Cautionary Tales Why Miners See Ghosts | Halloween Season

Pushkin. Chris Campbell is fighting a sudden drowsiness, but losing. As a sandwich lunch settles in his stomach, Chris can barely focus on the playing cards in his hand. Chris sleepily stands and leaves his three fellow miners to play on. He's off to find a place to nap. It's Britain in the late 1970s, and the men are a third of a mile below ground, hewing coal in Walton Colliery, a mine not far from the Yorkshire city of Wakefield. This is a section of the mine where flammable gases gather. Twenty years ago, it was the scene of a deadly explosion, so now extra efforts have been made to keep fresh air rushing through the mining chambers. For his nap, Chris searches for a warmer and less drafty part of the tunnel. He walks further from his friends until they're out of earshot and he's enveloped by darkness. The miner settles down and switches off his own lamp. Chris wakes with a jolt. It's freezing cold. and the darkness is no longer complete, for an eerie glow greets the groggy miner's opening eyes. A man looms over Chris. A stranger. His clothes and equipment seem oddly antiquated. He wears an outdated mining helmet and carries a lamp not seen in the Walton pit for decades. At least, not since that deadly blast of 59. Chris suddenly realises this stranger isn't standing over him. He's floating above the tunnel's roadway. The figure fixes his stare on Chris and speaks, inviting the prone miner to follow him deeper into the pit. Are you coming down the back roads? Chris screws shut his eyes, pulls his helmet over his face and screams. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to Cautionary Tales. When Chris Campbell summoned the courage to reopen his eyes, the apparition was gone and he was alone once more in the dark. The miner raced back along the tunnel to his workmates. The startled men were perplexed by Chris's panicked appearance. What's up, young'un? Has there seen a ghost? This supernatural encounter is recorded in the archives of the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield, as is the aftermath of the sighting. Chris's card-playing colleagues thought him foolish to believe in ghosts, but other men at the pit slowly sidled up to share stories of a similarly paranormal nature. One worker swore a shadowy figure had sat down beside him to talk and then suddenly vanished. Another miner was said to be so perturbed by encountering a spectre that he refused to go back underground and quit the mine. Before you scoff, more people have seen ghosts than you might think. Polling by the Pew Research Centre suggests that one in five Americans have seen some sort of apparition. That's 61 million people. In the UK, the proportion is similar. And a good number of these respondents had never spoken to friends and family about these spooky sightings. Perhaps fearing ridicule, If we widen the definition of a supernatural encounter to include things such as hearing voices or seeing objects moving, then 60% of Americans will admit to having had a brush with the paranormal. But let's put our sceptics hats back on and re-examine Chris Campbell's subterranean tales. As the great Carl Sagan said in his book The Demon-Haunted World, hallucinations are common. America's most trusted science communicator wrote that he often heard the voices of his parents calling his name, even though they were both long dead. I miss them so much that it doesn't seem at all strange that my brain will occasionally retrieve a lucid recollection of their voices, said Sagan. He stressed that these ghostly calls represented an internal rather than an external reality. So there are many good reasons why, deep underground, Chris Campbell might have vividly seen the Phantom Miner and heard his ominous question. Are you coming down the back roads? First, Chris had sought out a dark and quiet spot for his nap. These are prerequisites for sound human sleep, but they're also the perfect conditions for encouraging strange visions. An astronomer by trade, Carl Sagan liked to compare this to the stars in the sky. The stars of course are always above us, but we only see them when the brilliantly bright sun dips below the horizon. Likewise, our brains might constantly be producing dreamlike content, but the noise and busyness of daily life blots it all out. A quick experiment to do on yourself involves darkness. If it's safe to do so, close your eyes, and perhaps cover them with a hand to block as much light as you can. What do you see? Certainly not inky blackness. you're probably seeing flashes and splashes of colour, crazy irregular shapes dancing before you. But even though your eyelids are shut, your retinas are still busy collecting information to send to your brain. Those colours you're perceiving are the result of your brain trying to make sense of the insignificant signals generated by background activity in your visual system. And evolution has honed our brains to look faces, be they friendly or menacing. So as a result, we