[josh] on this episode of expedition x.
[phil] look how steep that is.
[jess] careful. Oh, my gosh.
[josh] phil and jess head to the wilds of the pacific northwest.
To investigate a paranormal hotspot.
[bert] I heard a disembodied voice of a woman humming.
[josh] at the site of horrific train tragedy.
[phil] can you imagine, you're sitting there in a crowded car,
-And then this crushing force on top of it. -[jess] yeah.
This is essentially, you know, a graveyard.
[man] I personally think that there were a lot more people killed.
-So, you're saying there's a bit of a cover up? -Yes.
[josh] the truth behind this haunting disaster was kept hidden until now.
So, you got this footage, right on top of the accident site?
Yeah. I saw the head right there.
[josh] we uncover the buried secrets of...
[jess] is that you?
Did you just hear whistling?
[josh] ...The avalanche ghost train
[josh] my name is josh gates
In my travels, I've experienced strange things that defy logic,
And made me question everything.
Oh, my god.
[josh] now, I've put together a team
To investigate the stranger side of the unknown
Let's go.
[josh] phil torres is a scientist who hunts for rational explanations.
Jessica chobot's paranormal research, has made her a true believer
If you're here with us, knock again.
[josh] together, we're searching for answers
[phil] what is happening here, jess?
[josh] to the world's most extraordinary mysteries.
This is expedition x.
All right. Jess, phil,
When was the last time the two of you took a trip by train?
I took a lovely trip on a bullet train a few years back in japan.
Yeah, I took a sleeper car across europe a few summers back.
Nothing like falling asleep to the rumble of a train.
Both those sound lovely.
Now, imagine it's the dead of winter
And a blizzard rolls in.
Your train gets stuck.
Snow is piling up past the windows
And you are trapped for days.
Food is running low. There is no heat,
No power, and then it gets worse.
No wi-fi.
That does sound like your nightmare, jess.
-It does. -This is a real nightmare.
This is actually a true story.
And it goes down as one of the deadliest train disasters
In american history.
And some say, that even now a century later, the ghosts of that tragedy,
Still haunt the mountains of the pacific northwest.
[josh] February 22nd, 1910.
Winding through the cascade mountains,
The great northern railway, passenger train number 25,
Is on an east-west journey from spokane to seattle.
Aboard are 55 passengers.
From commuting businessmen to vacationing families.
They expect an uneventful overnight journey.
But fate makes the tiny town of wellington their final stop.
Snow begins falling at up to a foot per hour.
Burying the tracks under 20-foot-high drifts.
Snow ploughs fail and the train can't move.
Days pass and anxious passengers
Are running low on food and coal
To heat the train cars.
A few trek nearly four miles through stormy weather
And deep snow drifts to the next outpost.
But most have to stay put on the stranded train,
Unable to make the treacherous hike.
Six days after the train stalled, the snow turns to rain.
Everyone celebrates believing that soon, they'll be on their way agai
But mother nature has other plans.
On March 1st around 1:30 a.M lightning flashes.
Thunder cracks.
Suddenly a slab of ice, more than a quarter-mile wid roars down the mountain side
Turning rocks and trees into high speed projectiles
That slam into the helpless train,
Hurling it more than a 150 feet into the ravine below.
It's a mangled heap of metal ice, splintered trees and human bodies.
Rescue crews managed to pull 23 people to safety
But the rest are dead.
The final body isn't recover until the end of July.
The official death toll is 9
The wellington disaster, remains the deadliest avalanche in us history.
Now, over a century later,
Hikers are reporting paranormal activity around the accident site.
People claim to hear ghostly voices,
Laugher, strange humming and singing,
And an eerie unsettling feeling that overtakes them
One man captured on camera what appears to be an apparition.
Reports of unexplained phenomena around the abandoned tracks
Have escalated over the past few months.
So, the time to investigate is now,
Before snow covers the evidence again.
So what do you think?
So much trauma, and death concentrated in one location,
I think it's gotta be haunted.
