Most of the ghosts miners saw were optical illusions they were too frightened to investigate. Historian George Korson claims that many were startled by the gleam of foxfire - "the luminescent fungus that frequently appeared on old mine timbers."
He reports that in 1901 a ghost ran wild in a mine north of Brazil, Indiana. The story was told, according to the Brazil Times, by "two miners who never have been known to prevaricate." The two claimed that "a white apparition" frequently loitered in the room where they worked. Lately it had become bolder, often standing upright and pointing toward them when they entered the room. However, it always vanished when they came near it with their lamps.
Legend claimed the ghost was the spirit of a young man who was crushed to death in that very room shortly after coming to this country and only a few hours after he began work in the mine. The young man had either a secret he longed to tell or a message he wanted to send home, but his tragic death prevented him from carrying out his wishes.
Now it was time to lay the ghost to rest. The Times told readers that a "party of persons picked for their courageousness will visit this underground place of the spook at a dead hour of the night and endeavor to hold a conversation with the apparition." They would be accompanied by a man who claimed to have communicated frequently with spirits. He planned to interrogate the ghost and induce it to tell its secret. Then, according to his theory, "It will return to the rendezvous for spirits and never again be seen of earth." The spiritualist assured the newspaper that if the ghost told a story worth printing, he would pass it on for publication. The ghost must not have divulged its secret for the newspaper didn't mention it again.
Nearly every major mine disaster inspired its own ghost stories. The 1904 Harwick mine explosion at Cheswick, Pennsylvania, where 179 men were killed, was no exception. Many people believed, even long after the accident, that ghosts of the dead miners interfered with working miners. Many quit their jobs because they wouldn't work in a haunted mine, so the company imported a group of immigrants to replace those who left. But the ghosts bothered the new workers as much as they had their English-speaking predecessors. The situation became so bad that, five years after the disaster, the immigrants quit in a body.
