The Tape Library - Archive of the Paranormal & the Unexplained - The Disturbing Sheppton Mine Disaster
Episode Date: May 21, 2026In August 1963, the ground suddenly collapsed beneath a Pennsylvania coal mine… trapping three men hundreds of feet underground with almost no food, light, or air. For the next 14 days, the world l...istened as rescuers drilled into the earth and heard something impossible — voices coming from deep below the surface. But down below, something truly strange was happening. The survivors began to be visited by strange figures... This is the true story of the Sheppton Mine Disaster, one of the most dramatic survival stories in mining history. In this documentary episode, we explore what really happened near Sheppton, how two miners survived in total darkness, the desperate rescue operation that captured global attention, and why the disaster still fascinates people today with its stranger details. Buried alive. Fourteen days underground. And a rescue the world would never forget. If you enjoy true disaster stories, survival documentaries, and forgotten historical events, subscribe for more episodes from The Tape Library. This episode features the track Heating provided by long time fan of the show Maikee72/Michael. Huge thank you to him for providing it, which you can hear at 6:37 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Support the channel with Patreon - www.patreon.com/thetapelibrary Do you have a supernatural story to share? Drop me an email at thetapelibrary@protonmail.com You can check out The Tape Library in audio form on all of your favourite podcast providers. Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thetapelibrary Tiktok - https://www.tiktok.com/@thetapelibrary Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Tape-Library/100094332411836/ Archive of the Paranormal, the strange and the unexplained. Additional footage and audio from Evanto, Artgrid, Epidemic Sounds, Singularity and Pexels. Music includes Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio and the youtube audio library. Additional music by @repulsive1908 All other footage used under fair use. Chapters 00:00 The Knox Disaster 03:42 The Coal Region05:56 The Sheppton Mine Disaster14:03 The Visions22:39 The Rescue26:38 An Unbelievable Story32:35 What Really Happened?38:41 Wrapping Up SpectreVision Radio is a bespoke podcast network at the intersection between the arts and the uncanny, featuring a tapestry of shows exploring creativity, the esoteric, and the unknown. We’re a community for creators and fans vibrating around common curiosities, shared interests and persistent passions. spectrevisionradio.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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It had been a few years since Knox, a disaster that many called murder.
In January of 1959, the thin rock that separated the mine from the river broke, creating a whirlpool that sucked in millions of gallons of icy water, flooding the tunnels and giving the men inside no chance.
to react before the wall of water hit them.
Somehow, 33 miners have made it out.
However, 12 were not so lucky.
Their bodies were never found, just sucked down into the darkness below.
That was the story that David Fellin had running through his mind at that exact moment
as he listened to the sound of water running down the broken drainage pipes.
It had been five days, five days buried deep underground, in a space that they could barely
crawl around in.
He and his companion, Henry Throne, had been keeping a keen ear out in the hope of hearing
someone, the sound of yelling, the sound of a drill, anything that could signal that someone
was trying to rescue them.
But this was the first thing they had heard in days.
falling from above, finding its way down below.
David thought this was it.
The painful haunting memory of the Knox disaster echoed in his mind, and he believed the
end was soon to come.
They were drowned here.
He was sure of it.
All hope was lost.
But they didn't.
The rain fell for only twenty minutes before stop.
stopping, sparing the men from a watery end.
But it didn't even feel like it mattered in that moment.
No one was going to find them.
At least, no one from the surface.
But soon David Fellin and Henry Fawn would begin to realize that they weren't as alone
as they thought they were.
There seemed to be something down there in the collapsed mineshaft with them, something they
would struggle to truly explain. Some of what they would see would be described as a miracle,
but other elements of their experience they would take to their graves, unwilling to speak about
the darker elements of what was there down below. This is a really interesting story on multiple
levels. It begins with a tragic disaster. It demonstrates the unwavering capacity of human beings
to survive even the darkest circumstances.
But it also takes us into a more fantastical realm,
a world of near-death experiences, of visions, of miracles,
and possibly something less welcoming.
Get yourself a warm drink, dim the lights and get comfortable.
I've got something a little different for you tonight.
This is the terrifying true story of the Shepton Mind disaster.
Welcome.
To the table ivory.
In the anthracite coal belt of northeastern Pennsylvania, the landscape is defined as much by
what lies underground as what stands on the surface.