I really wanna talk to the guy that caught that ghostly image on camera.
Phil, what do you make of the video?
[phil] there are some plausible explanations for what he caught on tape.
It could be atmospheric conditions. It could be an animal.
It could be a trick of the light.
Yeah, but the witness also said that he heard voices at the disaster site
And other people have reported that too.
So, this video's not an isolated incident.
But it's also a windy place.
Wind can make strange sounds. And so can wildlife.
So, the two of you have got to get up there and check this out.
You're gonna be the first team on tv to ever investigate the wreck
And the paranormal claims surrounding it.
-That's kind of awesome. -All right. Get ready to see a ghost.
Well, it sounds like the two of you are all aboard.
[groaning]
I'm sorry.
Just gonna let that one wash over me.
Please do.
[josh] phil and jess, fly 2200 miles from new york
To spokane, washington.
From there, it's a four hour drive west into the cascade mountains.
[jess] gorgeous.
This is one of my favorite patches in wilderness in all the us.
-I come here every single spring. -Mm-hmm.
And yet I've never heard this story about the train.
-[jess] look at this [bleep]. -[phil] oof!
So, this is logging?
[phil] all of these downed trees, this is not logging.
This is wreckage from an avalanche.
What? Whoa!
-[jess] whoa! -[phil] are you kidding me?
-[phil] look at that! -[jess] I mean, this is recent.
[phil] oh, my god!
Wow!
[phil] oof!
-[phil] that's incredible. -[jess] there's snow.
Ooh! That is just packed.
[laughs]
-Not cool, jess. -Oh, come on.
Have some fun.
I mean, that is like concrete though.
You would never survive getting hit by something like that.
Yeah. If you think about all the snow pack that happens here.
And they say in this area of washington, they can get up to 25 feet.
-Yeah. -All gets compressed, turns into this giant ice cube
Just rushing down. Look at what it did.
Look how thick that tree is.
[phil] avalanches occur when wind, rain or human activity
Causes a layer of snow to suddenly fracture and detach from a mountain slope
Sending thousands of tons of snow, hurtling down
At speeds of up to 200 miles per hour.
Anyone below, like those trapped on the great northern train
Would have only seconds to try to escape.
[jess] man, you can see, like, the trees,
How they're flattened and bent like that.
-[phil] yeah. -Man!
[josh] jess and phil continue to skykomish
Which would have been one of the next stops
On the train's ill-fated journey.
There, I've arranged for the to meet someone
Who has a very personal connection to the tragedy.
Sheila hagar is a local reporter.
And a descendant of one of the avalanche victims.
What kind of sparked your desire to find out more about
Your great grandmother's involvement in the wellington avalanche?
I just typed my grandfather's name into google.
And I come across this little tidbit about sarah jane covington.
And I'm just stunned.
[jess] 69-year-old sarah covington
Was in spokane caring for her sick son
And was travelling alone back to seattle when the avalanche hit.
She never made it home to celebrate her 51st wedding anniversary
So nobody in the family ever talked about this?
Not to me.
Not many people at all knew that this 1910 avalanche had occurred.
When I wrote about it people had no idea.
I think the railroad company did their very best
To make sure it was forgotten.
For them, this was a terrible pr...
-Mm-hmm. -...Issue.
If people were afraid to go on that train
They weren't going to have customers.
Josh had mentioned that you'd actually come across some of your
Great-great grandmother's writing from when she was on the train.
Yes.
I don't know whether it was on her body when they found it.
Or possibly in her luggage.
What was going on inside that train?
Let me show you.
[sheila] she's not very worried when the train actually gets snowbound.
[sarah] "February 27th, 1910.
My dear husband and children
I, with 100 or so, are snowbound here."
She does talk about how one young man
Was able to play music.
He had a horn. But that people were very blue.
[sarah] "quite a number play cards and drink,
Talk slang and any old thing.
We have no water and very little fuel.
I am trusting in god to save us.
