When miners flocked to Wyoming in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they brought with them from the Old World their ancient superstitions of tommy knockers and ghostly apparitions. These beliefs of the unknown had been created in the black abyss of their eerie world beneath the earth.
“The darkness of the underworld, the silence, the long hours of solitary work, are all conditions ideal to the birth of superstition,” said coal miner Joseph Husband in 1911. This Harvard graduate had spent a year working in the coal mines beside men who survived the dangerous work through their beliefs in the supernatural.
However, this fear of the spirits that haunted the dark was not enough to stop Wyoming miners from rushing to a ghostly mine when it meant gold.
The Haunted Lucy
In 1903, Wyoming miners grabbed their picks and joined a gold stampede to a haunted gold mine in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. They threw superstition aside to claim their portion of the rich nuggets an old prospector was showing off.
The 1903 Kemmerer Camera ran a story with the compelling title “Ghost Helps A Prospector” where the reporter shared the true story of a rich discovery.
“Old John” Willis claimed that he had been led to this wealthy gold mine by the ghost of a woman named Lucy, his lost love.
“This woman has been with me in the spirit for more than twenty-five years,” Willis said. “And to her lays my good fortune.”
According to the Kemmerer Camera, Willis has long been regarded as an eccentric throughout Wyoming and Montana. When he announced that he had named the mine the “Haunted Lucy,” he was looked on as “mentally deranged,” until he exhibited the nuggets.
“Willis has just returned from a long visit in the Blue Mountains, Oregon, and the tale he tells is remarkable, to say the least,” the Kemmerer Camera said.
Willis had brought back a big sack nearly full of big nuggets, which have been examined by the assayers in Butte, Montana. They pronounced the nuggets to be pure gold, running nearly $22 to the ounce.
Wyoming coal miners spent long days beneath the earth with little light and multiple dangers surrounding them. Many miners of the early 1900s were superstitious and would refuse to work in haunted sections of the mines. (Wyoming State Archives) 
Wyoming coal miners spent long days beneath the earth with little light and multiple dangers surrounding them. Many miners of the early 1900s were superstitious and would refuse to work in haunted sections of the mines. (Wyoming State Archives) 
Wyoming newspapers reported on haunted mines and often tried to explain away the supernatural claims of the miners. (Wyoming Newspaper Project)
Stampede
This was the first time that gold in any quantity has been found in the Blue Mountains, and a stampede happened immediately as miners headed to new fields.
“The aged prospector has interested two of the local bankers of this section in his find, and a party of workmen will proceed at once to the claim of Mr. Willis out in the hills,” the Kemmerer Camera said.
Years before the gold discovery, Willis had been long considered a man of mystery in the west. That there was a romance in his life he had admitted, but the nature of it he never would disclose until, that is, Lucy led him to his fortune.
Superstitious Miners
Most mine apparitions, however, are ominous and may lead to rockslides and death rather than hidden wealth.
Tommy Knockers, for instance, are supernatural creatures that could be heard tapping or knocking on the walls of the mine.
While some miners viewed them as mischievous, others feared them and believed that these ‘knockers’ would purposefully attempt to collapse sections of the mine or cause fires.
Journalists often would seek to find natural reasons to explain these creaks and groans of the earth rather than the supernatural.
The Converse County Herald used such deductive reasoning in 1903 to explain away a haunted mine in Texas.
“About 100 years ago, this mine was worked by the Spaniards and apparently it was abandoned suddenly,” the Douglas, Wyoming, newspaper said. “Whenever the attempt had been made to explore it, the explorers have been met by a sudden and violent blast of wind accompanied by dreadful howlings and wailings suggestive of lost souls.”
Without any evidence, the reporter concluded that this mine probably tapped into a hidden reservoir of air controlled by an underground stream of water and was a “blowing cave,” the sound of lost souls thus explained.