sometimes see faces in clouds, in rock formations, in tree stumps, and yes, sometimes in those dancing, coloured patterns we see in the darkness. This phenomena could explain the glowing human form Chris Campbell saw in the dark. And as for the ghostly voices, In quiet places, our brains equally strain to pick up sounds. In doing so, they can misinterpret creaks, whirs and whines as plaintive human calls. Another contributing factor could be mould. Research has linked the effects of inhaling certain fungal spores with reports of hauntings. Breathing in aspergillus mould, found in damp, spooky houses and, you guessed it, mine workings, seems to inflame the optic nerve, causing shapes to float across our vision. The mould also triggers shortness of breath, which only heightens our feelings of panic and dread. But if Carl Sagan had heard Chris's story... he'd no doubt have latched onto the fact that the sighting occurred in what the scientist called that twilight world between being fully awake and fully asleep. The napping miner said he awoke to see his apparition. Such experiences are known as hypnopompic, that's as opposed to hypnagogic, where we might see strange things as we drift off to sleep. hypnopompic waking experiences are a little less common. A third of us have seen, heard or felt something eerie as we sink into sleep, but only one in ten have had these sensations upon awakening. If, like Chris Campbell, you wake up and see a ghost, strictly speaking, you probably aren't hallucinating. Full-on hallucinations are linked to things such as mental health problems or drug use. Instead, you're most likely having a kind of waking dream. Your eyes might be open and taking in your actual surroundings, but parts of your brain are still in a sleep state and producing dream-like visions to populate that real world around you. The sections of the brain that fire most during hypnopompic experience are those associated with both identifying threats and spotting human or animal forms. It's little wonder then that people feel a sense of fear and report seeing menacing beasts at the foot of the bed or the looming figure of an intruder. When we fully awaken, these sights, sounds and sensations vanish. But unlike visions that come before we fall asleep, we tend to remember these terrifying, hypnopompic moments. Some of us might realise what we just experienced wasn't real, but others might begin their day certain they've just seen a ghost. So that's it then. Chris Campbell was having a waking dream that day, deep below ground. We can all agree that there was no ghost haunting the mine. But wait a moment, and hold your judgment, for I haven't yet told you the story of that explosion in the Walton Colliery. Cautionary Tales will be back in a moment. In 1959, the Walton Colliery was a so-called safety lamp mine. It was forbidden by law for workers to take matches, lighters, cigarettes, cigars or pipes below ground. There were to be no naked flames and even electric flashlights were built with thick rubber cables and rugged housings to prevent the slightest spark escaping. The reason for all these precautions? Fire damp. Damp is the name for any gas other than air that's encountered in a mine. And fire damp is the name reserved for a fantastically combustible methane mix. Pockets of fire damp often sit inside or close to coal deposits. If this methane leaks into the confines of the mine workings, a tiny spark can ignite it. Even the spark from, say, a pit. or shovel glancing off something metallic. Fire damp explosions have killed countless miners, often hundreds at a time. And it isn't just the blast and flame that claims lives. The ignition of methane produces a new cloud of toxic gases. Afterdamp. No component of afterdamp is good for humans to inhale, but its high content of carbon monoxide is the killer. It prevents the blood from carrying oxygen to our muscles and organs. Miners not struck by the initial blast wave perish before they can flee. In Walton Colliery, the dangers of fire damp were well known. Aside from the banning of naked flames, the mine was designed to keep fresh air circulating along its tunnels so that methane would never collect in concentrations likely to ignite. But in April 1959, this ventilation system wasn't working as planned, and unknown to the miners, the pit was filling with dangerous gases. On the early afternoon of April 22nd, most of the miners of the early shift had left the coal face, while the men of the late shift had yet to arrive at the scene. Just a skeleton crew remained hard at work. The coal they piled onto conveyor belts was carried back down the tunnel to be loaded up and taken to the surface. At about 1pm, the three men at this loading point were plunged into darkness and the conveyor belt stopped dead. Then they felt a rush of air and dust... coming from the coal face. They phoned for help, then set off down the tunnel towards the explosion. Along the way, they met an injured miner who'd been working just short of the coal face. He'd