Lore - Episode 120: Whistle While You Work

Episode Date: August 5, 2019

Human ambition has led us to some amazing achievements, and taken us to unexplored places. But it has also lured us into places where there is a lot more fear and danger than we are used to, and the stories that have grown out of that world have left the world a richer—and more frightening—place. ——————— The Lore book series: www.theworldoflore.com/books The Lore TV show: www.Amazon.com/Lore Latest Lore news: www.theworldoflore.com/now Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com Access premium content!: https://www.lorepodcast.com/support See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Gifting the Glenlivet says, I know I wasn't always the easiest child. It says after everything you've done for me, you deserve better than novelty socks. It says, the best parent in Canada deserves the best single malt scotch in Canada. Parents give their best, why not return the favor and give the gift of the Glenlivet this Father's Day. Discover the single malt collection at theglendlivet.com. Please enjoy responsibly. Music We've all seen the image before.

A dusty red cloud painted on the wall of a cave with the imprint of a hand in the center of it. It looks as if someone placed their palm against the cold surface of the rock and then sprayed paint over it. And yet this artwork predates spray paint by thousands of years. It's one of many examples of artwork found in caves across Spain and France, ranging from 10,000 to 40,000 years in age. And similar caves have been found across the globe. Small reminders that our predecessors were just as interested in leaving their mark as modern-day YouTube stars and social media influencers.

It's an impulse we all share, no doubt about it. But there's more. In recent years, scholars have begun to notice a pattern. Whether these caves are located in Spain, East Africa, Australia or Malaysia, the symbols painted on their walls all seem to be pulled from a common lexicon. They act like the emoji on our mobile devices, each one representing an idea or a message, and it's breathtaking to consider. 40,000 years ago, there was a global Stone Age messaging system.

These symbols show us something else, though, too. For a very long time, people have been drawn to the darkness of caves. Whether it was in pursuit of shelter from the cold and rain, or in search of resources that could be used to improve our lives, venturing into the darkness of the Earth has always offered us hope and stability. But they've also become a focal point for story. Yes, caves and mines might hold the riches we seek, but they can also be dangerous and unpredictable.

There might be mysteries to dust off, or superstitions to pay attention to, but they also contain a powerful warning. Be careful how deep you dig, because you never know what you might find. I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is Lore. For thousands of years, humans have delved beneath the surface of this world. In many instances, it was to explore or seek shelter. Other times, it was to see what valuable resources might be waiting in the darkness below. And as the symbols on cave walls around the world have taught us,

we also use those places to leave messages for the next group to pass through. But outside of the natural caves that were available to anyone who stumbled upon them, the most common way humans have gone deep is through mining. The oldest mine on record is located in Swaziland and dates back over 40,000 years. Other mines of a similar age can be found in Europe, and most of them were built with the same goal, to find hematite and flint. But mining is a deceptively simple thing. On the surface, it's just digging.

You grab a tool, move the earth out of your way, and search for the thing you need. But for most ancient cultures, there was more to it than that. For them, mining was a spiritual thing, and you can see that in the words connected to it. For example, in the ancient Assyrian culture, the word for mineral, cuckoo, literally translates as fetus or embryo. To them, a piece of flint wasn't just a stone. It was the offspring of the earth, a magical seed that was created for their use. And that attitude helped foster a spirit of respect among cultures that used mining to find resources.

In Cherokee culture, crystal formations were often fed with the blood of animals that they hunted, because they believed that the blood would nurture them and help them grow. Other cultures viewed mining as an act of violence against the earth, ripping the minerals out like a hunter might pull out the entrails of an animal it plans to eat. For these cultures, it was all about doing it respectfully and properly. And a great example can be found in the Aboriginal people of Australia. That's where the world's oldest continually operating mine is located, in the western part of the country in a strip of mountains known as the Weld Range.

