Back in the pioneer days Daniel Boone blazed the Wilderness Road up and over the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky. That wagon road became the main way to the West for the first settlers. Eventually that rutted old road was replaced with a wider, paved highway, which was the main route north to Middlesborough, Kentucky, for many decades.
That all changed in 1996 when the Cumberland Gap Tunnel opened, giving a pathway through the mountain directly into Kentucky from Tennessee, and allowing the old highway to be converted into a hiking trail through the Gap. And the opening of that new tunnel marked the beginning of, well, maybe the end.
Not long after the Cumberland Gap Tunnel was opened someone left Middlesborough on Highway 25E at a high rate of speed. A local Kentucky police officer engaged in a pursuit through the tunnel to the Tennessee side, where a Tennessee officer pulled over the young man driving the car. As this Tennessee officer asked for the man’s driver’s license and registration, he noticed that he was acting oddly, so he asked him what was wrong.
The driver told him that he was scared of something, and that’s why he was going so fast. He told the officer that he had picked up a hitchhiker in Kentucky, who wanted a ride to Tennessee, and that he wanted to sit in the back. As they went along, they started talking until the hitchhiker started mumbling incoherently. He kept this up for a few minutes, getting louder and louder and louder…until he started screaming at the top of his lungs:
“Gabriel is coming! Gabriel is coming!”
Then, in a flash, he just disappeared, as if he had never been there.
Good story, but the cop still gave him a ticket. But that’s not the end of our tale.
A year later just down the road in Tennessee something very similar happened. A Tennessee state trooper was patrolling along Highway 63 just a few miles south of the Cumberland Gap Tunnel when he came upon a car occupied by an obviously distraught young woman. He came up to her and asked for her license and registration, whereupon the woman suddenly broke down, sobbing. Her story was that she, too, had picked up a hitchhiker on the other side of the tunnel, then drove on into Tennessee. As they drove along, this “man” suddenly sprouted wings and began screaming about the Judgment Day being at hand. Then, in a wink, this winged being vanished and the woman drove off the side of the road.
If you’re planning on a trip to Middlesborough, think twice before picking up any hitchhikers.
(Picture of Gabriel by Pinturicchio – Web Gallery of Art: Image Info about artwork, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15463892)