A Tabloid Article by Linden Dunham

The Greater Depression saw a worldwide uprooting of provincial communities and mass migration towards the big cities. A significant minority though resisted the pull of the urban centres. Forced to abandon the ghost towns their homes had become, yet unwilling to be cooped up in the sprawling metroplexes they became nomads. In the United Kingdom there was something akin to a revival of the New Age Traveller movement of the 1980s: Families and like minded groups living in mobile homes or vans and buses converted for residential. Not all of the Britain’s nomads opted for life on the road though. Some took to the waterways in narrow boats and other craft capable of navigating the country’s canal and river network.

The breakdown in civil society experienced by the United Kingdom in the Dark Times means that the canal network, so lovingly restored in the 20th century, has started to fall into decay again. Administration of the network is fragmented and under-funded. Maintenance is haphazard and in rural areas often non-existent. Long sections of canal are half choked with weed and silt, their banks and tow-paths overgrown or slowly crumbling into the water.

In one of these remote rural districts lies a one-and-half-kilometre long canal tunnel, built in the 1850s so that the waterway could pass through a ridge of ground too high and too long for the engineers and navvies to divert around. In its day the tunnel was an impressive feat of engineering: Entirely brick lined and constructed with a tow-path alongside so that barge crews wouldn’t have to “leg” their boat through. Ventilation shafts were sunk into the hill above to provide light and air.

In the Dark Times there is something forbidding about the tunnel. It’s once solid bricks are stained and mouldering, with moss and weeds growing in their mortar, the portals at either end seem to gape into an impenetrable darkness that almost threatens to swallow up any boat that enters. Some of the ventilation shafts have toppled over leaving large sections of the tunnel without light. The trees on the hill are gnarled and twisted as if poisoned by something leaching up into the soil from the tunnel below.

There are moorings sited near both ends of the tunnel but few boats stop once they’ve traversed the dank interior. The tunnel has a bad reputation so that most bargees keep moving and put some distance between it and them before they stop for the night. In recent years stories have circulated amongst boaters of a “the Grey Lady”, a ghostly apparition that follows boats through the tunnel, either walking along the tow-path or floating just above the surface of the water. Some witnesses claim to have seen wet footprints appear on the tow-path as if they were being followed by an invisible presence. Others say that the tunnel fills with a thick grey mist in which there is an indefinable something lurking. One or two have reported faint sounds of singing.

Speculation about the mysterious phenomena in the tunnel tends to be along the line of traditional ghost stories, and are possibly re-iterations of earlier tales attached to the Tunnel. The Grey Lady is, variously, the ghost of a local woman well known as a malevolent witch whose home was destroyed when the canal was built, a 19th century gypsy girl murdered by a lover and her body thrown into the canal, or a young woman from a nearby village who committed suicide by drowning after her sweetheart was killed fighting on the Somme in 1916.

The stories have become sufficiently widespread to attract the attention of the tabloid press. One paper, The Sunday Frolic, has engaged Xavier McLellan, self-styled parapsychologist, author and occasional freelance reporter to investigate The Grey Lady legend and see if there’s a good story in it. McLellan rented a narrow-boat and moored it near the tunnel four days ago. He reported in via mobile phone on the first and second evenings but hasn’t been heard from since. The Frolic’s editor contacts the PCs and asks them to look into McLellan’s apparent disappearance. When the PCs arrive at the Tunnel they find McLellan’s narrow-boat moored nearby, but no sign of the man himself…

There are three possible explanations:

  1. The tunnel is inhabited by a Reaver which is responsible for the supernatural phenomena encountered by eyewitnesses. With McLellan moored close to the tunnel for a couple of days the Reaver had the perfect victim to toy with, tormenting him with visions, before finally coercing him into committing suicide by drowning.
  2. The PCs will find a diary on McLellan’s narrow-boat in which he records sighting the Grey Lady early on the third day of his visit. Further entries become increasingly incoherent but seem to record McLellan experiencing visions of deceased friends and love ones – the last line of the diary, surprisingly legible reads: “They are calling to me. I must join them in the water.”McLellan’s body can be found and retrieved from the canal. Although it is in a poor state after two days in the water the PCs can easily make out the expression of sheer terror on the corpse’s face.

