New Zealand Ghosts & Other Haunts

Stauf Stevens

Not all ghosts are dangerous. Not all are even scary, by some accounts. The ambiguousness of some hauntings are such that people confuse physical nerve jostlings and the like with the caress of a supernatural entity. There is a supposedly true story about a ghostly feeling far worse than that.

In the early part of the century a young man by the name of Clarence Walsh was working in the mines in Pennsylvania. He was an immigrant to America and, like many such then, could find no better employment. Working conditions in the coal mines were awful. In the days before the labor unions were formed, men lived terrible lives in the mines. There were virtually no safety measures taken to ensure the safety of the workers. Often workers were very young boys. Usually there was a company store and a company shantytown nearby, where workers could buy the things they needed to live on company credit. If they were paid at all, they made horrible wages. All of the mines were looked over by the powerful mine bosses.

If there was any hint of resistance or protest at their conditions, men were roundly fired and in some cases troops would be called in to suppress the riots. To further their ills, there were often secret societies of men dedicated to violence and terror to further the cause of the poor workers. These groups organized accidents, thefts, and murder on mine bosses who oppressed the miners. In turn, the mine bosses planted spies among the workers. None ever knew who was a terrorist and who was a company spy.

Despite all of this, the miners were neither convicts nor slaves, but free, proud men. Collapses were frequent and those that survived the mines were usually cursed to die of the dreaded black lung disease. But yet they did the hardest, roughest work of the nation, and at least were free men.

This was the world into which Clarence Walsh put himself.

He was not, at first, truly acclimated to life in the mines. He was a better-bred man than the usual fare of the mines, and at first there was much distrust of him for the way he dressed, that he might be a company spy. What was particularly unusual about a man working in the mines was that he could both read and write. He was nothing if not persistant and honest, though. After a little time, however, a small few of the men warmed up to him and they became friends.

Clarence, of course, had no knowledge of what life was like in the mines, so he asked his friends as much as he could. They told him about the terrorists, and the mine bosses, and the company store, and things that he would need to stay alive long in the mines.
Eventually, Clarence met a pair of men, named only in his journal as Patrick and Ethan. They spent what free time they had together.

One night, they had been assigned to an older tunnel, in Shaft 4, where they had apparently struck an especially hard vein. They were being pressured and threatened by the bosses to continue into the late night, but by the stroke of eleven, most of the men had cleared out of the tunnels. Clarence, unused to this deep, old section of the mines, asked why the men were so eager to get out.

It was Patrick who responded, all the while gathering up his tools to leave. "The mines are always a dangerous place, lad, and we go where we must, but none with any sense inside of him stays in Stewart's tunnel past midnight."

"Stewart's tunnel?" asked Clarence.

"Aye. Old Stewart MacLaren, who died a hunted man right here in the earth." whispered Ethan.

Ethan told Clarence about the story of Stewart MacLaren, a man who'd been a member of a group of terrorists known as the Molly Maguires. Little is known today about the Mollies, except that they were a terrorist group of Irish bandits and mine workers who used murder and subertfuge to fight the mine bosses. It was said that Stewart, a long time mine worker, had raped and killed the daughter of a mine boss on orders from the Mollies. It was also said that he did not. Stewart himself protested that he was innocent. However, there was no defense against an accusation from the rich bosses and he had no useable alibi. So when they came to arrest him, knowing that he was as good as hanged, he fled.

Stewart had been a desperate man. He killed one man who tried to stop him and plunged into the mines late at night. Once down there, he destroyed as many of the lights and torches as he could find. By the time the authorities had word that he'd entered the mines, he'd
plunged a good part of the mines into darkness, including that section that the men wanted to get out of. In blackness so total that not a hint of even the rocky wall could be seen, Stewart waited. A bull of a man who'd lived all his life in the darkness, he knew only that he had to wait out the authorities and flee, thinking that they'd not pursue him into the depths of the mines, where danger could collapse upon them from any direction.

Stewart had been wrong. With lamps, a group of hired men went into the mines that night to apprehend and kill Stewart MacLaren. None returned. No one knows how it happened, but it seemed that Stewart, waiting for them in the darkness, or else the men who were sent in, somehow triggered the collapse of a mine shaft, killing the posse and, they thought, killing or trapping Stewart inside. When the tunnel had been dug back out again and supported, workers found the remains of seven men who'd gone in after Stewart, but never found any trace of Stewart himself.

That was five years back. Since then, men had reported odd things happening in the tunnels of Shaft 4. The greatest of these was something the men called the 'Cold Hands'. Men would be working in the mines late, and would feel something grab at them, their tools, or their clothes. A grasp as chill as ice. One miner reported that something had grabbed his wrist and held his arms at his side for several minutes. Another had told of something placing its hands on his shoulders and grasping him with chill claws. Still another bore bruises on his throat from where he swore an invisible thing with icy hands had tried to throttle him.

The men soon learned to stay out of the shaft late at night. Some nights they would desert the tunnels late, and come back the next morning to find that tools left behind had been tossed all about. And some men had found long, deep shapes like handprints pressed into the dust of the floors and walls. Clarence, too, left when the others left and never strayed too far from the lights. It was not out of any fear of any ghosts. It was pure common sense. A man alone could die in the mines if he wandered down the wrong path.

A month past. They were still cutting and blasting against the ends of Stewart's tunnel. Clarence became acclimated to life in the mines, came and went as the men did, saw tragedy and joys among the men who worked there. One night, however, something terrible happened. The men were getting themselves out of the mines at seven, others waited a little later. Clarence was among these. Ethan had already gone home that night, as had many others. