I recently revisited this video and saw a very interesting comment from someone that claims to have been a coal miner in the Appalachian mountains. It was as follows....
Robbie Smith:
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 hear things, 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, 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, and 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 the grown men, family men, who I had my dinner with at 3am 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 and I'd get out of the mine. 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.
- from southern West Virginia.
I REALLY love these kind of stories. If you have not seen the video in I was referencing I've posted it below. It's really worth a look.
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