Some are in deadly fear that a landslide will come down on us."
Can we get a copy of some of these documents?
-You guys can take all of this and pursue. -[jess] awesome. Thank you.
All of this! What else do we have in here?
[jess] victims list. This is very helpful.
-This is a great place to start. -Yeah.
[jess] now that we have more information about who was on the train,
We need to investigate the actual site of the disaster.
It's a half-hour drive east to where the accident happen and the old train route.
Then it's a hike up to the site.
I'm curious to connect with whatever spirits may be lingering here.
Josh has arranged for us to meet bert coates.
A graphic designer, he has lived in the area for 40 years
And spends most of his weekends hiking and camping in the mountains
One night around the disaster site,
He captured and eerie figur on camera.
So you had an experience around here.
I did.
-I hiked up here... -[jess] mm-hmm.
[bert] ...And I had heard a disembodied voice of a wom that just started humming.
And then she started singing
-[jess] really? -[bert] but you couldn't really make out the words
Of what she was singing.
-Did you recognize the song at all? -No, not at all.
Did you know the history of this place before coming here?
Not until after I went back home.
After the hike I started looking at the history of wellington.
So, essentially, you had your first experience here.
-Yeah. -And it sounds like you kept coming back...
-Oh, yeah. -...At night to try
-To figure out what was happening? -Yep.
-So, the video, can you show us what happened? -Absolutely.
[phil] all right.
[jess] bert takes us down the trail to the snow shed.
A massive half mile long concrete structure
Built after the avalanche to shield the tracks from future disasters.
[phil] I definitely recognize these pillars from your video.
[bert] yeah.
I'd hiked to the snow shed. We started having problems with the camera.
The batteries just started draining,
So I stepped off to the sid with the camera
And I wasn't paying attentio to what I was filming when I captured the image.
And so then you were recording down in this direction?
Yep. I was recording right at that angle.
Which pillar would it be?
I saw the head right there.
-So, here, right? -Yes.
Okay.
[phil] there are a lot of deer tracks over here.
[bert] there are.
But even I will quickly admit that looked nothing like a deer.
[jess] that looked like a person's head and shoulders.
[jess] I think bert captured a lost soul from the train disaster.
This area is where the trains would have been.
[bert] yes.
[phil] I think what he caught on camera was a glimpse of an animal.
And what he's heard, including the humming and singing,
Might simply be the sounds of birds
Echoing through the snow she
So you got this footage essentially right on top of the accident site.
Pretty much, yeah.
The debris field's down this direction over here.
[jess] ooh, okay.
-[phil] right down there. So it's over this ledge. -[bert] right.
-What else is down there? -The tye river.
And then you'll see a bunch of debris.
Well, jess, I think we should try to get down to the debris field...
-Yeah. -... And do that before it gets dark.
-Yeah. Thanks. -[bert] good luck.
-See ya. -See ya later.
[phil] we're going to have t get to the crash site the same way the train went
All the way down this cliff
-Oh, that is steep! -Do you have your gear?
-I've got my gear. -Yeah.
So, what, rope off to one of these trees?
[jess] rope off to a tree and let's shimmy down.
-[jess] you first? -Yeah.
Okay.
All right. I can see we're getting close.
You think that's gonna... That's not enough line.
We'll see how far we can go.
-Get ready. -Yeah.
[phil] whoa!
Oh! Are you all right?
-I'm good. -Are you okay?
Yeah. I'm good.
Careful, careful. We've got a rockslide here.
Look at this!
[phil] oh, my god!
[phil] careful, careful. We've got a rockslide here.
Look at this!
Oh, my god!
Solid steel. Completely collapsed in.
It got smashed. The rivets all popped out.
Can you imagine? You're sitting there in a crowded car.
-Mm-hmm. -Desperate for days.
-And then this crushing force on top of it. -Yeah.
It took them months to find all the bodies here.
Months! Because of the conditions.
Let's just keep that in mind while we're exploring.
Let's remember that a lot of people passed away here.
