True Tales from Haunted Mines
The following story comes from the comment section of YouTube. The viewer writes:
“Folks, I’ve worked in and out of the coal mines in southern Appalachia quite a bit over the years, and as a former coal miner watching this, there’s some things you need to know about working below the drip mouth of a mine:
1. It is quite normal, very normal actually, to hear things back in a mine shaft. Normally you don’t hear the noises until it’s dinner time when they shut off the machines and everyone sits down at the ‘dinner hole’ back in the mine. But we all know (as coal miners) that there’s more activity going on in the mine besides our activity, and we often choose to ignore it.
2. It is a common thing to see lights that aren’t supposed to be there, hear voices that aren’t supposed to be there, and even see an orb from time to time. Most of the men who work in the mine accept it and just go about their job, though I admit, it gets creepy back in the shaft when you’re very far down in to the mountain sometimes. I never feared it because other miners were always right there with me, and there’s safety in numbers – most of the time.
3. Tommyknockers: We had an unfortunate accident in one of our mines years ago, and a miner lost his life when the shaft he was working in collapsed in on him. We called in rescue and tried to get him out, but he was so far back into the shaft with his equipment that we couldn’t get to him. He died back there, and it was a tragic, horrible accident. The mine company (Eastern) decided to just brick up that part of the shaft and leave him in there, and to this day he is in the shaft, though passed on, and entombed in the mine.
4. Our dinner hole was close to the entrance of that shaft, though it was bricked over. I admit there were times.. yes, you could almost ‘hear’ that man back in that shaft hitting the wall with a chisel of some kind, or a hammer. I was far from the only one to hear that, and grown men, family men, who I had my dinner with at 3 AM back in the mine would get a little frightened at times. We moved our dinner hole after a while because it was too unsettling to eat there for most of us.
5. We would often see orbs just fly by out of nowhere down the mine shaft, and there was never a shift that I wasn’t glad to see the dawn of the morning. It’s scary enough down there, not knowing if each shift will be your last, and I was never ‘really afraid,’ but there were times, I confess, it was just eerie down in the mountain, and none of us miners ever felt alone down there.
6. The mine I am referring to is now completely closed and shut down, and has been for well over a decade, but I often think of that man who is still buried back under the mountain, and I wonder if he is still Tommyknocking on the walls back there.”
Creepy Sounds from Abandoned Mines
In 2016, the man behind the popular YouTube channel “Exploring Abandoned Mines and Unusual Places” uploaded the following video. The explorer claims he only wanted to document Nevada’s Waldeck Mine while demonstrating the capabilities of a cool new flashlight. Instead, he ended up recording eerie whispers from deep within the mine. Check out the video below. The creepy sounds start at 12:10.
The video went viral soon after its publication, and viewers were quick to offer theories. Some claimed ghosts, demons, or mine-dwelling spirits were to blame. Others suggested more logical explanations like echoes, animals, or the wind. What do you believe?
Ghost in the Machine
Eerie whispers aren’t the only creepy sounds the man behind “Exploring Abandoned Mines” has caught on camera. In 2014, the explorer encountered swinging chains and mechanical noises in Nevada’s long-abandoned Horton Mine. See for yourself below. The chilling activity starts at 7:45.
Theories for the strange sounds range from the paranormal (noises from another dimension, ghosts reliving the past) to the mundane (echoes from activity above).
What do you think of the creepy sounds? Supernatural or easily explained?