But they didn't mine flint there. No, in this location, they dug for something more important, red ochre. It's a mineral used as a pigment, and it gets its color from the iron oxide that has tinted the clay, giving it a rusty red tone. In fact, most of those painted handprints I mentioned earlier were created using red ochre. And for many cultures around the world, it was precious, almost holy. If we step back for a moment, that should make a lot of sense. Mining at the basic level is about digging through the common to find the rare.

It's the search for special things buried in the mundane to pull something valuable out of the worthless. In fact, many of the early materials mined by our ancestors were valuable specifically because they were rare. In a sense, the very act of mining is a search for the sacred. For the Aboriginal people of Australia, red ochre was that sacred thing. Early European settlers arrived to find the people there already fully obsessed with the pigment. One of the earliest reports by white settlers about Aboriginal activities is a description of the trip many Aboriginal men would make each year from their homes to the nearest ochre mine. It's said that they would walk for months, covering hundreds of miles just to make their annual visit.

Along the way, more and more ceremony and ritual would enter their days. Then, once they arrived outside the mine, these travelers would fall to their knees and kiss the ground, weeping with joy at the sight of it. But they wouldn't rush inside. Instead, they would set up camp and perform one last ritual of preparation. After shaving their entire body from head to toe, the men would cover themselves in fat, abstain from food, water, and sleep, and then dance all the way through the night. Only when this ritual was complete were they ready to do what they came for,

to enter the mine and retrieve the ochre they required. But even then, there were superstitions and traditions to observe. Among them, it's said that the Aboriginal men would gather up the ochre they came for and then retreat back to the entrance of the mine by walking backwards. This was partially so that they never showed their backs to the mine, which would have been a sign of respect. But it also allowed them to use a branch to obliterate their footprints. Why? Because they had just stolen from the sacred mine, and if they left tracks behind,

they might be followed and punished for it. And who, you might ask, would follow these brave miners up to the surface? The guardians of the mine, of course, known locally as the Mondongs. But Mondongs aren't human caretakers. They aren't a priestly caste or a tribe of sworn protectors. No, there's something much more frightening than that. They are the creatures who live inside the Earth. The notion that mines are protected by mystical creatures isn't unique to Australia.

In fact, all over the world, there are stories of beings that live inside the Earth, guarding the sacred resources it contains. And humans have shared those stories for centuries. One good example can be found in Germany, which is where a 16th century physician and chemist named Georgus Agricola called home. In fact, the town he lived in was a hub for mining and smelting metals. And over time, his scientific curiosity pulled him into that world. He eventually became one of the leading experts on mineralogy and metallurgy in his era.

Being a doctor, though, he spent most of his time treating the injured miners that worked in the area. Illness and broken bones and everything else that could happen to those who worked the mines kept his medical training in good use. And that put him in a good position to hear all sorts of stories. And here's the thing. Agricola was a deeply skeptical man. He preferred science over superstition. And he rejected all of the folklore that surrounded him in favor of cold hard facts.

Except for one area. Agricola was a firm believer in cobalds. A cobald was a creature that lived inside the mines. After listening to stories about them for years from hundreds of miners, Agricola documented them as small beings roughly two feet tall and dressed in tiny versions of the typical uniform of a mine worker right down to the leather apron. And they were complex creatures, too.

Most of the time, cobalds were said to leave the miners alone. They might toss pebbles at them from the dark corners of the work area from time to time, but they typically kept to their own, usually only showing up to warn of a disaster that's about to happen. But they had a darker side, of course. It's said that if a miner mocked the cobalds or muttered curses about them, that the creatures would become angry and cause problems for them. Caverns, injuries, and unusual sounds and vibrations

were all blamed on angry cobalds for a very long time. And it's easy to see why, too. In an age when people understood a lot less about geology and the forces that were at work beneath the surface, those who worked down there wanted answers, so they invented them for themselves. Oh, and if the name cobald reminds you of the mineral cobalt, that's because the latter gets its name from the former.