For more than a century, this region was powered by deep coal mining, carving vast networks
of tunnels under towns and forests, and leaving behind a landscape dotted with abandoned shafts,
ghost towns and industrial ruins.
Our communities once depended on the mines, and thousands of miners lost their lives on the ground.
Even today, the earth here still shifts and sinks.
And in places, the ground continues to burn, from long-forgotten fires, like the one that emptied the town of Centralia.
It's a place that feels forgotten, an echo of man's attempt to control nature.
Among miners and their families, the coal region has long carried a reputation for strange stories.
Everything from Bigfoot sightings to UFOs have been reported in the region over the decades.
But the folklore that really gives the region its personality comes from those echoes that I mentioned
before.
Some speak of hearing distant knocks from sealed mineshafts at night, as if tools were still striking
rock far below.
The shining lights of minor helmets have been seen moving across the abandoned streets of Centralia.
tell of warm air rising from vents in winter, carrying faint voices or the hum of machinery
where no mine has operated for decades. The legacy of the Molly Maguire still lingers in local
folklore, a supposed secret society that was known for its activism within the Irish-American
coal mining towns, which saw several of its members executed in the 1800s. But some people
will swear that they still see them, still walking around the town, still walking around the town,
towns to this day. It was in this atmosphere that the events of the Shepton Mine
disaster unfolded when the ground suddenly collapsed and three miners disappeared
into the darkness. What followed would become one of the most extraordinary survival
stories in mining history. It was 7 a.m. on August 13th, 1963. A year we have
spoken about a lot recently. A year when our world seemed to take a strange turn.
A free man crew made up of David Fellin, Henry Throne and Louis Bova entered into the mine.
As they descended into the single entry mine, the temperature instantly changed.
The warm breeze of the summer morning quickly faded into the icy cold of the tunnel.
David was actually the oldest of the three men and in charge that day, which was pretty normal
since he was one of the mine's co-owners. Lewis Bova was in his 40s, but Henry Frone was only 28,
and relatively new to the industry. Soon they were down there, in the darkness, lit only by the gas
lamps, skin darkened by the coal that could penetrate their skin so much that it often looked
like a tattoo. By 8 a.m., the three men had filled up their first buggy, and Lewis banged three times
to let the men above know to start hoisting the cart out.
David and Henry were on one side of the cart's track.
Lewis was on the other.
It had been a productive start to the day as they watched the first cart slowly move up the mineshaft,
pulled by a steel cable.
They turned away and continued their work.
David and Henry walked towards a shelter area just to the west,
while Lewis moved to the signal station on the east side.
They didn't have time to process what happened next.
All they heard was a large rumble.
The carts had reached the top, unloaded the coal and was now returning back down.
When suddenly, the cable snapped.
The cart began to fall back down the track completely out of control.
The support beams smashed and the walls surrounding the track began to crumble.
The men quickly cowed in the hope that it would save them from the full.
falling debris, but there was nothing they could do.
The earth swallowed them whole.
David and Henry were instantly separated from Lewis, stepping aside just as the beams above
their head came down and became trapped in what can only be described as a small pocket of space
to the side of what was once the mine cart track.
The force from the collapse was so great that it sent David flying into the floor, temporarily
deafened by the loud crash. He tried to catch his breath but choked on the thick coal-filled
air. It was like an explosion. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. He couldn't hear.
But slowly he regained his senses, at least partially. Lewis was still on the other side of the track,
separated from the others by the rubble. David and Henry rushed towards the wall of coal and timber,
and in the dim light that still remained from the road.
their work lights and headlamps, they could just about see their colleague threw a gap on the
other side on the ground. But those work lights quickly died, leaving only the headlamp light,
cutting off their vision to just a few feet, and losing Lewis to the darkness. They shouted out
to him to see if he was okay. Amazingly it seemed he too was alive, but he sounded as though he were in a
great deal of pain. He shouted out that he had broken his leg, but then he went silent.
David and Henry kept calling out to him, but it would be a long time before they would hear
Lewis's voice again. For the next 90 minutes or so, the ground continued to move. Constant
cave-ins can be heard from elsewhere in the mine, and David and Henry just sat with their
backs to the wall in their tiny space, praying that the ceiling
wasn't about to fall down on them, completely helpless and cut off from the real world, 300 feet down.
The headlamps lasted for just a couple of hours before they two faded away, leaving the two men entombed in the pitch black.
