Blast from the past: Wellington drivers beep horns to dispel ghostly tunnel vision

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Commuters in the New Zealand capital are divided over tradition linked to murder of girl at site of city traffic tunnel

It won’t make any lists of the world’s spookiest places, though it is arguably one of the noisiest. Inside the bare, concrete tunnel that takes Wellington’s commuters into the city centre, a path is littered with abandoned rental scooters and the air is thick with exhaust fumes and the deafening, incessant honking of car horns.

But the tradition of motorists beeping their horns as they drive through the Mount Victoria tunnel has become a city-wide superstition – and has also proved divisive. Many residents believe a jaunty toot – or, for some, blasting their horns for the tunnel’s entire 623-metre length – either wards off evil spirits, or acknowledges the memory of a teenage girl who was murdered and her body buried at the site a year before the tunnel was opened in 1931.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2WtCK05

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