It turns out the sorts of metals European miners were digging for in the 16th century, silver and copper mostly, all had a striking resemblance to another ore. But it wasn't until the substance was smelted that the difference became apparent. This mystery mineral didn't melt down to a beautiful shimmering silver. Instead, the heat reduced it to a powder that contained a high amount of arsenic, which was toxic to those who worked with it. Over time, miners felt that this ore was tricking them and making them look like fools,

so they named it after the cobalds who did the same. It's been cobalt ever since. There are other creatures in the folklore of mining cultures around the world. In South America, the mining towns of the Bolivian Andes are home to belief in a spiritual being known as El Teo, who is seen as a god of mines and ore. In parts of England, there are stories of bluecaps, a mine spirit that usually shows up in the form of a small blue flame. But it's in Cornwall that we find one of the strongest veins of mining guardians,

the knockers. In a lot of ways, they are similar to the cobalt of Germany, including their physical description, standing around two feet tall. These creatures are said to resemble weathered old men, dressed in the clothing of a miner, and they earned their name in a couple of ways. Legend says that the knockers would literally knock in parts of the mine

that would net the biggest payload, guiding the human miners to the best ore. But there was also a less common belief that the knockers were the spirits of workers who had died in the mine, and they would knock from beyond the veil to warn the living about impending danger. Like their cobalt cousins on the continent, knockers were better left alone, because while they might be helpful in tracking down valuable ore,

or avoiding the dangers of a rock slide or a cave-in, they were also volatile and vindictive, and I have a couple of stories to help illustrate that idea for you. In one, a miner named Tom Trevoreau made the mistake of insulting the knockers in his mine, failing to maintain that necessary level of respect that seems universal across all mining cultures. As a result, Tom's luck was turned bad,

and he became such a failure at mining that he had to give up the profession altogether and become a farmer. In another story, a man named Barker was exploring the depths of an unoccupied mine when he claimed to have stumbled upon a group of knockers who were working in the depths of the tunnel. For a long while, Barker stayed hidden, listening to them as they worked and talked, but it quickly ended.

One of the knockers had noticed him, and he was confronted by them for his disrespect and curiosity. As punishment, the creatures magically injured his knee, making Barker lame for the rest of his life. It was one more verse in the same old song. Disrespect to the guardians of the mine came with severe punishment, from physical injury to the collapse of an entire mine. Sadly though, we humans rarely need the assistance of supernatural creatures

to bring ruin down upon our heads. Whether or not the approval of mythical creatures is secured, mines have been and always will be a very dangerous place to work, because down in the darkness, something very real awaits those who venture in. Unexpected disaster and horrifying death. Mining is far from safe. It's no wonder that early miners told stories about mystical beings

that lived in the darkness and warned them of impending danger, because honestly, danger was often waiting right around the corner. In 1858, a coal mine in Port Talbot, a town on the southern coast of Wales, suffered an explosion that took the lives of four workers. Five years later, another tragedy there killed 39 men. Seven years after that, it was another 30, and a generation later in 1890, another explosion killed 87 workers. A similar tragedy took place in France in 1906,

when almost 1,100 miners died in an explosion. 36 years later and thousands of miles away, an explosion inside a mine in China killed more than 1,500. The stories go on and on, and not just deep into the past either. Even today, reports occasionally hit the news of new accidents and more lives lost. Mining is dangerous work, and like a lot of human endeavors, it comes at a great cost. And that was no less true for the people who worked in the mine just outside of Crosby, Minnesota at the turn of the century.

Now, when most people think of Minnesota, they probably think of frost-covered tundra, countless lakes, and dense, endless forests. But hidden beneath that landscape is a ribbon of minerals that had been sought after for more than a century. Crosby is actually a planned mining town, built specifically to be the home base for those who worked in the nearby mines. It sits on what's known as the Cayuna Iron Range, one of four narrow, 68-mile-long strips of flatland

that hide iron and manganese ore beneath the surface. And that includes the Milford Mine, situated about three miles north of Crosby, right up against the northwest corner of Foley Lake. The mine was just six years old when the work crew arrived on the morning of February 5, 1924. There were 48 of them, and to get to work, each one had to descend 200 feet into the ground

by climbing down a seemingly endless ladder, one rung at a time. And remember, at the end of the day, exhausted and filthy and ready for rest, they would all have to repeat that process all over again. Frank Junior was relatively new to the crew in the mine. His father, Frank Senior, had worked there for years as an expert blaster, but Junior had to start at the bottom of the ladder, so to speak.