I mean, this is essentially, you know, a graveyard.
Okay.
[phil] lots of debris over here.
The roots of this tree are growing right through,
Right over this big piece of iron metal right here.
It's just amazing to think that this forest has basically been growing back
Over the top of this wreckage for over 100 years.
[jess] all right, let me just take a picture.
[jess] as I'm standing on top of the wreckage
Where 96 people lost their lives,
I'm suddenly struck with a heavy, uneasy feeling.
There's probably a lot of train underneath where we can't even see it.
I mean, it's a miracle that they found sarah's diary
In this debris field.
[jess] some believe spirits will remain in the spot where their life ended,
So the words from sarah's journal and letters
May help me reach out to her or the other avalanche victims.
I'm gonna use sarah's letters
To do a bit of a bit of a call and response with this recorder.
It's voice activated so it will record if anybody answers.
-Okay. Are you recording? -Yeah, I'm recording.
Sarah, if you're with us, feel free to reach out and speak with us.
"February 23rd, we're snowed in at the mouth of the tunnel,
Twenty minutes of 11:00 a.M.
I just got up from my bed.
The mountains are beautiful, and we are all resting easy.
They say it we may be here all day.
The cars are warm and very nice."
Let's review it.
[recorder] February 23rd. We are snowed in at the mou... Tunnel.
Twenty minutes of eleven...
Just got up from my bed... The mountain... Beautiful and we are all resting...
We may be here all day.
Okay, this is really weird.
Why is it skipping?
It's supposed to run when it hears somebody talking.
So why was it continuously getting interrupted?
Well, two options here. One, it's sucks at its job.
Or two, there's some kind of interference.
There's definitely a heavy vibe in the area.
What I've been struck with is we've been to so many tragic places.
I've never been to a place like this. Like, it just is depressing.
-Really heavy. -Yeah.
I think it's the tech, but also, jess, we're just getting started here.
Who knows what we're gonna find?
[jess] with the daylight fading fast,
We make the tough climb back uphill to the snow shed
Once it's dark, we'll be abl to better investigate bert's video.
Phil thinks it may have been an animal.
But I think bert may have captured an image
Of a lost spirit from the train disaster.
-What if we set up the camera to just record this area? -Okay.
[jess] we aim a camera towards the pillar, and I set up a rem pod
Which will alert us to any electromagnetic disturbance from a paranormal presence.
[jess] okay, rem pod's up.
All right, so I'm going to stay here and do a little call and response.
That's your territory, I know. I'm gonna try and set up some trail cams round here
To get an idea of what wildlife do pass through this corridor.
I think animals might be the real source
Of the sights and sounds people are reporting.
-Okay, good luck out here. -Thanks, you too.
Right here, guys. I think I've found the route up.
[phil] I'm going to inspect the rest of the snow shed top to bottom
Looking for signs of wildlif
Watch your step here. We've definitely got to tread lightly around here
Because this is old concrete structure.
We definitely saw parts of it that had caved in when we were down below.
And we've got this ledge. If you fall off, that's a good 30-foot drop.
So we'll be careful.
[jess] since our other devic was giving us problems,
I'm going to switch to our 360 recorder,
An ultrasensitive mic that will pick up sounds from all directions.
Record.
If anyone responds, we'll capture it.
So the plan is that I'm gonna go ahead and set this
So that we can do a calm response.
I have sarah's letters,
I have the list of, uh,
Victims of the avalanche.
All right. We're good to go.
Is there anyone here in the tunnel with us?
What happened on the night of the avalanche?
Sarah, were you disappointed that you weren't able to send off
Your final letters to your family?
[phil] all right.
I've seen very little evidence of any animal activity.
So, I'm gonna head back down, set a game cam right in the pathway
Where bert reported some unusual activity.
Is there anybody here with us?
Sarah, just so you know, those letters did make it to your
Great-great-granddaughter, sheila.
[emf beeping]
Are you standing over by the pillar?
