(This has a kind of squatchy vibe, but also sounds coming from different areas and the sound of stones on a roof… it surely has poltergeist-like features reported? and the knockers are of course rather like cousins of boggarts. It’s interesting that the mine has just been reopened, in that disturbance restarting phenomena is a trope. I also notice that the miner’s lamp went out… echoes of modern ghosthunter’s equipment failing, or aliens causing cars to stop running.)
Weird noises in dead o’night.
Cornish miners tell of eerie experiences.
Inexplicable tappings.
Three miners working at the old Redmoor Mine, near Callington, which has been reopened recently, last week told of queer things, which have happened in the dead of night, when they were the only men at work there.
Mr Roscoe Smith related a strange and eerie experience which he said befell him after he had left the levels at 2.30 a.m. and gone to the drying-house. “Just as I reached the drying-house, something, I cannot tell what it was or what it looked like, suddenly came out of the drying-house and swished past me. Then I heard a sound, but saw nothing. The thing, whatever it was, made my lamp go out.
“Presently I lit my lamp again and entered the drying-house, but saw nothing to indicate what it was that had frightened me. Then I heard a loud noise, like stones falling on a galvanised roof. It came from the direction of one of the mine-sheds. I went towards the place, but the sound shifted and I heard it coming as if from the stamps up above me. My mates came out from the levels just then, and we went to investigate.
“We heard a mysterious thumping and rattling, coming from the old mine-burrows and stack, then from the sheds and blacksmith’s shop. Wherever we went in an attempt to locate the cause of the noise it shifted to another region. Once we heard it coming from the direction of some farm buildings about 200 yards away. As a matter of fact the weird noises came from many angles, at almost regular intervals, but always on the mine or in the immediate vicinity. It began at 2.30, and not until daylight, about six o’clock, did it cease.”
The other two miners admitted feeling scared at the time. “It’s past explaining,” Mr Lionel Smith remarked. “I’ve never heard anything like it. It was really uncanny. I’m not nervous, but I shall never forget my experience. Sometimes I thought it sounded like something scrambling away and making a big noise about it.”
Other miners spoke of curious tapping sounds being heard in the levels, reviving the theory, popular in Cornwall, that the spirits of departed miners, known as “knockers,” haunt old workings.
St. Austell Gazette and Cornwall County News, 29th September 1937.