David, the much more experienced of the two, instantly knew that what awaited them was a mental battle as much as it was a physical one.
He was sure they would be rescued, but how long that would take was anyone's guess.
He knew it was his responsibility to keep not just himself but the younger Henry in high spirits,
to keep hope alive that they would one day see light again.
Above ground there was panic.
The coal company claimed that it did not have the funds to launch a rescue mission.
But regardless, everyone who looked down the slope into the,
mine had little hope that anyone could have survived the collapse. If they hadn't been crushed,
they would have surely quickly suffocated. A terrible but hopefully quick end for the free men.
Down below, David and Henry began to pick up broken bits of timber and used it to try and reinforce
the small chamber they were trapped in, crawling along the floor for the most part to do this.
Their body's aching, their hearing still ringing. And very,
virtually blind in the darkness.
The cold ravaged their bodies, the relentless, uncaring chill of the ground.
The two men spent much of their time huddled together, trying to keep one another warm in a desperate
hope to avoid hyperphemia.
The cold was so harsh that they couldn't think straight.
It was just this constant pressure on their bodies, but their main concern was water.
At first they began to try and suck the moisture out of the broken bits of timber.
But that didn't offer much in the way of hydration.
But then they would have a small bit of luck.
They couldn't say exactly when it was, as hours turned into days very quickly and all
sense of time was lost, but they managed to find a small stream of water running through
the mine.
Using a broken bit of a pipe, David plugged one end with electrical tape and the other with rags and
tied a piece of cable to the end. They then dropped the pipe into the drainage hole that they
had found. When he pulled it up, sure enough it was full of water. The excited men quickly drank
from it before they noticed the smell. It was sulfur water. At first they spat it out,
but it was their only source of water. And soon desperation took hold. They were luckily able
to keep it down, although the dehydration had already begun to cause stomach cramps and other
issues for the two men. The water was disgusting to drink, but it would keep them alive.
For food they began to eat the bark from the support beams. It didn't offer much in the way of
sustenance, but it would help with the hunger pains. All the while the two men held on to the belief
that help was coming. Each day they would attempt to dig, desperate for
for a way out, using whatever broken remains of tools they could find. They would tap on beams
and poles, in the hope that the sound would reverberate the top, letting the others know they
were alive, and they would pray. David, a devout Catholic, encouraged the less religious Henry
to pray each day with him as they were down there. And it was soon after these attempts to speak
out to a higher power, that the two men began to become to be able to
convinced that there was something down there in the dark with them.
At first it was just an odd sensation, paranoia maybe.
Their senses were dulled to such an extreme and in such a hopeless scenario that it
only seemed logical that their minds would be searching for danger.
But it really did feel like they were being watched.
Above ground, plans were being put in place to see if they could find them.
men, but worries about toxic fumes of black damp gas made things difficult.
The initial estimate was that it might take as long as 50 days to find the men.
At which point, even if they were somehow still alive at this moment, they wouldn't
be any longer.
But the community and volunteers from all over rallied together to lend a hand.
The event quickly gained national and then international attention.
But down below, things were taking a strange turn.
David woke up with Henry asleep in his arms.
That was when he noticed.
He could see.
There was a light just further along the area they were trapped in.
David quickly woke Henry.
There was someone there.
Someone had found them.
It was a shadowy figure with a light on his head.
David called out to the man for light, saying they were over here.
Henry laughed with joy.
This was no hallucination.
He could see the man too.
They were saved.
But strangely, the man didn't react to their cries.
Henry and David began to crawl towards the shadowy man, but then they realized something
was wrong.
wrong. He had initially assumed it was a miner or a rescuer based on the headlamp. But he was
dressed, strangely, in a silver full-bodied suit. What's more, the more they crawled,
the further away the man seemed to get. Was he walking away from them? Why couldn't he hear
them? Then as the shadowy man got smaller and smaller, he just seemed to face. He just seemed to
fade out of existence, leaving the two men back in the dark, in stunned silence. The fort came
to David first. Were they losing their minds already? But Henry had seen it too. That wouldn't
be the only time they would see the shadowy figure. He would appear on numerous occasions over the
following days. Sometimes he didn't come alone. Being spotted next to
people dressed just like him. But there was another person who seemed to be a constant presence
in their time down there. One day, something even stranger happened. A door appeared. Once again
both men could see it. It looked just like a normal house door, but there was a strange blue
glow around its edges, lighting the space around it. The door slowly opened. The door slowly opened,
and out stepped two men. They seemed to be just ordinary looking men, and they revealed to David
and Henry what was beyond that door. But this was where, interestingly, what they saw differed.