[faint whistling]
What the [bleep]?
Was that a whistle?
[cameraman speaking]
I'm loving this spot right here
Because there are footprints all over the place.
Which means this gets a lot of wildlife traffic,
Which means I'm gonna set up my trail cam right here.
[jess] hello? Is there anyone here?
[faint whistling]
[shushes] was that you?
Did you just hear whistling?
[cameraman speaking]
[jess] is there anyone here?
[faint whistling]
[shushes] was that you?
Did you just hear whistling?
[cameraman speaking]
Hey, phil? Were you guys just whistling?
I heard that too.
What was that?
[phil] a logical explanatio might some kind of bird.
Several species like chickadees or swallows do live here
And have shrill chirps.
[chirps]
[chirping]
But the sound we heard was a single sustained note.
Not a warbling bird song.
And most songbirds aren't nocturnal.
So we'll see what our trail cams captured.
[jess] I heard like someone with a whistle
Right next to my ear.
[phil] that is really weird
Definitely sounded like it came from your direction.
Let's meet back up.
Let's figure out where we are with this thing.
[jess] copy.
[phil] the whistling sound could also be a mixture of something entirely natura
And something man made.
In 2020, people noticed hig pitched howling noises across san francisco.
An investigation determined the sound was wind blowing
Through the slats of a newl retrofitted sidewalk railin
Of the golden gate bridge.
It's possible that wind blowing through these pillar
Might also create some odd sounds.
I've got something in my ki that I can use to put this idea to the test.
-[whispering] smoke bomb. -That's cool!
We'll be able to see where the wind goes,
If it weaves around some of these pillars.
That kind of helps us visualize what the sound could be doing too
To get distorted through here.
-Are you ready for this, jess? Okay. -Yeah.
It's barely going past these pillars.
[jess] mm-hmm.
[phil] so it's really just a straight shot down.
I was hoping to see some gusts coming through.
Some vortices.
[whispers] absolutely nothing.
[jess] I mean, it doesn't seem breezy enough to make any whistling noises.
[phil] wind didn't cause th whistling sound we heard tonight.
So what did?
[jess] that whistle was definitely a response from someone.
One thing that's certain,
This place is really unsettling,
Even phil seems to feel it.
-We have a camera that's gonna pick up... -Game cam.
...Whatever walks around here.
-Mm-hmm. -So, I say we call it a night
-Because this place is creepy. I wanna get out of here. -It's creepy.
But why? It's just animals, phil.
Don't worry about it.
[phil] jess, some of those animals could be a mountain lion.
-That would suck, yes. -You know?
[phil] I've been thinking about possible explanations
For what's going on around here
And I wanna run a theory past josh.
[josh] hey, you two.
-Hey, josh! -Josh!
[josh] I'm eager to hear how it's going out there.
Jess, were you able to make contact with the spirits of the train passengers?
[jess] I'm not sure yet.
I reached out and I got some strange responses.
A whistle.
What like a train whistle or like a person whistling?
[jess] more like a whistle you'd blow.
Listen to this.
[faint whistling]
So did train conductors carry whistles?
You know that actually does sound kind of like those old time conductor whistles.
Right? The ones that they would wear around their necks.
[blows whistle]
And there were something lik 60 crew members who died in that disaster.
[jess] I feel like I need to learn more about the crew.
Phil, you thought the wind could have been making the noises
That people were hearing out there.
And what do you think now? Could that have been what caused the whistling?
[phil] well, there was no wind that night,
So I don't know what made that whistle.
I think we should analyze it
Against the sounds of any known animals when we get back.
[jess] the other odd thing is that we all felt kind of just off.
Like a little nauseous and very uncomfortable.
And we read that about this place, right?
That some of the witnesses have noted feeling this unease and sense of dread there.
Well, wellington's not at a high enough elevation
For something like altitude sickness.
[phil] I felt that before. This was something else.
Pretty much everybody last night felt weird.
Experienced strange feelings.
