The 7 Gates of Hell and the Trapped Spirit of a Young Girl
In the 1990’s a group of teenagers was traveling through the Seven Gates of Hell located just outside of Collinsville, Illinois. The gates are a set of train trestles placed sporadically near Lebanon Road. The trestles are narrow, making it difficult, if not impossible for two cars to pass through at the same time. Gate Four is located in a blind downhill curve. When the teenagers were approaching Gate Four, another car was traveling through the trestle in the opposite direction. The teenagers swerved to miss the oncoming car and hit the trestle’s retaining wall. Their car burst into flames, and all three teenagers died in the fire. In 2007 I was investigating Gates Three and Four and took a picture of the retaining wall where the teenagers crashed. In the photograph, I captured a faint apparition that appears to be a girl wearing a hoodie. Given the cluster of hauntings around the Seven Gates of Hell, I wonder if this is the trapped spirit of the young girl who died in that horrible accident.