Both men could see the glowing house door, and both of them could see the strange silent men
who had stepped out. But to David, beyond the door he saw marble steps, reaching up to a
was seen that almost looked like a stereotypical view, of heaven, a golden city with massive
structures, cherub-like creatures floating around, and angels playing harps. But to Henry, he saw something
much simpler, a narrow staircase leading to another identical door. While the vision gave David
a sense of peace, he instinctively felt that they shouldn't head towards the door, that the
doorway marked the end, an opportunity to give up and move on. Something he wasn't willing to do,
not yet, not while he still had some hope of seeing his family once again. David turned his
head. Standing to his right in the cave was the man in the hat, smiling and standing there
with his arms crossed. It was Henry who had actually referred to him. He was, he was, who had actually referred to
him as the man in the hat. He was one of the first visions they seemed to have shortly after the
man with a light on his head had appeared to them. Both of them could see him, this kind-looking
young man who just stared at the two men. Henry thought he looked strange, but to David,
the man in the hat was a comforting presence. He wasn't always easy to spot, just this figure in the
darkness watching them from the corners each and every day. Henry only noticed him a couple of
times, but David would see him in the corner of his eyes continuously. He tried not to draw too
much attention to him. He knew Henry was struggling and was increasingly becoming prone to erratic
behaviour. When Henry noticed a man, that was one thing. But he didn't want to tell him that the
man in the hat was constantly there, nor did he want to tell the young man that he, in fact,
knew who the man in the hat was. It was too unbelievable. He thought it was too much for Henry's
already fragile mind. This wasn't the only time they saw the doorway, nor the figures, nor the
lights. Some days they were both see it, other times only one of them.
Henry became so convinced that it was real at one point that he told David he was going home through the door,
only to fall into an unseen hole, bruising his eye in the process.
The figures they would see in the minds, they would refer to as humanoid.
Not quite people.
They looked like tall men, handsome with bronze coloured skin,
and slightly pointed ears, thin lips and dimmed.
dark straight hair and wore outfits not too dissimilar from a kimono. These figures were often
spotted, but they just seemed to observe the two miners, just silently watching them. At one point,
Henry became convinced that they could hear Lewis's voice again, shouting down to them from
somewhere higher up, that he had a light to give them. But Henry thought this was just his
mind playing tricks on him. It seemed that there were times when they couldn't trust their
senses anymore, but both men still seemed to suggest that there was a difference between
those times and the other things they saw. One night when they were both close to giving up
all hope of being rescued, something happened to both men. They felt a strange sensation.
Then they both realised they could see themselves. They were looking at the same. They were looking
down on their sleeping bodies from the roof of the narrow cave. But then they floated further
up, passing through hundreds of feet of black rubble, until they were suddenly at the surface.
At that moment they continued to rise up. They saw them. Hundreds of volunteers, large machines,
unlike any they had ever seen, that were working to dig them out, before suddenly returning to
their bodies. A simple dream perhaps, but seemingly it happened to both men. Although for Henry
it was just that one time, David claimed he was able to leave the mine on multiple occasions.
It was the sixth day of being trapped down there when the two men heard something, a rumbling sound.
Suddenly a drill pierced through the chamber's roof. The drill bit broke in the process.
but it was the first sign that someone was up there trying to reach the men.
Their first moment of true hope. They began to yell and scream out that they were there and alive.
It took some time but soon something else poked through the newly opened hole,
a microphone, the wire of which had been snaked through 300 feet of coal to reach them,
and it was just trying to see if there were any sounds that could signal.
life.
Cheers roared between the team up above when the voices of Henry and David came over the radio.
David had grabbed the microphone and shouted out, we're not afraid of anything down here.
But despite finding where the men were located, actually getting to them, was going to be
an achievement in of itself.
The borehole was too small to fit through and it would require a special bit of gear to be brought
in to actually make the hole large enough to fit the men through, a drill that would actually
be supplied by the billionaire Howard Hughes. It would take another full week until a plan was
formulated to get the men out. In the meantime, food and medical supplies were dropped down
for Henry and David. But the strange visions persisted, and David especially was conscious
of the man in the hat, still there, always there.
watching, smiling.