So on the day in question, he was in a less congested part of the mine, fulfilling his duties as a dirt tramer, shoveling up all the smaller bits of ore that were left behind by the bigger equipment. He lit his work area with one of the carbide gas lamps that every miner carried, casting harsh shadows on the rough-hewn walls. It was cold and damp,

and while there were echoes of the work elsewhere in the mine, Frank Junior's little corner seemed to be a bit more peaceful. And then he felt the wind. It was a hot blast of air that rushed hard against his face. So hard, in fact, that his lantern was blown out, leaving him in total darkness. And as Frank stood in the suffocating blackness, a new sensation appeared.

Water. It was flowing against his work boots, fast and thick with dirt and debris. And it was rising. Frank Junior didn't know it then, but today we know what had happened. Turns out that a portion of the mine had actually been dug beneath Foley Lake. And when that happened, it became a ticking time bomb,

just waiting to blow up in their faces. But Frank didn't need to know what had caused it to react. So in a heartbeat, he made a dash for the exit ladder. Above ground, the frozen surface of the lake actually cracked, and the water level began to drop. Inside the mine, the reverse was happening, and all of that water was quickly filling up the tunnels where the men had been working.

Frank wasn't the first to reach the ladder, but he threw himself on it as fast as he could, climbing away from the rising danger. Along the way, he actually climbed around a slower, older miner named Harry Hossford, and then came to a stop beneath another larger man. His name was Matt Kangus, and he had apparently panicked and froze in his place

at a key spot in the exit shaft. Frank later described the situation by saying that Kangus had clogged their escape route. But he was a smart man, and he wanted to survive, so he forced himself up between the legs of the larger man and reached back down and pulled Hossford through. Finally, after ascending those 200 daunting feet one last time, Frank and the others collapsed on the ground

outside the exit of the mine. Only five of them had managed to escape alive. Among the dead was Frank's father. 40 others lost their lives that day as well, and most of them did so without someone else to tell their tale or claim to see them trying to escape. But there was one lost miner who would forever be remembered for his act of heroism in the face of danger,

and his name was Clinton Harris. Harris had been the closest miner to the exit shaft. Part of his job down there involved operating a hoist that sent buckets full of coal to the surface, and when the water began to rush in after the tunnel collapsed, he very well could have made it easily to safety, but instead he chose to do something else. Stepping toward the ladder,

Harris apparently grabbed hold of the cable that operated the warning whistle. Pulling hard on it, he sent a loud alarm that was designed to announce an emergency and cause immediate evacuation. But in the process, perhaps due to the strong flow of the water pushing against him, Harris became tangled in the alarm device,

unable to make his own escape. Even after drowning with inside of the ladder, the weight of his body kept enough pressure on the cable to keep the whistle blowing for hours. It became the soundtrack to the panic and despair that every man felt inside the mine, and as loved ones rushed from Crosby to learn what had happened, that whistle was the first thing most of them heard.

Many of those loved ones were wives who learned they had suddenly become widows, and a number of them expressed a desire to throw themselves into the water-filled exit shaft to join their lost husbands in death. Thankfully, that never happened, and within four or five hours, someone was able to reach the engine room of the mine

and silence the alarm whistle. The aftermath of the tragedy was an exercise in frustration. With more than 40 bodies to recover, rescue efforts began that very same night, and it was soon clear that pumping the water out of the mine was pointless since it was fed directly by the lake above it. In fact, so much water had flowed from the lake to the mine that the surface of the lake had visibly dropped.

Instead, they decided to drain the lake, allowing them to gain access to the mine and recover the bodies of their fallen fathers and friends. It took them nine months to do it, but by November of 1924, they finally pulled the last of them out, bringing closure to an experience that would haunt the town for decades to come.

