Seven Gates To Hell

Located along the back roads east of Collinsville are a series of tunnels and bridges that are called the "Seven Gates to Hell." It is unknown how they got their name, but there are many stories about them. One account says that they were used by the Ku Klux Klan as a place to hang African Americans. No records exist that the hangings ever happened, but this is one of the reasons how the bridges got their ominous name.

The most often told story is that if you drive through all the gates, you will swiftly be sent into hell. Different variations say that you need to go through the last gate at midnight to get to hell or if you park under the seventh gate with your lights off, the spirits will send the "hounds of hell" to take your soul.

One of them, now called the Acid Bridge has it's own story. The tale says that some local students were out partying and driving on the back roads, and they supposedly took some LSD or acid. They decided to try and find the Seven Gates and found six of them, but not the seventh. They kept driving till they found what they thought was the seventh. They missed the entrance and ran into the concrete supports. The car was incinerated and all the students were all killed. Some people claim to see a ghostly replay of the crash near the bridge.

The gates are on Lebanon Road, east of Collinsville.