Seven days after the mine collapsed, drilling resumed after the right equipment was shipped
in by the Navy, as the world's media and locals watched on.
After seven more days it reached the two men, who had now been trapped underground for a full
two weeks.
The hole that had been drilled wasn't a smooth entrance in and out.
The lower sections in particular had numerous ledges that jutted out.
A plan was created that saw body harnesses and coverals being sent down to the men.
David and Henry were instructed to help each other into the outfits and then to cover themselves
in axle grease that would be required to squeeze the men through the 300 foot plus hole
that was only around 17 inches wide.
David insisted that Henry be rescued first.
He had seen the deterioration in Henry over the last week.
He was highly emotional and he wasn't sure how he would react to being left down there alone.
As the harnesses began to lift Henry, David told him not to speak about what they had
seen, that people wouldn't understand, and then he was off, being wasted up toward the light.
The claustrophobia was intense.
struggle to breathe as he was pulled up through the narrow opening, unsure if he would truly
make it. But after about 15 minutes he felt it. The cool breeze of the night's air, as he was hoisted
up and onto the earth. David was pulled up next, singing songs and making jokes as he went up,
much to the delight of the crowds who had gathered around. David was a little disgruntled, when he
arrived at the top to find Henry talking to the press about having seen people down in the
mines and glowing lights.
But for the most part, these were just assumed to be a psychotic element to the trauma
that the men had undergone.
The two men were quickly taken to the hospital, the whole time claiming that they believed
Lewis was still alive.
But unfortunately, it was estimated to take nearly four months to reach the place they believed
Lewis was, quickly the search was called off and Louis Bova was declared deceased. His body never
recovered. As Henry sat in his hospital bed at Hazleton General, he spotted something from across
the room. A photograph someone had left next to one of the beds. He approached, picking it up,
his hands shaking as he did. Davy, he called out to Fellin.
Davy, it's the man in the hat, the man who was with us down there.
David smiled and closed his eyes.
He knew who was in the photo.
It was Pope John the 23rd.
David had recognised the man straight away when they were down there from the various photographs
he had seen of him over the years.
But interestingly, he appeared to the miners as a much younger version of himself.
his 30s, despite being in his early 80s at the time.
That was when David revealed to Henry why he hadn't told him who the man in the hat was.
It was because Pope John had died just a couple of months before the mind collapsed.
To David, his appearance was a miracle, a sign that the divine was there, keeping them strong
and alive. But he wasn't sure how Henry would react to the idea of being trapped in an underground
tunnel with a dead man. Miraculously, both men seemed to be in surprisingly good health. They
had minimal injuries and were declared of sound mind despite the trauma of the last few weeks.
In regards to what they had seen down there, they were told that these were simply hallucinations.
the two men couldn't accept this. The doctors weren't there. They didn't see what they saw,
experienced what they experienced. At least at first David kept his stories close to his chest,
aware of how wild they sounded. Henry, however, was much more frustrated about being treated
as crazy. Then things took a turn for the two men. Their ability to survive was attributed to a much
more sinister theory than a will to live or miracles. Some believed that they had turned to
cannibalism, that they had eaten the body of Louis Bova. Both men denied it and no evidence
of the act was ever found, but the rumor persists to this day, leaving a dark shadow over their
whole ordeal. David caused further issues for the men when he publicly criticized a rescue
effort for taking as long as it did, and some state that their claims of some kind of biblical
vision only began after questions were raised about the safety of the mining operation that David
was partially responsible for. Pope John 23rd was canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church in
2014, more than 50 years after his death. In the Catholic Church, canonization normally requires
proof of two miracles that occur after a candidate's death and are attributed to them.
The first miracle linked to John 23rd involved an Italian nun,
Sister Katerina Capitani. In 1966, she was dying from a severe stomach hemorrhage
following surgery. According to testimony gathered during the church's investigation,
she and others prayed specifically to Pope John the 23rd.
and doctors could not find a medical explanation for her sudden improvement,
but she claimed to have been visited by the Pope while she lay alone in bed at her lowest moment.
After years of review by medical experts and theologians, the Vatican formally recognised this as a miracle in the year 2000.
Normally a second confirmed miracle would be required before canonisation.
However, in a rare and significant decision, Pope Francis wavered the requirement for a second miracle
when he canonised Pope John 23rd in 2014.
