Author photo of the “tunnel of trees” on Weary Road
The entrance to the “Tunnel of Trees” on Weary Road, about one mile south of Evansville, Wisconsin, in Rock County, does make it appear as if you’re about to drive into a black hole, even on sunny days like the one on which I snapped this pic. There are a variety of other spooky claims about this narrow country lane, but area residents pooh-pooh most of them. I’ve also heard from a few that they wish the legends would just go away. (The fact that traffic levels spike from thrill seekers on Halloween and moonlit summer nights may have something to do with that.)
Many of the legends were submitted anonymously to Weird Wisconsin and also appear on various online sites, but most have been in circulation among Evansville area teens for several decades. They range from appearances of a spectral, smirking farmer, to a bridge that will not allow a stopped car to be started again. Like most unknown phenomena, these things seem to appear only at times of their own choosing.
I took an accidental tour of Weary Road recently thanks to area detours. I kept an eye out for the farmer’s ghost but didn’t see even a live human. I also stopped on the bridge to take a pic, but was too chicken to turn off the engine since my cell phone had zero reception in that spot. Two people had also written to Weird Wisconsin that something big flew out of the trees at them; in one case it was a white owl and in another, some invisible thing that allegedly left long scratches on the eye-witness’s arms as it fluttered by. The trees were eerily still during my drive-through. I kept thinking that anything could have been in the corn field, however, and indeed, the site is not many miles away from multiple past sightings of Bigfoot and dogman at Lima Center and Fulton.
A phantom train and unknown lights are among other described anomalies here. My advice is the same as with all spook lanes: If you go, please remember that real people live there–and own the property. And while there may be kernels of truth in these types of legends, they should always be taken with a large grain of road salt.
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