One and a half hours from downtown Sydney, there is an interesting place.
On the Internet, it is hailed as "the ninth wonder of the world", "dream paradise", and "photographer's pilgrimage", easy search, there are countless amazing suffocating beauty, people happily yearn for.
And in the Australian Chinese community, this place is even more famous. Every summer, the official accounts post it collectively, labeled "a must-have online celebrity attraction", and recommend it to international students and new immigrants all the time.
Under the blessing of these two halos, this place will be crowded by countless Chinese every year.
This place is the (Old Helensburgh Station) Firefly Cave at train Station in Old Helensburg.
Photo by Denny Lou
However, many of the Chinese who have been to this place have encountered a phenomenon that is difficult to understand.
When they come to the mouth of the hole, ready to enter, they can not help but feel particularly anxious.
Even during the day, at a glance from the entrance, the hole was incredibly dark, like a well, deep without a bottom.
Even in the middle of summer, standing at the entrance, you will feel the shade of cool.
As if the foot stepped in, it would be swallowed by the darkness, into a completely different world.
In fact, there are reasons behind all this.
The gorgeous photo won't tell you, and the one thing that the official accounts won't tell you is,
In the firefly hole at the old Helensburg train station, there are actually a few ghosts whose spirits have existed for hundreds of years and have never dissipated!
For the locals, haunted stories began to spread from grandfathers' generation. And now the endless stream of tourists, they are beginning to worry deeply whether there will be a day of revenge.
Maybe this day, it won't be too far.
The story begins a long time ago.
The origin of the train tunnel in Helensburg
More than a hundred years ago, Australia's mainland was in a period of dramatic transition.
On the one hand, home country UK has completed industrial revolution, a large number of technology and talent poured into Australia, hoping to open the ground here to build their second home.
On the other hand, the mystery of Oceania has been completely unraveled, and the vast gold deposits on this new land have attracted gold divers from all over the world.
Sydney was then Australia's largest city, and its surrounding development has naturally become a top priority.
The town of Helensburg, where the Hellensburg firefly hole now lives, arose at the time.
This place in Helensburg is found to be range continuous, geologically complex, densely forested and ravaged, and, according to experience, full of coal-mining resources.
Indeed, the first group of gold miners, after a period of mining, discovered the huge mines in the area.
The news spread ten, and one after another, groups of people came here with tools.
They were mining during the day and stationed in the plains next to the mines at night, only a few years later. This once deserted place has developed a vibrant town-Helensburg.
The town has developed, but the problems soon ensued. That is the inconvenience of transportation. Because of the mountainous areas, roads have not yet been built, people must trek and walk dozens of kilometers to get here.
The hard work of the road makes the material extremely scarce here, and the mining work is often stagnant.
Traffic problems are plagued not only by miners, but also by government, a city of Sydney, 45 kilometers away. At that time, Sydney was developing at a rapid pace, and the demand for coal mines was increasing.
The mines that can be reached by the surrounding roads have been largely exploited, so the treasure house of Helensburg became the greatest savior of the time.
Against this background, a giant project called the South Coast Railway was approved.
The project will cost so much to build seven railways that will tunnel through the mountains around Sydney.
Steam train will then travel all night between the mines and downtown Sydney, giving it constant power to take off.
In the seven steam train tunnels, the Helensburg Tunnel, built in 1889, is the most famous.
One is because the Helensburg tunnel is the largest and the most expensive, and the other is the reputation of the town of Helensburg.
At that time, the construction of the tunnel was warmly welcomed by local residents, who regarded the Helensburg tunnel as a symbol of their hometown and also named it "Avenue of Light".
It means that its completion will bring endless light to the future of the small town.
What no one expected, however, was that the prestigious, expensive Helensburg Tunnel, which had been in operation for less than 30 years, was completely abandoned by the new state of government.
The local residents would never have thought that the "path of light" in their eyes had not brought light, but had brought infinite darkness …
Screams in the train tunnel in Helensburg.
In 1895, six years after the opening of the Helensburg Tunnel, a terrorist incident rocked Australia.
It was midsummer when Robert Hales, a coal miner, walked drunk to the platform at Helensburg Station, and his workman waved goodbye to him in the distance.
The sultry air made him very irritable, and he kept pacing the platform
The mining at his site was coming to an end, and he couldn't wait to go home and reunite with his family.
Strangely enough, the clock at the station had been pointed at 09:05, and train, which was supposed to arrive at 9 p. M., had yet to show up.
Robert looked at the clock again and again, 9: 05.9: 10.9: 20, train still no shadow!
The drunken Robert was impatient. He looked at the tunnel and had a bold idea in his mind.
He weighed in his mind that he had traveled through the tunnel in train before, and it didn't feel very long.
"maybe I can go through the tunnel and walk home!"
Robert jumped off the platform and, as soon as he put on the miners' headlights, walked straight past the dark, autumn tunnel.
The tunnel is much longer than he thought.
He did not know how long he had gone, and still did not see the light at the end of the day, when his wine was half awake and he began to dread.
"what time is it?" He doesn't have a watch on him and he can't judge.
"where have I gone now?" There are no landmarks in the tunnel, and there is no way to judge.
His heart began to pounding, a bad hunch came up, and he looked back, in addition to darkness or darkness. -.
"maybe there won't be another car tonight," he comforted himself. Then he began to move on.
He did not wait until he took two steps, and a sudden gust of wind came up behind him. He trembled, turned and looked, and a beam of bright light was rushing towards him at a very fast pace!
The late train, it's catching up now!
Before he had time to think, he turned around and ran and shouted, "stop!" But his voice was soon buried in the roar of steam train,
And his distance from train is rapidly shortening!
