Picton's Mushroom Tunnel — Emily Bollard's Crossing
A gated 1860s railway tunnel in 'Australia's most haunted town', where a woman killed by a train in 1916 is said to still walk — headless.
Case File No. 167
FILE 01 The Legend
The Redbank Range tunnel, opened in the 1860s as the first railway tunnel used by the NSW Railways, ran the Great Southern Railway under the escarpment at Picton, a small town 80 kilometres south-west of Sydney that has worn the nickname 'Australia's most haunted town' for decades. It stored munitions in World War II and later grew mushrooms — hence 'Mushroom Tunnel' — before tragedy in the tunnel's past earned it a darker fame: a decapitated body found there in 1884, and in 1916 local woman Emily Bollard, taking a shortcut home through the tunnel, was struck and killed by a train. Ghost tours ran here for years until the council gated the deteriorating tunnel; the state's own heritage listing now notes the paranormal reputation matter-of-factly.
FILE 02 The Sightings Log
Tour operators and visitors reported a headless woman in white walking the tunnel — Emily, universally — plus lights floating above visitors' heads, sudden temperature drops, whispering, ghostly children, and orbs in photographs; one long-time local guide claimed eighty per cent of the town had an experience there. Others spoke of a watchman's figure at the portals and of being touched on the arms and hair in the dark. The tunnel is closed to entry now, but the stories keep the track-side viewing spot busy on weekend nights.
FILE 03 The Skeptic’s File
A dark, dripping, gated Victorian tunnel with two real deaths in its past is a legend-generating machine — cold drafts, magelight headlights bleeding through the arch, and a tour industry that ran for decades on precisely these reports. 'Eighty per cent of locals' is a guide's estimate, not a survey; the headless woman is the standard motif attached to a decapitating accident. The tunnel's documented truth — a death by shortcut in 1916 — is tragedy enough without a ghost, and the heritage listing is right to record the folklore as folklore.