. Ghost stories cluster around points where roads, railroads, and rivers cross or press against each other, as if people keep returning to those junctions to ask what the land has seen.
Ghost tourism, vandalism, and community ethics
As Sensabaugh Tunnel’s reputation has grown, so have practical concerns for Hawkins County residents. Writers who profile the site now regularly warn that it sits on a low traffic rural road, that its concrete floor often floods, and that graffiti, litter, and reckless driving have become recurring problems. The road itself belongs to local government, but the surrounding land is someone’s home.
Kingsport’s official tourism site treats the tunnel cautiously, mentioning it in lists of “really scary places” while reminding visitors that the area is residential. At the same time, it notes that ghost hunters and storytellers have also attached a separate local legend called “Long Dog” to the riverside near the tunnel, underscoring how quickly one haunted reputation can attract others.
For descendants of the Sensabaugh family, the ethical questions run even deeper. When a ghost story insists that a real ancestor murdered his wife and children or that a baby was drowned in a tunnel, it does not stay confined to Halloween. Family members still live in the region, read local newspapers, and see their surname used as shorthand for a supposed killer. Writers like the Knoxville paranormal researchers and the author of the “Haunted Spots” essay have tried to push back, emphasizing that the documentary record does not support the most lurid claims and encouraging readers to distinguish between entertaining stories and accusations that can affect living people.
For historians and storytellers, Sensabaugh Tunnel poses the same challenge as many Appalachian ghost sites. How do we recognize and enjoy the folklore without turning unproven violence into a casual thrill or repeating stories that the evidence contradicts.
Folklore and memory in a one lane tunnel
Whatever its factual origins, the legend of Sensabaugh Tunnel reveals several things about how people in southern Appalachia make sense of place. It reflects the anxiety of parents and community leaders about unsupervised teenagers driving back roads at night. It taps into older fears about strangers on the doorstep, unwanted pregnancy, and domestic violence. It uses the soundscape of a hollow that amplifies cries and footsteps to suggest that the land itself is speaking.
At the same time, the story shows how quickly a local dare can become a shared regional narrative. Within a few decades, tales traded on Kingsport porches and in Hawkins County school cafeterias have become material for writers and ghost hunters across the country. A concrete underpass beneath a railroad now sits beside far older legends like the Brown Mountain lights or the Bell Witch on lists of Appalachian hauntings.
Standing at the mouth of the tunnel today, a visitor can see all those layers at once. The graffiti and potholes tell a story of modern neglect and teenage adventure. The concrete arch and the railroad above speak to the era when roads and rail lines cut new paths through the hills. The crying baby and the shadow in the rearview mirror belong to a much more fluid world of tale swapping and late night bravado. Somewhere behind all of that lies the quieter history of families named Sensabaugh who farmed this hollow, buried their dead in nearby cemeteries, and probably never imagined that their name would travel so far on the back of a ghost story.
Sources & Further Reading
City of Kingsport. “Sensabaugh Tunnel.” City of Kingsport, November 8, 2016. https://www.kingsporttn.gov/sensabaugh-tunnel/.
Katsigianis, Ioanna. “Tales of the Sensabaugh Tunnel.” East Tennessean (Johnson City, TN), September 11, 2025. https://easttennessean.com/2025/09/11/tales-of-the-sensabaugh-tunnel/.
Justus, Anthony. “The Sensabaugh Tunnel: Haunted History or Local Folktale?” Haunted Spots Library, October 30, 2015. https://hauntedspotslibrary.wordpress.com/2015/10/30/sensabaugh-tunnel-haunted-history-or-local-folktale/.
Knox Paranormal Researchers. “Legends of Sensabaugh Tunnel.” Knox Paranormal Researchers, April 1, 2015. https://kprcrew.com/2015/04/01/legends-of-sensabaugh-tunnel/.
“Haunted Kingsport: 4 Really Scary Places in Kingsport.” This Is Kingsport, March 27, 2022. https://thisiskingsport.com/haunted-kingsport-4-really-scary-places-in-kingsport/.
“Kingsport Hauntings … Are You a Believer?” This Is Kingsport, 2022. https://thisiskingsport.com/kingsport-hauntings-are-you-a-believer/.
“Sensabaugh Tunnel, a Haunted Road in Tennessee.” Roads to Travel, n.d. https://roadstotravel.net/usa-sensabaugh-tunnel/.
“The Creepy Story of Sensabaugh Tunnel in Tennessee.” Dangerous Roads, n.d. https://www.dangerousroads.org/north-america/usa/4913-sensabaugh-tunnel.html.
“Tennessee Ghost Stories, Haunted Tennessee Ghost Stories.” Gatlinburg GhostWalks, n.d. https://www.gatlinburgghostwalks.com/gatlinburg-ghost-stories/haunted-tennessee.html.
“The Legend of Sensabaugh Tunnel.” Gatlinburg Haunts, October 31, 2025. https://gatlinburghaunts.com/the-legend-of-sensabaugh-tunnel/.
Brown, Alan. “The Crying Babies of Sensabaugh Tunnel and Click Tunnel.” The Ghost Doctor, n.d. https://theghostdoctor.com/the-crying-babies-of-sensabaugh-tunnel-and-click-tunnel/.
Douglass Alumni Association of Kingsport. “The History of Rotherwood: A Master-Slave Mentality.” Douglass-Riverview News and Current Events, August 12, 2008. https://douglassalumni.blogspot.com/2008/08/history-of-rotherwood-master-slave.html.
Price, Charles Edwin. More Haunted Tennessee: A New Collection of Spine-Chilling Ghost and Monster Tales from the Volunteer State. Johnson City, TN: Overmountain Press, 1999. https://catalog.chattlibrary.org/Record/863144.
Sensabaugh, Deshawn. The Sensabaugh Family Lineage: The Chronicles of Edward Sensabaugh. North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2017. https://www.amazon.com/Sensabaugh-Family-Lineage-Chronicles-Edward/dp/1545009503.
“Thomas Edward Sensabaugh (1912–1983).” Find a Grave. https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/5863400/thomas-edward-sensabaugh.
“Edward Sensabaugh (1912–1983).” FamilySearch. https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/GSBS-RKG/edward-sensabaugh-1912-1983.
WJHL. “Haunted Tri-Cities: Sights and Screams at Sensabaugh Tunnel.” YouTube video, October 26, 2020. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3NSUQGCwK8.
Stories of Appalachia. “The Dark Mystery of the Sensabaugh Tunnel.” YouTube podcast episode, June 23, 2023. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95fy39ZAAAA.
Haunted American History. “The Sensabaugh Tunnel of Tennessee.” Podcast episode, August 31, 2025. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sensabaugh-tunnel-of-tennessee/id1525750530?i=1000724325871.
Author Note: Sensabaugh Tunnel sits at the edge of the kind of stories I care about, where ghost lore meets real family history. My goal here is to enjoy the haunting while still being honest about what the records can and cannot prove.