Robert is not Bolt. How could he have run past train? 100 meters. 50 meters. 30 meters. 10 meters. 5 meters.
With a loud, dull noise, Robert screamed and died in the rolling car.
Later, according to police records, Robert's body was hit in half by train, and the tunnel was full of blood.
The day after Robert was killed, the headlines in all Australian newspapers were dominated by the news, and everyone was asking the same question.
Why would train be late that day? After investigation, however, the police found that the train was on time, but the clock at Helensburg Station was eerily 40 minutes faster.
As for the reason, no one knows.
This makes the whole thing even more confusing. The new state transportation department later compensated Robert's family for a sum of money and replaced the timetable hanging from Helensburg station in an attempt to quell the accident.
But after the accident, a lot of things have changed quietly.
As many passengers ride through the Helensburg Tunnel in train, it seems that a man's cry can always be heard in the roar of train.
That voice was desperate enough to raise the cold from the spine.
What is even more frightening is that the train driver who runs this line can often see a figure running in the darkness of this tunnel.
When it comes to catching up with it, it suddenly turns back and then crashes towards train.
There were all kinds of rumors that Robert's soul was dead, so the soul couldn't be ultrasonic and could only be trapped in this narrow, dark tunnel.
Of course, this was criticized by the new state transportation bureau, which kept stressing that the Helensburg tunnel was safe.
The so-called haunted is only nonsense, I hope the public can safely ride.
See government come out, everyone has a bottom line, after all, the locals say too strange, those "ghost stories" as a joke read.
John Joseph was one of them, and he never believed that, and still took the train every day through the Helensburg Tunnel.
Until the day he was weird about death.
John Joseph's bizarre death and the closure of the Helensburg Tunnel
August 14, 1914.
John's wife was preparing dinner in the kitchen when suddenly the bell rang in the living room. She ran to pick up the phone, and it was John on the other end of the line.
"Darling, you'll never guess what I've been through today! today's horse race, I, I won a lot of money!" John said excitedly.
"I'm going back from Sydney on train now!"
John's wife couldn't believe it, but the husband didn't seem to be lying. She quickly told him, "be careful on your way back! I'll wait for you at home with my child!"
After the phone hung up, John's wife began to look forward to her husband's full return. What she didn't know at that time was that her husband would never come back.
That night, John's wife waited until early morning, John did not come home.
At noon the next day, the door of her house was knocked heavily. She pushed the door and looked at it. It was a few police officers.
They found the body of a man in a tunnel on the south coast of Sydney. The man was confirmed to be John.
It was a blow to John's wife. She queried the details of the police case, but the police showed an expression of embarrassment.
It turns out that the tunnel was the Helensburg tunnel, where his body was found, and his head, neck, and breast were seriously injured.
That kind of injury, the police say, really looks like it was hit by train.
No one knows why John, sitting in train, was hurt like train.
No one knows why John disappeared from train and appeared in the Helensburg Tunnel.
The only thing we know is that John's huge bonus is gone.
After John's accident, the police sent a full investigation for a month, but there was no progress.
The desperate police are offering a bounty in the hope that the passenger passing through the Helensburg Tunnel, train, will be an eyewitness that night.
Strangely enough, the passengers on the train that night all agreed that they had never seen John.
In the end, John's death, like the vanishing bonus, was an unbreakable case, and the Helensburg Tunnel, where he died, once again entered the public eye.
It was said that Robert had done harm to innocent people. Some people say that someone deliberately made the scene of a ghost's death. Although people have different views on this matter, there is one thing that is unified.
That is the Helensburg Tunnel, which has become a land of right and wrong, and must be shut down completely!
This time, the new state government can only compromise.
This huge investment, through Sydney's south coast, witnessed the development of Australia's golden-age railway, which was closed in 1920.
To the bewilderment of outsiders, the seven routes are open to the public without exception after they are shut down and can be visited.
Only the Helensburg Tunnel, after it was closed, was placed in a thick iron gate by government, which became a closed area.
In this regard, government only explained that the air in the tunnel was not smooth, but the local people knew it very well.
It was closed because there had been two sensational and grotesque killings inside it. There is definitely something extraordinary in that, beyond what ordinary people can understand.
The train tunnel in Helensburg has become an online celebrity attraction, with Chinese crowded
After the Helensburg tunnel was closed, government tried to turn it into a reservoir and plantation, but none of these projects lasted long.
Gradually, the Helensburg Tunnel itself, along with the stories behind it, was forgotten.
Until 1995, nearly 100 years after the tunnel was first closed, Helensburgh Landcare, an environmental group, noticed it during a dig.
To their surprise, after such a long period of abandonment, the tunnel became this way:
The tunnel was no longer bleak and was replaced by waterfalls and vibrant green plants.
And when they pickled weeds and entered the tunnel, everyone's breath stopped.
This time it's not the ghost, it's the spirit of light-the firefly.
This is a long time away from human interference, providing an excellent breeding environment for fireflies, a rare blue-ray bug that is rare in number.
Now, they are found in this forgotten tunnel, and so many more!
Environmentalists were shocked by the sight: it was a natural beauty and treasure!
The news that the Helensburg Tunnel became a firefly paradise went on, and it became a household name as a "tourist destination."
Nowadays, every summer, there will be overcrowding, and more Chinese come here through official accounts or tour groups.
So far, there has been no more accident in this tunnel.
Perhaps it was the firefly with the light that calmed the ghost who lived in it.
Perhaps it was the ghost who fulfilled his long-cherished wish and became a firefly, illuminating the dark tunnel.
Either way, the stories behind these beauty should not be forgotten.