Mining in the Cayuna Range ended around 1984, but the land still bears the marks of its residence legacy. The piles of rock and open mines are proof of that, but some of the marks are a bit more mysterious, and they serve to remind us of the darker side of humanity's search for riches beneath the surface. In the end, one thing is absolutely clear. No matter how deep we delve into the world around us,

we're never really far from our most abundant resource. Tragedy Music It's clear that we have a deep connection to the world below us. For many, those dark tunnels and unexplored caverns represent horror and uncertainty. They are the shadow, and we're not really sure what they contain,

so we stay away. The fear of the dark is one of our most primal, after all. But that hasn't stopped others from setting aside that fear and going deeper. Whether it was in search of shelter, a place to record a message, or to retrieve something rare and valuable, humans have occasionally set aside their fears

in favor of other urges. Looking back, though, it's unclear whether that has always been a good thing. Frank Jr. certainly understood that. Much later in his life, he was interviewed about his experience in the mine and his miraculous survival after such a horrible tragedy. And he was quick to disagree with the official declaration

that the accident had been an act of God. No, Frank believed the true cause was a lot closer to home and much less noble. They wanted the ore real bad, he told the reporter. In those days, they needed steel. Every place they could get it. After the armistice that ended World War I, they had to replace supplies because steel was gone.

They just wanted the ore. Frank went on to tell the reporter that they wanted the ore so badly that they went too far. According to him, the mining engineer knew they had tunneled too far beneath the lake. The miners knew it too, and many of them had quit over it just days before the accident. But the best ore was beneath the lake,

and corporate greed became more important than personal safety. Of course, they had reason to be worried, and the events of 1924 validated that fear. But the people of Crosby picked up the pieces and tried to move forward. Eventually, the mine was cleared and operations there were resumed. And naturally, locals signed back up to work there.

But stepping back into a place that had been home to so much pain and suffering, was bound to stir up some feelings. Some of the miners to venture down there after it reopened claimed to hear voices in the darkness below. Voices that sounded a lot like those of their lost fellow workmen, which admittedly would have been enough to frighten many away. And yet something even more terrifying awaited them down there.

As they descended for the first time, waves of sensation washed over them. They could feel the cold and the damp. They could smell the scent of death and decay. And there was something else. At the bottom of the ladder, many of the returning miners saw a shape in the darkness. Naturally, they used their lanterns to chase away the shadows.

When they did, though, the light revealed the figure of Clinton Harris, still tied to the alarm whistle. The man's body was ghostly and translucent, and his features were ravaged by decay. But they recognized him nonetheless. Of course, it was all impossible. Harris' body had been pulled from the mine months before,

and the apparatus that housed the emergency whistle had been dismantled and carted to the surface. What they saw did not exist. And yet there it was, right before their eyes. So they retreated back up the ladder. With fear pushing against them from below, the men hurried back toward the safety of the open sky and the daylight up above.

But as they did, a new terror surged through all of them, like an electric shock. The whistle, long gone and nonexistent, began to shriek throughout the mine. They reached the surface a short while later, their hearts beating uncontrollably. But as they lay there on the dirt around the opening of the entrance shaft,

all they could think about was the vision of Harris, the scent of death, and that horrible, piercing, never-ending whistle. From that day forward, not a single one of them ever set foot in the mine again. It takes a lot of faith to set aside fear and enter a place that makes us feel insecure. So it's only natural that thousands of years of mining

had netted us more than cart fulls of precious metals. We've also walked away with folklore. We've also walked away with folklore. We've also walked away with folklore. We've also walked away with folklore. We've also walked away with folklore. Stick around after this short sponsor break, and I'll reveal one more piece of that amazing folklore to you.

