Donner Summit

Mona, our newest member, invited us to investigate a ski lodge in Donner Summit. Think we were excited? You know it! Mona grew up in Truckee, Ca. and is has a wealth of knowledge of the area. On the drive up to the Summit, Mona told us about Summit Tunnel No. 6, an old railroad tunnel that was built in the 1800's. How the contractor had used Chinese immigrants to dig the tunnel. To expedite the process, he had a team of workers at each end of the tunnel, digging and blasting towards the center. This proved to be too slow for him so he decided to blast a hole in the center, then lower the workers down to work their way towards the outside. He, then, felt that the process of lifting the workers out in order to blast took too long and forwent that process all together. As you can imagine, many lives were lost in the construction of Summit Tunnel No. 6. Mona had taken some interesting photos during a previous trip that showed "aura" type anomalies. We opted to visit the tunnel before we went to the ski lodge to see if we could recreate those anomalies. The tunnel was very damp and much longer than I had envisioned. With cameras and voice recorders in hand, we worked our way towards the center. I ran my voice recorder, hoping to pick up EVP's of the Chinese workers who had lost their lives. The acoustics were incredible once we were deep inside. I made a mental note to return with my flutes and do a little recording. As I reached the center of the tunnel, I tried to take a photo of the opening to the top of the mountain. My batteries were drained. I started to go back to the car to get new batteries, my camera came on again. Each time I tried to take a picture of the opening my battery would die.

I decided to do some EVP work to avoid further frustration. In reviewing the data, I did pick up a whisper and also dogs barking. Neither Rebecca nor Mona remember hearing dogs and didn't pick them up on their recorders. Rebecca and Mona walked to the far end of the tunnel while I went back the other way. Needed a little nicotine. Again I tried to photograph the opening. This time my camera worked.









The sun was starting to go down and the temperature was dropping pretty quickly, so we left the tunnel and made our way to the ski lodge. We plan to return to this location for further investigation.
Mona it's great to have you on our team! Looking forward to the next investigation.

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