A fall of rock crushed Frank Broderick inside Shamokin’s Luke Fidler Colliery. Days later, his coworkers swore he had come back as they worked near the spot where he had been fatally injured on March 28, 1900. Newspapers carrying stories of his death alternatively called him Thomas Bedoric, Thomas Bederick, and Thomas Rederick.

The official register of mining fatalities recorded his name as John Vidovic, a 30-year-old non-citizen Polish mineworker who died from a “fall of rock.” His was the seventh death recorded in the 7th Anthracite District that year and the first fatality at Luke Fidler in 1900.

Thousands of men worked in Pennsylvania’s anthracite mines, and they traded whispered stories of strange sounds and the restless souls of men lost to accidents and disasters. This story appeared in the newspapers in early 1900:

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A MINE HAUNTED.

STRANGE TALE TOLD BY WORKMEN IN THE LUKE FIDLER COLLIERY AT SHAMOKIN—SAY THEY SAW A MAN WHO WAS KILLED SOME TIME BEFORE.

According to a lot of foreign miners, the wraith of Frank Broderick, an Austro-Hungarian, haunts Luke Fidler shaft, and some of them refuse to work in or near the part of the mine in which he lost his life, by a fall of top rock, last Wednesday a week. Broderick was not killed instantly, but died shortly after his removal to the boarding house, on Tioga street.

During his life Broderick contributed nothing to the support of his church and seldom, if ever, attended services. He often expressed his non-belief in the church doctrines, but it is claimed, as the breath of life was departing, he asked for a priest. Before a messenger could summon one he was dead.

It is known positively that when asked by friends where he wished to be buried, between gasps he said, ‘Bury me in the dirt bank.’ He was interred in the corner of the Polish Cemetery, reserved for the non-attendants of church.

While mining yesterday six foreigners heard a rumbling noise, like the shoveling of coal. They stopped work and listened attentively. The noise continued.

John Guginskie walked in the direction of the sound and declares that he saw by the light of his lamp the outline of Broderick’s form and face. He called to him, but he [re]ceived no answer. To satisfy himself that it really was a man Guginskie says he struck at it.

According to the miner’s story, the pick ax passed through the supposed apparation [sic] and, landing on a rock, jarred Guginskie to the floor, his nose and face being badly cut.

He scrambled to his feet and alleges that the figure had vanished. The terrified miner then fled to his companions. The story spread like wild fire. A number of miners and laborers at once picked up their buckets and refused to work. Many others, whose superstitions have gotten the better of their reason, threatened to follow in their steps.

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Stories like this moved quickly through the dark, dangerous world of the mines. Hundreds of feet underground, with death and injury always close, they were one way mineworkers made sense of what could happen to any of them on any shift.

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Read more about ghost stories in the Coal Region

Ghost stories and dark folklore collected by George Korson in the Coal Region | 1938

A ghost story from Pottsville, Pennsylvania | 1865

A failed Halloween prank on the trolley tracks at Plymouth, Pennsylvania | October 1892

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