been bowled over by the blast and was limping away from the scene. The rescuers pressed on, passing machinery wrecked in the explosion. But the air in the tunnel was becoming increasingly hot. and foul, heavy as it was with coal dust and deadly after-damping. Parts of the roof had also caved in, and dull, ominous thuds signalled further explosions of methane up ahead. Two miners tried to crawl on their bellies to reach the coal face, but first one, and then the other succumbed to the toxic gases and had to be dragged to safety. Several more rescuers were rushed to hospital, overcome by after-damp, until eventually men in breathing apparatus reached the remains of the five missing miners. Their scorched clothing was searched for contraband, those forbidden cigarettes and matches, but none were found. Investigators later concluded that a damaged electricity cable had probably arced and set off the fire damp. The official report criticised the mine's poor ventilation, its poor maintenance of electrical wiring, and a lax work culture where miners didn't always monitor for fire-damp accumulations. True, mining in 1959 was nowhere near as dangerous as it had been a century before, but it was still an industry that claimed many lives. 53-year-old Charles Ray died that April day, but his fate was a grimly familiar one to his family, for Charles's brothers Albert, Harold and Ike had all been killed in previous accidents at the pit. So if anywhere is haunted, it's going to be a place like Walton Colliery, the scene of so much sorrow and so many horrific, untimely deaths. That would certainly be an argument forwarded by the members of the Ghost Club. Founded in 1862, the group counted Charles Dickens amongst its earliest members. The club met to discuss paranormal phenomena and placed ads in newspapers asking the owners of haunted houses to grant them access to investigate any ghostly goings-on. The present custodian of the Ghost Club's archives, its chairman Alan Murdy, says that clear patterns emerge from the records. When we look at accounts of apparitional sightings, he says, a high proportion could be described as sudden deaths. Murder scenes, race car tracks, castles and, yes, coal mines all seem to have more than their fair share of ghost sightings. Alan says it's often sites where there's an intensity of emotion which produce hauntings. Many reasons are proposed for this. Some people believe that sudden, violent or unjust deaths cause souls to become trapped at the place of their undoing. the trauma of their demise preventing them from proceeding on to the spirit world. Others suggest that ghosts remain to seek revenge on those who wronged them in life, or stay on to fulfil a goal, or pass along a message that their abrupt deaths prevented. Stories abound of mournful, vengeful or angry ghosts, spirits unable to find peace in death. And a belief in the existence of such ghosts was particularly entrenched in mining communities. It was not uncommon for miners to refuse to enter the section of a pit where a fatal accident had occurred until all its victims were buried. There is a shadowy belief, explained Anjali. newspaper article in 1894 that the spirit of anyone killed in a pit hovers round the spot until after the body is consigned to sacred earth. When the newspaper dismissed such beliefs as mere superstition an enraged miner registered his displeasure. Tell your editor to confine his remarks to things of this world, for he knows nothing of heaven and hell and the workings underground. But burying the dead wasn't a surefire way to ensure their spirits stopped haunting the pit tunnels. One coal mine was said to be infested with ghosts for years after an accident. According to a contemporary account, they make their presence known by wailing and knocking. These diversions, they vary by the singing of dirges and the roll of muffled drums. It was observed that whilst miners were undoubtedly very brave men, they are terribly afraid of ghosts. Chris Campbell's brush with a phantom miner in the 1970s fits snugly into this pattern. His account of the ghost, dressed as it was in older-style mining garb, suggests that the apparition was that of Charles Ray, killed so suddenly in 1959. Or perhaps Charles's brother Ike, killed in 1957. Or Harold in 1944. Maybe even Albert, who lost his life in the same mine, aged just 19 in 1914. It's easy for us, dwellers of the surface, to mock Chris and the other miners who believe in ghosts. But do we know enough of heaven and hell and the workings underground to really pass judgment? Skeptics like Carl Sagan would likely say that Chris's belief in ghosts is precisely what caused him to see one, given the centuries of mining lore. Chris had a framework to immediately explain the strange sights and sounds that greeted him when he awoke in Walton Colliery. For Chris, the obvious cause wasn't hypnopompic visions or aspergillus mould, it was that he was being confronted by the restless spirit of a long-dead fellow miner. In his book The Demon-Haunted