Wyoming mines were plagued with danger including explosions. Some miners would hear creaking and knockings and would claim that Tommy Knockers were threatening them with accidents such as pictured here. (Wyoming State Archives) 
Wyoming coal miners spent long days beneath the earth with little light and multiple dangers surrounding them. Many miners of the early 1900s were superstitious and would refuse to work in haunted sections of the mines. (Wyoming State Archives) 
Wyoming coal miners spent long days beneath the earth with little light and multiple dangers surrounding them. Many miners of the early 1900s were superstitious and would refuse to work in haunted sections of the mines. (Wyoming State Archives)
Ghost Mule
Yet not even the foreman could fully explain the ghostly mule that tormented miners with its presence. Husband, in his 1911 book, “A Year in a Coal Mine”, reported that Croatian miners refused to work in a section of a coal mine due to this apparition startling them with its presence.
“This phantom mule would materialize silently from the wall of the entry, and with the most diabolical expression upon its face, creep quietly down behind its intended victim,” Husband said. “The phantom mule would sink his material teeth deep into the miner's shoulder; and death would follow.”
Husband thought that the ghostly mule was actually the sudden white glare cast from the headlight of a locomotive far down the entry. The Croatians did not buy this explanation and refused to work in that area of the mine. They were sent to another section and new men, just arrived from Bulgaria, were sent to work the section where the white mule lived.
If these miners ever saw the mule, they never reported it to their superiors.
Wyoming gold prospectors were just as superstition as their coal mining brethren. John Willis, a 1903 miner, claimed that the ghost of his beloved led him to a rich gold mine he named “Haunted Lucy.” (Wyoming State Archives) 
In 1903, the ghost of a lost love led Old John Willis to a rich gold mine. Miners through superstition aside and stampeded to the new gold-rich mine in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. (Kimmerer Camera)
Ghost Of A Cage
Another deadly ghost was reported in the 1901 Laramie Republican. The “Ghost of the Cage” was a true story about a deadly trap that plagued miners deep in the earth.
This reporter worked in the mine himself and saw firsthand the devastating effect these phantom cages had on his co-workers. He believed it was just an optical illusion although his fellow miners believed it had more of an evil, supernatural origin.
In the early 1900s, there were hundreds of elevator accidents according to an old inspector. He said that very few of these deadly accidents were from the breaking of cables of brakes. Instead, the victim would step into the shaft on his own accord and plummet to his death.
The reporter said this was because the miner thought he saw the elevator car in the accustomed place, and when he stepped on what he thought was solid floor he went to his death.
“Years ago, I was out in a mine and actually witnessed one of the accidents,” the reporter said. “One of the oldest men in the employ of the company, a man who had been following mining for half of his life and knew this mine as he knew the streets of Leadville, ran a car of ore over the edge of the shaft on the third level and was dragged down to the bottom with it.”
The miner was mortally injured, but before he died, he told the doctor that he saw a “cage” at the shaft.
Since that time, the reporter noted that there had been many accidents like that in the mines out west.
“Sometimes the victims were all killed at once, but those who survived always swore that they saw the cage,” the reporter said. “I have talked to old miners, and they say they dread nothing more than the ghost of the cage.”
The miners that this dreaded phenomenon occurred to were men who had worked all their lives in the mines. The longer a man has worked in a mine, the more apt he was to see the “ghost of the cage.”
“I firmly believe that those who lose their lives by stepping into open elevator shafts really see the elevator car,” the reporter said. “It is one of the most fatal optical illusions in the world, but such it must be. The victim has become accustomed to seeing the cage at the shaft when he needs it, and the picture of it is fixed in his brain.”
The reporter said that when the fatal step is taken that sends the miner to his death, the miner really sees the dreaded ghost of the cage.
Whether a prospector is led to a mine of riches or coal miners sent to their deaths, there are still miners in Wyoming and beyond who continue to this day to claim that deep within the earth, there reside supernatural beings and apparitions that cannot be explained away and are very real.
Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.