Yes we were at a place where a lot of people died
But I'm also wondering if there's something else going on here
And that would be a sound that we can't actually hear.
What do you mean a sound we can't hear?
You mean like, infrasound or something?
Exactly.
So that's an interesting idea, right?
I mean there are these frequencies that we can't actually hear with our ears
But scientists do suspect that they can impact how we feel.
They can make people feel uneasy or scared.
It's even been suggested that those sort of frequencies
Could be what makes a place seem haunted.
Okay, well, if that's the case, then, where would the infrasound even come from?
I guess that's the question.
It's known to come from seismic activity,
It can come from traffic,
There's a lot of different sources out there,
But I do wonder if it's railroad connected.
-[train horn blowing] -oh, you hear that train right now?
[jess] I do.
[phil] josh, I'm not sure you can if hear right now,
But there is a train going by somewhere in the distance.
Still an active railroad area
Which actually could lead into the infrasound theory
That maybe could be a train passing by.
That's a cool theory, phil. I would love to have you test it out.
And, jess, if you think the site is potentially haunted
Not just by passengers but maybe by the crew,
I have located someone who you absolutely have to meet.
I found this railway historian who has extensively researched this incident
And the people involved.
[jess] great, send us the info, we'll go meet him.
-[josh] great. -Sweet.
-Awesome. Bye, josh. -We'll meet up with him.
[josh] see you later.
I'm sending phil and jess to meet kevin weiderstrom.
A retired boeing mechanic,
He now maintains the histori skykomish depot.
He's had a lifelong fascination with the story o the wellington train disaste
He thinks there's more to th story than anyone has heard
They tried to keep the death toll down.
I personally think that there were a lot more people killed.
-So you're saying there is a bit of a cover up? -Yes.
-More people than 96 died? -Yes, probably up to 150.
Lot of the other people were transient workers, they work couple of days and leave.
So there's been nothing officially documenting saying they were there?
No. Not at all.
-Wow. -They tried to keep the death toll down
Because people get scared.
It was a psychological thing
As well as a thing for the railroad to keep in business.
[jess] how were they able to get all of the bodies out of there?
Well, it took weeks, they were taking the bodies,
They put them on toboggans and went down all the way to windy point.
Down the dead man's slide by rope.
It's 800 to 1,000 feet down the side of the mountain,
And right down here at scenic, that's where they went.
-Obviously the old train route's no longer in use. -Right.
But there's still a train that goes through here,
-I mean we saw train tracks right outside. -Sure. Right.
So does it pass by this area?
It is below it, about a 1,000 feet below it.
[jess] considering the strange whistle we heard last night,
I wonder about the conducto on the doomed train.
Could the sound be his signa from the other side?
So, I wanna know about the conductor. What's his story?
Pettit.
[phil] kevin tells us that joseph pettit
Was one of the handful of people who left the trai
And hiked nearly four miles to safety.
But with passengers strande on his train,
The conductor didn't just walk away.
[kevin] he was trying to get help.
But he made his way back to the train
And unfortunately he was killed in the avalanche.
But that's beyond just doing your duty,
-I mean he climbed a mountain for these people... -Right.
...And then died in the avalanche.
-Died in the avalanche. -That is tragic.
-So bad. -Yeah.
[jess] armed with new information about where and who to investigate,
We head back to the site of the disaster,
The snow shed.
[phil] I think infrasound waves coming from trains on the new set of tracks
Could be causing strange sensations
That people might mistake for paranormal activity
At the avalanche site.
-So check this thing out. -Yeah, what is that?
-This is a special microphone. -Oh.
That can hear super high frequency
And super low frequencies.
-Anything 20 and above, we can hear. -Uh-huh. Got it.
But once it gets too low, that becomes infrasound
-And that's really what I'm interested in. -I see. Okay, gotcha.
Lot of animals can hear infrasound
And communicate through infrasound.
-But we can't hear it. -Uh-huh.