However, not formally connected to his canonisation,
numerous other miracles were considered to have possibly been attributed to the deceased Pope,
one of which was the Shepton Mind Disaster.
Both Henry and David were interviewed separately on Sunday.
several occasions, most notably for Fate magazine, and it was astonishing how many of their
supposed hallucinations they both claim to see, backing up one another's claims on many occasions,
repeatedly arguing that these were not hallucinations. Later in his life, David Fellin made a strange
comment, saying he saw things down in that mind. He knew things he shouldn't.
Before adding, there are more planets with human life in the universe than there are grains of sand
on all the beaches in the world. He stated that there were also things he saw down there that he
wouldn't talk about, things he couldn't talk about, sightings that both men believed
people wouldn't be able to understand, a dark secret, that they took to their graves. So what really
happened. The most likely answer to all of this is the idea of hallucinations. That what the
two men experienced down there was an example of folly adieu, a shared delusion between two people.
Hulls have been picked in their accounts of what they saw, most notably the differences in the
staircases that both men claim to have seen, and also in an apparent glowing crucifix,
that was also seen on some occasions, with both men describing it slightly different.
differently. But in many other instances, their claims did match up. They seemed to genuinely
believe that they had seen these things and rejected the idea of them being hallucinations,
a fact they argued for the rest of their lives, up until both men finally passed in the 1990s.
But there are the more out-there theories posed over the years, and some of these take us
into some unexpected and wild directions. Comparisons have been drawn up to supposed encounters
with the men in black that the men they saw down there underground acted and looked a lot like
the legendary figures that haunt UFO witnesses. The alien or otherworldly connection to what
they saw seems to tie in nicely to the comments that David made late in his life about other worlds.
claiming that while down there he saw other places and times.
Putting the men in black to one side, comparisons have also been drawn from the men in the mines,
to the Nordics, an apparent race of aliens that many people have claimed to see over the years,
who do seem to bear a slight resemblance to what Henry and David claimed to see.
Then we can start to get into the really out there theory,
about this case, including the idea of hollow earth theory.
The hollow earth theory is a long-standing idea that the planet contains vast hidden worlds beneath
its surface.
Versions of this theory date back centuries, evolving from early scientific speculation into
a mix of conspiracy theories and paranormal folklore.
Modern interpretations often describe enormous underground caverns, lit by a mysterious
internal light source.
According to believers, secret entrances to this underground realm exist at the poles or in remote mountain regions.
Many have tried to claim that the two miners ended up close to one of these hidden worlds, that its residents came out to see the men to observe the strange humans who had found themselves so far underground, and that David's religious ideals twisted what they saw slightly into something more biblical.
But if we're going with a more out-their claim, I believe that David and Henry had a fairly clear idea in their heads of what they saw.
A lot of what they claim to experience seems to fall into the realm of visions associated with near-death experiences.
Near-death experiences are reported by people who have come close to dying or were briefly declared clinically dead before being revived.
Across cultures and decades, many accounts.
share strikingly similar themes, a sensation of leaving the body, moving through darkness
or a tunnel, encountering a bright light, and feeling an overwhelming sense of peace, or unconditional
love. Some people described meeting deceased relatives, religious figures, or mysterious beings
who communicate telepathically. Researchers approach NDE's from both scientific and spiritual angles,
Neurologists often point to oxygen deprivation and the brain's attempt to process trauma
as possible explanations for the vivid imagery and emotions.
Meanwhile, spiritual interpretations view NDEs as a glimpse of an afterlife
or a transitional state between life and death.
Regardless of the explanation, the experiences can have profound long-term effects on those who report them,
often leading to reduce fear of death and significant shifts in personal beliefs.
All of this seems to match up with what the miners experienced.
But if what they were being shown was the other side of human existence,
a far-off world where other life forms lived,
a glimpse into some kind of afterlife,
or simply the brain,
releasing chemicals to make the process of death easier,
I don't think they could truly say
what really happened down in those tunnels
well I don't think anyone other than Henry and David could tell you that
and there were secrets they held on to
about what happened down there
secrets they decided for whatever reason we shouldn't know
it makes me wonder
what if there was something down there
But it was just taking on a biblical theme because that's what it thought the men would relate to.
Maybe it was hiding its true appearance.
But maybe, at some point, David saw beyond it, or sensed something else there alongside
it.
Something he didn't want to tell the world.
