Erie's Brew-Eerie

Last week I went on a Haunted History Tour of Erie's Union Station.

The Brewerie at Union Station is hosting these tours Thursday nights in October. The tour starts at 7:30pm, costs $8 per person, and takes about 90 minutes. Find out more from the flyer.

On December 3, 1927 Union Station was dedicated after two years of construction. At the height of popularity, Erie's Union Station included a hexagonal rotunda/waiting room, eight ticket windows and a baggage window. In the large main concourse there was a Union News stand, a soda fountain bar, a barber shop and other merchants. The United States Post Office operated mail service for both the New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroad.

Although Erie now only has two passenger trains that stop and there have been many changes of ownership over the years, the station still looks as it did in 1927. Most of the lighting fixtures are original and are in working order. And the large amount of marble that was used in the 1927 design is still there today.

Below Union Station there is a very old and fully stocked bomb shelter and an underground tunnel that goes under 14th Street that was used to transfer mail from the station to the Erie Post Office. There are other tunnels under Union Station as well. One of the tunnels led all the way to the Bayfront and was used to transport cargo to the ships but has been sealed off. There is another one that was used for coal and the station’s furnace.

If you go on this interesting tour, Chris, one of the owners of the Brewerie, will share history and ghost stories while taking you through the tunnels.

Below are some pictures:

The luggage tunnel.

An old luggage cart.

An old luggage cart

The tunnel that leads to the boiler room, coal room, and a boom shelter.

Cracker rations from 1963 in a bomb shelter

In the luggage tunnel, lots of things were left. Here is an old bench.

In the luggage tunnel, there are many of these phone booth doors.

Still connected, here is the tunnel (no longer used) that connects Union Station to the Post Office.

I don't want to share the ghost stories with you in case you are interested in attending. But if you visit the history of Union Station on The Brewerie's website, you can read a bit more about the history and some of the ghost stories. If you plan on going on the tour, I wouldn't read it, because you will hear these same stories on the tour.

No ghosts were spotted and no strange paranormal experiences were felt on my tour. As a matter of fact, while the haunted stories were interesting, I thought the history and just the experience of seeing these tunnels first hand were more interesting.

There were younger kids on the tour, and they were not scared - they were bored. There is a lot of standing around listening to Chris tell stories. I wouldn't recommend it for younger kids because it seemed they all got antsy.

All in all, I enjoyed the tour. I think it was a bit long (our tour started late and lasted longer than 90 minutes) and the haunted stories were a bit indulged, but it was a "Haunted History Tour."

I really enjoyed imagining what Erie was like in the late 20s and how excited travelers would have been in our wonderful Union Station. Erie must have been a wonderful place to be during the Roaring Twenties! 250 trains used to pass through Erie every day - that's one every 5 minutes. Now 75 trains drive on our rails daily - that's one every 20 minutes.

And since our tour in the tunnels lasted 90 minutes, we actually had trains pass over our heads while we were beneath them exploring Erie's past.