But the theory is, and it's even been proven in a lab,
That it can make people feel weird,
Certain frequencies can vibrate your eyeballs
And make you almost see things.
-That's kind of cool -I know.
-So we've got this one set here. -Uh-huh.
What I need to test is if when a train goes by at windy point
Is that sound strong enough to essentially pass through a mountain and hit here.
So if we get a really big spike
This thing is connected to my phone
And it will send me a message.
So potentially what happens over there
Could be correlated with what happens over here.
-We've got ourselves a long hike ahead. -Oh, yes we do!
[jess] these were conductor pettit's last steps
And the route used by rescue to recover dozens of bodies
[phil] wow!
I'm getting tired.
[jess] I'm getting tired too.
[phil] this is a long way walk in not through overhead height snow.
-[jess] yeah. -And not carrying a body behind you.
And not worrying about an avalanche falling on top of you.
[phil] yeah.
-You feel that cold air? -[jess] yeah. Ooh!
-Man, all the way from here you can feel that. -[phil] wow.
[jess] oh, how cool is this?
-Look at this thing! -[phil] ooh, that...
-That's a huge tunnel! -[phil] ...Is a huge tunnel.
Look at the size of this thing.
-Wow. -[jess] all right.
I mean that gets super dark, you wanna bust out the flashlights?
At the far end of this,
That's where the dead man's slide is,
Where both the survivors went
-And where all the dead bodies went down. -Exactly.
So, I think while we have some daylight,
We should try to book it to the far end.
-This is uh, spooky. -[jess] this is creepy.
[jess] spooky.
[phil] oh, we've got a cave in up here.
[jess] yeah.
So really the only thing protecting us
Are old wooden beams from the original tunnel.
-That's comforting. Excellent. -That's something. Yeah.
-Great. Cool. Let's keep walking. -[phil] perfect.
[jess] this tunnel is a quarter mile long and pitch black.
There is a definite chill in the air
And I'm not convinced it's just the temperature.
[phil] this thing is quite the piece of engineering.
[jess] oh, yeah. Kind of scary.
Which means right down here
-This should be dead man's slide. -Oh, dead man's slide?
[both panting]
[phil] this is insane.
[jess] so this is it?
[phil] this is it.
-Look how steep that is. -[jess] let me see.
Careful!
Oh, my gosh!
Phil, I am uncomfortable with you doing that.
-Oh, yeah that is so steep! -[phil] wow.
-Look how far down this goes. -Imagine trying to transport bodies
In the winter down this.
This is about, what? A 1,000 foot elevation drop?
And imagine the conductor, pettit.
-He was stuck back there in a blizzard. -[jess] yeah.
Would have to get here, get all the way down the mountain,
Ask for help,
Climb all the way back up
And then miles back to the train only to be killed in an avalanche.
-Yep. That's rough. -That is some heroic effort with a tragic ending.
Yeah, that is rough.
All right, let's just set up for the investigation.
All right, yeah. The sooner we get going the better.
[jess] mm-hmm.
All right, jess, somewhere down in that valley is a modern train.
-Yeah. -So, I'm gonna go
Down the trail on the outside of the tunnel
And see if I can get a good eye line on it.
Okay, I'm gonna go back inside the tunnel,
I wanna try and track for any paranormal activity
And see if it matches up with you're finding,
On your end because if it does,
Then maybe your theory is correct and if it doesn't,
Then maybe my theory is correct and it might be haunted.
-I'll take that wager. -All right.
-So you got your walkie on you? -Sure do.
Look at that.
Right there. Wow.
Active train track way closer than I thought it would be
And there's the tunnel.
This is right next to the old track just 1,000 feet below.
Okay. This is gonna be good.
[jess] I head back towards the entrance of the tunnel
And set up for a call and response session.
All right, this seems to be a good spot.
I'm going to reach out to conductor pettit
Or any of the other lost sou whose bodies were transporte through here.
All right.
[machine humming]
Is there anybody here with us?
Were you one of the passengers
On the train that was hit by the avalanche in 1910?