And that will be the detail about this story that will keep it.
will keep me awake tonight. That's all for this entry into the tape library. I actually read
about this story when I covered Centrelia way back in my Ghost Town episode in early 2024. It didn't
really fit into that episode, but I've always kept it in my back pocket for when we inevitably
do an episode on near-death experiences. But I recently read Shepton, The Myth, the Miracle and the
Music, and thought it deserved its own episode. I strongly recommend checking out that book if you
want to delve deeper into this one. It's a quick read but it contains so much more information
that I only skimmed through here. The author also has a follow-up book about the general
strangeness of the coal region that is well worth checking out too. I had mentioned in the last
episode that I was working on a more modern paranormal case, but the research for that one was
taking a while. So that will still be coming at some point, but it's likely going to be a double
length episode. So I'll be working on that one for a while, maybe with an aim of getting
it out in late June or early July. Our next episode is another entry into a series that I've
been doing on this show over the last couple of years. A few of you have been asking for the next part
for a while now, so I'm excited to finally get back to it. To make sure you don't miss out on that,
or to receive updates about releases, please be sure to subscribe. And if you want to see episodes
early and support the show. Be sure to check out my Patreon through the links in the description.
Thank you for sticking with me until the end of the episode. I know this was something a little
different but hopefully you all enjoyed it. Until next time my friends. Pleasant dreams. This episode
was made possible by my supporters on Patreon, so it's time to read out their credits.
First up our table library archive is Gillotine, Alex Wiles, Michelle Desnoeer, Awesome Wells,
paranormal Phoenix, Swiss Tony M, M, the Laughing Tabby, Sarisa Wells, Alice, Julian M.
Lampfries Blood, Summer Chambers, Jennifer, Shan Harding, Melissa Baldrow,
Adam M, Krypton, the Magic Pumpkin, Lucas Wilde, Yannock, Aurora, Liborix Johnson, Now Mekh Macchay,
Panther Por, the Elusive M, the Bisexual Moon Cult, emulated Phoenix, Jamie Long,
Dammit David and Marcus, G Martinez, Lisa Mary Sherindinin, Goughougham, Plum Blossom, Gina
Britain, Emily Carlin, Sarah Boyd, Thomas Boutwright, Stephen Lutman, Crystal E, West Virginia
Vegetable Man, Dawn Swann, Tina S. Shaw Miller, Juno, Joseph Condola, Jolly Jedi, Jolly
Jolie, Julesena, Jain, Dalai, Alfredo Sandoval, Midi DeG, Dominic DeGio D'Augn,
Adolf, Edel, Erich, Adeline, Afts, Bacchlusbius, Gabrielle, Umpa Grim and Sandy Lask.
Then we have our amazing lead archivists, butware of Kong, Sage, Dr. Thunderous Phantom,
PhD, Sandy W., Yvonne Rivers, Jennifer, Amy Stubblefield,
the original dear Emmy Bartley, Lady Bet Noir, Ridiculous, London Grace, Melissa Harrison,
Emperor Franz, Plague Doctor Is In, Xavier Ang or Sag El Cali, Alex O'Neill, Alex Goldberg,
Van Yell, Brian Baker and 1000th Ghost, and our insanely generous grand overseers,
Wynne Louis, the God Emperor of Mankind, Old Soul Like Mine, Harrison the Oglord,
Shannon in Seattle, Leah Carmela, Bad Diddle, Katie, Morning Rain 2619, Agent 355, and Queen
of Flatlands.
much to all of them or my junior archivists and my members on YouTube. Each and every one of you
plays a huge part in keeping the show going. If you want to join the archivists, links can be found
in the description. Thank you. Frequency transmission. One of the most interesting ideas about
ghosts was proposed by Andrew Lang, who was a fascinating polymath and author. He was one of the
co-founders of the Society for Psychical Research, who took one of the first sort of forensic
and scientific approaches to gathering and cataloging accounts of ghosts.
And in 1897, he collected them in an amazing volume called the Book of Dreams and Ghosts.
And in the Book of Dreams and Ghosts, Lange proposed the unique idea.
that ghosts may be the effect or the emanation caused by a dead person dreaming, and in effect
projecting into the mind of those living.
And that's a fascinating concept, that when you encounter what seems to be a ghost,
you may actually be making contact with a dead person dreaming.
Stay tuned to Spectar Vision Radio.
Stay.