World, Sagan explores the incredible power of suggestion. In religious times, odd lights or sounds were regularly interpreted as visitations from angels or the Virgin Mary. Today, science fiction has primed us to greet them as UFOs and aliens. A minor steeped in stories of underground ghosts is naturally going to conclude that any mysterious experience is, in fact... an encounter with a spirit. And Sagan would have an explanation as to why Chris clearly identified the apparition as being dressed and equipped as a mine worker. Once the key idea is suggested, wrote Sagan, the person often plausibly fleshes out the supporting details. But this cautionary tale isn't a debunking of ghost stories, not at all. Not at this time of year. You may believe in them, and you may not. But either way, I hope to convince you that down there in the darkness, sometimes it's the wisest option to take ghosts seriously. That's after the break. Morpha Colliery was blessed in some ways. It was dug into a rich seam of highly prized Welsh steam coal. This coal ignited easily and burned brightly, producing little ash or smoke. It was ideal for driving the steam locomotives and industrial engines that powered the Victorian age. But Morpher was also known as a fiery mine, for the steam coal was found alongside deadly deposits of fire damp. The colliery set production records, but it also outdid rival mines in the number of explosions that ripped through its tunnels. In the second half of the 19th century, this Welsh mine witnessed increasingly serious accidents. At first, Fire-damp blasts claimed the lives of a few miners at a time, then dozens, then scores. On a March Monday in 1890, a massive explosion rocked Morpha. The blast was even felt by the miners' families in the village nearby. Attempts to reach the dead and dying below only resulted in further casualties, as rescuers were overcome by afterdamp. There were small miracles. Four men and a boy somehow found their way out after a hellish day of navigating cave-ins, fires and clouds of toxic gas. A group of pit ponies was also found alive after ten days. the water pumped into the mine to fight the fires had partly flooded their underground stables, giving them something to drink. Up to 89 men and boys perished, and many of their bodies were never found. It's little wonder, then, that Morpha became known as the Pit of Ghosts. And those ghosts didn't stay quiet for long. In the winter of 1895, Cries and wails filled the mine, with hundreds of workers claiming to have heard the mysterious, otherworldly howls. Someone suggested they might be emanating from a tomcat that had strayed into the mine and become lost. But most miners were convinced that they knew the true source. Ghosts. These men threw down their tools, went to the surface and refused to resume work. And it wasn't just the moaning that had unnerved them. Banging and knocking had been heard. And a slender, black-clad figure had also been seen above ground, trudging forlornly from the pit head to a building across the yard. The same building that served as a morgue after that 1890 blast. It was said 90% of the workforce believed that morpher colliery was in the grips of a haunting. But there wasn't agreement on the reason behind it and the potential remedies. Some miners felt that a simple exorcism was called for. The crew working a place that was particularly devastated in 1890 asked that renewed efforts be made to find the remains of the dead, so they could be given a proper burial and be allowed to rest in peace. But there was another school of thought. Men who'd worked at Morpha in 1890 and a previous explosion in 1883 spoke of strange noises filling the mine in the weeks before each of those blasts. One story concerned a couple of men down on their knees emptying a coal truck Their ears were suddenly pricked by an unusual sound. What was that? one asked. And they jumped out of their skin as a nearby door inexplicably flung open and then slammed shut. The miners of Morpha became increasingly convinced that the ghosts in their pit were not trying to terrify the living, nor demand a proper burial. they were instead trying to warn the men that yet another disaster was imminent. Morphomine would stay closed until someone summoned the courage to go below to investigate. Whether they're digging for coal, gold or silver, miners around the globe often admit to sharing their underground world. with strange paranormal beings. Welsh miners call them coblins. and tappers. The tin miners of Cornwall call them knockers and say they're tiny creatures, not much bigger than an infant, but with the faces of wizened old men. As with much folklore, their origin story is confused. Some tin miners said they were an ancient tribe of Celts who, when they died out, had become trapped below ground, stuck in a purgatory between heaven and hell. The more common belief was that the knockers were the ghosts of Jewish slaves, brought to Cornwall to extract tin for the Romans. Both stories are fanciful, but