Richmond’s Vampire: Truth Behind Church Hill Tunnel

September 20, 2025 · 4:25 read

Category: Arts & Culture

Show: Unscripted RVA

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/VCV4mRGYVFg Got thoughts? Send us a text here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2513071/open_sms Richmond’s most persistent urban legend starts

Watch the full episode: https://youtu.be/VCV4mRGYVFg

Got thoughts? Send us a text here:

https://www.buzzsprout.com/twilio/text_messages/2513071/open_sms

Richmond’s most persistent urban legend starts in the dark: a train wreck, a tunnel collapse, and a figure seen staggering from the mouth of Church Hill. Over decades, the story morphed through the telephone game into “The Richmond Vampire.” In this clip, we peel back the myth and look at what likely happened — a battered survivor, shredded clothes, missing teeth, skin torn by debris — and how shock plus rumor became a monster.

Brian Bullock, a local Richmond filmmaker and history enthusiast seems to be the leading journalist and investigator regarding the Church Hill Tunnel collapse. He interviewed Ryan Pace, who directed “The Church Hill Tunnel Collapse Documentary,” a film about what went wrong on that day.

He also reached out to secondary sources like Gary Mason, Tom’s grandson, to hear what his grandmother told him about the day.

In the full episode we also sit with the part most versions ignore: the unexcavated train and the unnamed Black laborers believed to be entombed there. Plans to recover the site have surfaced and stalled. A century later, the lore circulates while the workers’ identities remain unwritten. That’s the real haunting.

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