And it's a story you don't want to miss. There's a temptation a lot of us feel to assume that folklore is a world we left behind centuries ago, that as reason and science took over, they halted the spread of the stories we've always told, but nothing could be further from the truth. That's because story is central to who we are as humans, and when we move and settle in new areas,

we take those stories with us. They're part of our culture, our family, and our faith, and no amount of years or miles can make them go away. One of the cultures I mentioned earlier were the miners from Cornwall. Back home, they became incredibly skilled at their job, but when economic hardship ravaged the country in the late 19th century, many of those miners packed up

and traveled across the Atlantic to make a fresh start in the United States. When they arrived, they put those skills to work in places like California, where the gold rush was spreading like wildfire and filling heads with visions of wealth and glory. Soon enough, you couldn't walk into a mine in the western United States

without finding at least one Cornish miner. But of course, they brought more than their trade skills with them. They brought their folklore too. But those little creatures they whispered about back in Cornwall took on a slightly different name in America. Instead of knockers, they became more commonly known as Tommy knockers, and that wasn't the only change those mystical guardians of the underground would go through,

because American culture was very different from back home. In Cornwall, those little creatures tended to be forces for good, rewarding honorable behavior and punishing ambition and greed. But ambition and greed were central to much of 19th century America. It was the gilded age, after all, the era of the Rockefellers and the Vanderbilt and all their other ultra-wealthy families who represented the pinnacle of the American dream.

So when the Tommy knockers arrived, they had to adapt to those new values. There were other differences too. In Cornwall, the knockers were seen as small, invisible, weathered old men who worked in the shadows of the mine. In America, though, the Tommy knocker became more of a ghostly figure, a spirit of dead miners who still communicated with the living. And in the late 19th century,

a time when spiritualism was dominant in American culture, that transformation made a lot of sense. But regardless of their new qualities, the Tommy knockers were a common subject of discussion among those who worked in the mines across the country. So much so that they began to become essential parts of that industry. They were protective spirits who never left a mine until it was officially closed down,

and they gave those who worked there a bit of extra reassurance. It's said that the Cornish miners in America would refuse to enter a mine unless their employers guaranteed that the Tommy knockers were already on duty. They were essentially co-workers, so it's no wonder that as mines began to close around the country in the 1950s, the miners wanted to make sure the Tommy knockers were taken care of too. In one instance in Pennsylvania,

out-of-work miners formed the Society for the Relief and Support of Displaced Tommy Knockers. That was its name. They had legitimate concern for the well-being of these imaginary creatures, and they weren't alone. In California, newspapers printed articles about the housing crisis faced by so many of what they called mining gremlins.

But the best example of this intersection of folklore and work life happened in 1956, after a large mine in California was shut down. The workers there were distraught at the loss of their own jobs, for sure, but they also expressed concern for the Tommy knockers who had worked invisibly alongside them, so they petitioned the owners of the mine to do something extraordinary. They asked for all the Tommy knockers to be given pink slips,

official notices of the termination of their employment, and they requested that the mine remain open for two weeks after the pink slips had been delivered, just to give the Tommy knockers enough time to pack up and find new work elsewhere. It sounds ridiculous, I know. Business is a cold and heartless place, after all, and it doesn't seem like a fertile ground to plant the seeds of folklore.

Running a mine is all about output and profit, but this request was something else entirely. It was, too, a lot of people. Nothing more than an exercise in fantasy. But it was also compelling. And in the end, the owners of the mine surprised everyone in the area, superstitious miners, and cold-hearted business owners alike. They happily complied with the request.

This episode of Lore was written and produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with research by Sam Alberti and music by Chad Lawson. Lore is much more than just a podcast. There's a book series available in bookstores and online, and two seasons of the television show on Amazon Prime Video. Check them both out if you want more Lore in your life. I also make two other podcasts, Aaron Mankey's Cabinet of Curiosities, and Unobscured, and I think you'd enjoy both.

Each one explores other areas of our dark history, ranging from bite-sized episodes to season-long dives into a single topic. And you can learn more about both of those shows and everything else going on all over in one central place. TheWorldOfLore.com slash now. And you can also follow the show on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and click that follow button. And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi. And as always, thanks for listening.