either way, The knockers lived up to their name, tapping and banging on pit props and the wooden shoring that prevented tunnels caving in. The knockers also sang and even spoke to miners, usually demanding food. One tin miner, Tom Trevorrow, responded to calls to share his lunch by shouting,' Go to blazes, you cussed old spirits, or I'll knock your brains out!' Tommy Trevorrow, Tommy Trevorrow, came the knocker's reply. We'll send thee bad luck tomorrow. As good as their word, the next day Tom Trevorrow returned to work to find his tools buried by a rockfall. The seam of tin that was to provide him with his week's wages was covered up too. It was best then to stay on the right side of the knocker's. and there could be rewards. Many miners claimed to have found rich seams of precious metal by following the tappings of the knockers. And the demands of the knockers were modest. One tradition was for Cornish men to eat most of their pasties, a parcel of vegetables or meat wrapped in pastry, but to save a part as tribute to the knockers. The corner of the crust they reserved and threw into the darkness was the crimped section they used to hold the pasty. Tin miners' hands were usually covered with harmful substances, including arsenic. Remembering to feed the knockers helpfully prevented miners ingesting such poisons. And knockers were said to save miners' lives more directly. Sometimes their eerie hammering was not a signal that a new, rich seam of ore was close, but a warning that a pit collapse was looming. In 1895, the miners of Morpha suspected that the ghosts of their pit were forecasting just such a disaster. Inspectors, managers and a few brave miners ventured into the abandoned works to check the miles and miles of tunnels for potential problems. The leader of the expedition had memorised a religious-sounding incantation should they come face to face with a ghost. Angels and ministers of grace defend us, he would say. Then ask the apparition. Bringst thou heirs from heaven? or blasts from hell. The party saw no ghosts, nor any evidence that the mine was about to collapse or suffer a fire-damp explosion. The pit manager held what were described as protracted discussions with his men, and a return to work was finally agreed. Whether you believe in ghosts or not, I don't blame miners who halted work to take these spectral warnings seriously. Creaking, tapping or moaning signs in a mine works could easily precede an explosion or cave-in. But there's something else too. The deep, rumbling sounds of earth moving and settling can be outside the range of human hearing, but that doesn't mean they don't affect our bodies. Research into so-called infrasound suggests that its vibrations can resonate in our chests, making us feel anxious and fearful. Infrasound seems also to affect our eyesight, creating odd shapes and shadowy figures in our peripheral vision. Research is ongoing, but it seems more likely that the rumbling of the ground moving is prompted the miners to feel unnerved and imagine ghosts, rather than ghosts appearing to warn of impending roof falls, or the splitting of the rocks holding back the deadly fire damp. We miners aren't so simple as some would make us out to be, one morpher man explained about the reasons for the walkout. We carry our lives in our hands. And we have a right to be assured that things down there are as they ought to be. A fellow miner then shared a story. Years before, he'd been underground and heard ghostly noises. The groans and thumps and wails. A man working beside the miner stopped digging to take in the sounds. He then made an eerie prediction. Somebody will be killed in this colliery very soon, he said. The storyteller had discounted this warning and mocked it as silly superstition. I laughed at him and said he was scared. But before the night shift was over, he was killed by a fall in of the roof. The old miner took the pipe from his mouth and jabbed the stem at his audience. I now don't jeer at men that hear things like that. The primary sources for this episode were Voices in the Coalshed from the National Coal Mining Museum and The Demon Haunted World by Carl Sagan. Cautionary Tales is written by me, Tim Harford, with Andrew Wright, Alice Fiennes and Ryan Dilley. It's produced by Georgia Mills and Marilyn Rust. The sound design and original music are the work of Pascal Wise. Ben-Nadav Hafri edited the scripts. The show also wouldn't have been possible without the work of Jacob Weisberg, Corinne Gileard-Fisher, Eric Sandler, Christina Sullivan, Keira Posey and Owen Miller. Cautionary Tales is a production of Pushkin Industries. If you like the show, please remember to share, rate and review. It really does make a difference to us. And if you want to hear it ad-free and receive a bonus audio episode, video episode and members-only newsletter every month, why not join the Cautionary Club? To sign up, head to patreon.com slash cautionaryclub. That's patreon, P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash cautionaryclub.