Conductor pettit, can you hear me?
[phil] all I have to do here is wait for a train.
I'm expecting that seconds after a train rumbles throug
We'll get a notification from the meter back at the avalanche site.
Saying that it's picking up infrasound.
[jess] did you work for the railroad?
Are you angry that the railroad company tried to cover up so many deaths?
[machine beeping]
Joseph pettit, is that you?
Oh, [bleep]!
Ah, [bleep]!
That was weird.
[josh] the 1910 wellington avalanche
Compelled researchers to figure out ways to preven future disasters.
One method is to set up snow fences,
Which can help control accumulation on the slopes.
Another way? Explosives.
[explosion]
Intentionally using detonations to fracture the snow pack
And trigger controlled slide
Reducing the risks of unpredictable ones.
That's done either by shooti the mountain side with live artillery rounds.
[explosion]
Or dropping charges from a helicopter.
Or even having a very brave ski patrol
Place explosives by hand.
[explosion]
Which I have to admit looks like a total blast.
Oh, [bleep]!
Ah, [bleep]!
That was weird.
The bizarre nauseated feelin we had at the crash site is back.
Phil, do you copy?
[phil] yeah, what's up?
[jess] I had that queasy feeling again.
It was so weird.
I actually had to take the headphones off.
Are you getting any readings on your meter just now?
Do you see any trains coming through?
[phil] stand by.
[train horn blaring]
Okay, you see that light? Right there. Right there. There's the train.
Hear that rumble?
We got a hit!
[phil] jess! Jess! You there?
Yeah, copy.
Jess, we just got the first hit
From the infrasound meter miles away at the avalanche crash site.
I'm gonna come your way
Because I got the results I was looking for,
So I wanna see what was happening on your end.
Okay. I'll pack up and meet you.
All right. Coming in. Coming in.
Wow, we got a major, like huge spike
On the infrasound back at the avalanche site.
You combine with the tragic history,
I think there's a chance that some of the paranormal experiences
They could be explained...
-Mm-hmm. -...By that combination.
[jess] the rem pod went off in the tunnel right befo the train arrived.
But that device doesn't reac to infrasound.
Maybe the train is acting as some sort of trigger
For the ghosts of the avalanche victims, you know?
I heard whistling next to my ear
When we were over at the actual crash site.
-Mm-hmm. -That wasn't infrasound.
The mind can play a lot of tricks on you
When you wanna hear what you wanna hear.
I'd be interested in analyzing the audio that you got...
-Yeah. -...Just to see if we can pick it apart better
And figure what that actual noise was.
[josh] when phil and jess returned from washington,
We isolated the whistle sound from our footage.
[whistling]
We compared it to the vocalizations
Of birds and mammals known to live in the region.
[chirping]
The whistle sound doesn't match up with any of them.
Our cameras did capture various animals around the snow shed.
But none of them seemed consistent with the ghostly figure
Caught on video.
We analyzed the audio of jess's call and response at the snow shed
And at the tunnel.
[jess] is there anyone here in the tunnel with us?
[josh] and there were a few strange sounds.
But no singing, humming or anything we could identif as a voice.
And there's no easy answer for what happened with jess's recorder
As she read aloud the words of an avalanche victim.
[jess or recorder] mountain... Beautiful and we're all...
[jess] okay, this is really weird.
[josh] we had the device checked out
And it is in perfect working order.
So, can we conclude whether lost souls from the wellingt train disaster
Still haunt that mountainside?
A reaction to infrasound
Is a rational explanation
For some of the alleged paranormal experiences reported.
But as jess points out,
It can't explain everything that witnesses have heard
And seen.
In light of such a terrible tragedy
Perhaps there is some comfor in believing that the spiri of conductor pettit
Is still looking out for his passengers
That remain stranded.
[whistle blows]
Perhaps he's making sure their lives and their loss
Will not be forgotten and buried by time.
For more information on expedition x
Head to discovery.Com/expeditionx.