In 1938, folklorist George Korson published a book of stories and traditions he had collected in his travels around Pennsylvania’s Coal Region – Minstrels of the Mine Patch.

Among the stories he documented were numerous ghost stories and tales from the mines of the anthracite villages and communities. He noted the superstitious nature of the anthracite mineworkers and highlighted why they often turned to ghosts or spirits to explain events in the dark underworld of the region’s collieries.

Korson described the sounds that often played with the minds of mineworkers in the dark depths of the earth:

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The most common source of legends was strange sounds heard in the mines. The roar of accustomed noises which dazed a visitor from the surface left the miner undisturbed. But what ground his brain were the mysterious knocking, creaking, groaning and wailing which he heard during a lull in mining.

Somewhere a rock or a large lump of coal, loosened from a cranny by some mysterious force, would drop suddenly with a tremendous thud. Far above his head there might be a crackling as the strata settled after a day of blasting.

Deadly gases seeped through crevices in the coal, making a sound like the murmur of trickling water. Underground railway tracks would contract at night to the accompaniment of terrifying knocking. Water dripping on the reverse side of a shovel or on a hollow lump of coal in an isolated section of the mine might become so magnified in the awful stillness as to sound like alternate blows of a steel drill…

These sounds once petrified miners and led to the spread of legends. The present-day miner recognizes them and is unmoved by them, but he hears noises of his own. Mysterious knockings are heard in other kinds of mines and are interpreted by the miners in accordance with varying local tradition…

But in the anthracite industry, unknown sounds were always associated with ghosts, especially the ghosts of miners who had been killed while at work. Most of the ghosts were cripples who lacked limbs which had been blasted away.

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Korson collected numerous stories of ghosts and spirits inside and outside the mines. These stories often related to the ever-present fear of violent and sudden death that loomed everywhere in the mines, especially in the 19th century when mining regulations and engineering standards meant mineworkers faced danger and death more regularly.

Korson related patterns in the stories he heard from old miners:

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Ghosts had various motives for returning to a mine. Revenge, as in the Hudsonryder legend, was one of them. Anxiety to complete a particular piece of work left unfinished by a fatal accident… was another. A third was a desire to help a former butty in his work, as illustrated by the following incident.

In the Wyoming Valley was a Welsh miner who could load his mine car in less time than it took two miners working in an adjoining chamber to load theirs. Since his prodigiousness was of recent origin, his feat was attributed to the help that he was receiving from the ghost of a former butty who had been killed a short time before.

The two miners regarded the common rumor with skepticism and decided to investigate. Leaving two laborers behind to load their own car, they entered the Welshman’s chamber and gossiped with him so long that he could not possibly load any coal. But when they finally left him and came out into the heading again, there, to their utter amazement, was the Welshman’s car loaded to the top with coal, waiting for the mules!

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Fear and trepidation about mining accidents featured in other stories as Korson noted.

He cited specific disasters and how the survivors reacted when they inevitably returned to the same chambers where their friends and family members had perished or been maimed.

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It is significant that apparitions were most commonly seen in the mines after a fatal accident. Undoubtedly optical illusions were more likely to be experienced during the mental strain and emotional disturbance that followed an accident. After the Avondale mine disaster in which one hundred and ten lives were lost, many men and boys refused to return to the mine because of a rumor that it was haunted…

Anthracite miners did not welcome ghosts. They believed that the way to ward them off was to remain away from the workings several days after a fatal accident. Miners would drop their tools instantly on hearing that one of their comrades had been killed. To prevent a sudden shutdown, bosses would try to suppress the news until after the shift, but they rarely succeeded, owing to the efficiency with which the underground grapevine worked. The men would not return to their jobs until after the victim’s funeral.

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The stories Korson collected didn’t always come from below ground – they sometimes featured the spirits of those believed to have suffered death above ground in the mining towns and patches of the anthracite region. This included stories of people allegedly murdered by the “Molly Maguires” in Schuylkill County.

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The mining folk had a deep-seated fear of the night. They believed that the night air held all sorts of evil. One old Irish miner told me that his people fought like wildcats during the day, but that when night came they lost their nerve.

A legend growing out of this fear centers around a large rock on the outskirts of Silver Creek Patch in the Schuylkill Valley. The Molly Maguires had murdered a peddler at this rock, so the legend goes, and to avenge his death, the peddler’s ghost haunted it—at night.

There were people living in Silver Creek a half century ago who swore by all that was sacred that they had seen the ghost and even heard it wail. So vivid and terrible was this illusion that even strong men would take to their heels when they passed the rock “after lamplight.” One poor soul imagined that the ghost was following him all the way to the nearby town of New Philadelphia, and ran so heedlessly that he plunged into the creek and was drowned.

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Korson also heard stories from more modern mine disasters that led to ghost stories. On May 26, 1927, a roof collapse and series of methane explosions killed 7 mineworkers and injured many more at the Woodward Colliery’s #3 Shaft near Wilkes-Barre.

Five of the dead were trapped by the “squeeze,” or collapsed area of the mine, and their bodies could never be recovered due to damage caused by a raging mine fire and explosions that continued to rock the Wilkes-Barre area in the days after the original disaster, forcing the Glen Alden Coal Company to seal the colliery for eight months after the disaster.

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With the introduction of technological improvements and safety appliances, anthracite mines are becoming less spooky, but it is doubtful that they ever will be entirely free of ghosts. In 1927 an explosion rocked the Woodward colliery, one of the most scientifically equipped in the Wyoming Valley. Many workers were injured and seven were killed. Despite repeated searches, five of the bodies have not been recovered. This has given rise to a legend that the ghosts of the five miners stalk through the workings at night.

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In January 1928, mining operations began at the nearby #1 Shaft at the Woodward Colliery. It would take two years for the #3 Shaft to reopen, and once repaired, returned to operation. Efforts were made to recover the bodies of the entombed men, but those efforts ultimately proved futile due to the size and breadth of the collapsed area.

As Korson also documented, not all of the ghost stories and legends passed down through generations had an alleged spectral origin. Take this story that Korson documented dating back to the Civil War era in Schuylkill County:

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[W]orkers in a certain Schuylkill County colliery believed that the ghost of one of their fellow miners had visited the underground workings. The legend sprang up in the sixties shortly after a miner had been killed, and it passed into anthracite folklore. Several years ago I learned that the legend originated in a hoax played by two mischievous boys.

They had smuggled a goat into the slope, tied a lighted candle between its horns and turned it loose in the gangway. Naturally the gangway was dark and the eerie bobbing of the candle light through that blackness fairly petrified miners who saw it. Too frightened to investigate, they carried to the patch the news of a ghostly visitation and shocked the patchers into believing their story.

The young rascals who had perpetrated the hoax held their tongues as they feared being trounced by their respective fathers, and thus abetted the perpetuation of the legend.

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Korson’s efforts to document these stories mean that nearly a century after he started collecting them, we have a trove of stories to better understand the day-to-day life of the mineworkers and these mining communities. Through the stories they passed down through generations, we can gain a better understanding of their lives – and their fears.

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Read more ghost and Halloween stories from the Coal Region

A ghost story from Pottsville, Pennsylvania | 1865

“The Youth owned the town” – Celebrating Halloween in Pottsville in 1893

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