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Formerly known as the Second Gorge Tunnel, and referred to locally as the Black River Tunnel, this Hiroshima Prefecture passage carries a haunting built from three separate tragedies spanning more than a century rather than a single defining event.
The Legend
According to local accounts, the earliest recorded death dates to the late 1800s, when a woman traveling by cart was killed in a landslide inside the tunnel — her spirit, locals say, still roams the passage. A second tragedy is placed in the summer of 1910: a seven-year-old girl died in a separate cart accident, and travelers since have reported strange noises and an oppressive atmosphere near the entrance, attributed to her lingering presence.
The most emotionally developed of the three stories involves a girl named Tomomi, who, according to legend, was walking through the tunnel one evening when she heard a voice calling her name from the darkness. She answered — and was never seen again. Her family searched but never recovered her body, and her spirit is said to haunt the tunnel still, searching for the family she never found her way back to.
What's Actually Verifiable
We could not verify any of the three deaths — the cart accident landslide, the 1910 accident, or Tomomi's disappearance — against a documented historical record. What's notable structurally is that these three stories span different decades and different circumstances without ever merging into one composite narrative, suggesting each was likely added independently over time by different tellers responding to the tunnel's already-established reputation rather than to one another's stories, each contributing a fresh layer without needing to reconcile the earlier details.
A Tunnel Now Physically Sealed
According to local accounts, the tunnel's entrance is now blocked by fallen rocks and debris, making it inaccessible regardless of anyone's interest in visiting. That physical sealing, whether from natural rockfall or deliberate closure, has effectively frozen the legend in place — no new visitors means no new firsthand accounts, leaving the three existing stories as the fixed, unchanging version likely to be told going forward.
Three Generations of Storytellers
Legends spanning multiple decades like this one typically require multiple, unrelated generations of local storytellers to each contribute their own tragedy independently — a landslide death recalled by one generation, a 1910 accident recorded by another, and Tomomi's disappearance added later still. That layering over time, rather than any single author's invention, is likely why the tunnel's reputation has proven durable enough to survive its own physical inaccessibility.
Can You Visit?
Kurose Tunnel's entrance is reportedly blocked and inaccessible. Given both its physical inaccessibility and its layered history of reported deaths, this is a site better appreciated through its story than through an attempted visit.
Ghost-Hunting Gear & Further Reading
- Books on Japanese haunted places and Meiji-era history
- Hiroshima Prefecture travel and history guides
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