Athens, Texas is Home to the Haunted Tale of Tunnels and Monkeys

East Texas is full of history, some of it weird, most of it good. This particular bit of East Texas history could make your skin crawl. To the locals of Henderson County, these stories could be second hand knowledge. To others in East Texas, these stories could be unknown. For instance, I had never heard of the tale of the haunted Monkey Bridge and Fuller Park in Athens and the suppossed tunnels underneath the city.

Haunted Monkey Bridge and Fuller Park

I just happened to stumble across this searching "Athens Texas" on YouTube. It was titled, "Haunted Monkey Bridge and Fuller Park. Athens TX." Okay, cool. It was a seemly innocuous tour of the woods in Athens that started at the corner of Wilson and West College Street. The gentleman in the video talked a little about the story of the area.

From there, I went deep down the rabbit hole.

I had never heard this story before. First thing I came across was the story of Monkey Bridge, also known as Thunder Bridge. In the 1960's, a circus was coming through town on the railroad and the train derailed around the bridge. Supposedly, the monkeys that survived the crash escaped from their cages and killed their handlers. Stories say that people can hear the handlers screaming and the howls of the monkeys at night along West College Street.

The story continues that Medford Fuller captured the surviving monkeys and held them in cages at Fuller Park. It is said that he performed rituals and did unspeakable things to those monkeys. You can still see these cages in the abandoned park along with the gravestones of Medford Fuller, and his wife, Virginia, in Fuller park.

Tunnels Underneath Athens

It is also told that Fuller park is home to one of five entrances to a labyrinth of tunnels that form a pentagram underneath Athens. The story of these tunnels says that they lead to a coffin at the center or that they were part of the Underground Railroad or the tunnels were used during prohibition or that the tunnels don't exist underneath Athens because the ground wouldn't be able to support them. The beauty of an urban legend, it's hard to distinguish the truth from the myth.

Sometimes it's fun to go down a rabbit hole of unexplained phenomena and weird stories in East Texas that most may not even know about.

Source: Athens Review
Source: Tyler Morning Telegraph
Source: The Daytripper
Source: Black of Day

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