    If the PCs linger any length of time by the Tunnel the Reaver will start to prey on them. Being largely incorporeal it cannot be hurt by conventional weapons. Empathic abilities are needed to defeat the Darking. If the PCs are deficient in the necessary skills then it should be possible to obtain help from a third party. Contacting the Empathic Underground and convincing some of its often eccentric members to help could be an adventure in itself and may come with a price tag – a favour for a favour.

  3. McLellan has been killed by a pack of Wailers that has colonised the tunnel. This particular sub-species of Darking. is related to the Russian Rusalka – they are able to create an obscuring mist in the tunnel which they use to hide their approach when attacking boats that pass through. The Darklings swim silently through the water or pad along the tow path then fling themselves onto the vessel and butcher all aboard in a frenzy of violence, slaying with claws, teeth and sometimes knives. Unlike their Russian counterparts these Wailers have little in the way of seductive allure: They resemble drowned corpses, their bodies pale and bloated, their hair long black hair matted and encrusted with dirt and weeds.The appearance of the PCs will tempt the Wailers with the prospect of more killing, but they will be cautious, especially if the PCs are armed. The Darklings’ strategy will be to use empathic powers to wear the PCs down and once they are weakened sufficiently draw them into the tunnel to be ambushed at close quarters. The creatures may make use of the ventilation shafts, dropping down on the PCs hoping to surprise them.
  4. A small stone circle on the ridge above the tunnel marks the site where ancient sorcerers once carried out rituals to open the gates to other dimensions. The sorcerers are long gone but their legacy remains: The area around the stones is full of sub-atomic micro portals (see sidebar “Weakening the Interdimensional Fabric”, page 36, “Proto-dimensions” sourcebook) which extends to a radius of 10 metres in all directions. Anyone passing through or remaining in the region risks being dragged into the nearby proto-dimension of Grey. In game terms an individual must fail an Easy: Luck task (one per day) to suffer this potentially fatal misfortune. Obviously the longer someone remains in the area the greater the chance that they will suffer an involuntary dimension walk.McLellan was caught while walking the length of the tunnel and passing directly under the stone circle. He is now trapped in Grey. Conversely, The Grey Lady is a female inhabitant of that dimension who has suffered the same fate as McLellan but has become trapped on Earth.

    Proactive PCs will try to locate McLellan but will need the assistance of an empath to perform a dimensional scan: Due to the area being riddled with micro-portals the task difficultly remains constant at Routine (two hours). A basic success reveals Grey to the empath. An outstanding success provides enough information that a successful Dimension Walk task as described in pages 35-44 of the Proto-dimensions sourcebook will allow entry to the alien realm.

    After a few baffling encounters with the mostly oblivious inhabitants of Grey (and possibly a Boogeyman) the PCs finally locate a traumatised Xavier McLellan who gratefully accompanies them home. If the PCs are able to render the same service to The Grey Lady then they can count themselves doubly successful and worthy of a bonus experience point or two.

Acknowledgements/Further Reading

The original idea for this “Tales of Terror” style piece came from a posting on the Dark Times Facebook group suggesting a canal as an appropriately spooky location for a horror RPG adventure. By happy coincidence a week after seeing the post after I read a short article on the supposedly haunted Netherton Canal Tunnel in the July 2018 issue of Country Walking. The brief details prompted me to do some more reading. The Tunnel’s entry on the Spookyisles.com website provides a succinct summary of the alleged phenomena involved:

In terms of length and its rural location my fictional tunnel owes something to the real life Sapperton Canal Tunnel in Gloucestershire, now sadly disused.

Walking in the area several years ago I stopped to look at the Daneway Portal entrance and found it suitably ominous. Far gloomier than the rather cheerful looking photo on wikipedia.

I also have to acknowledge the influence of the short story “Bosworth Summit Pound” by LTC Rolt from his fine collection of ghostly tales “Sleep No More”.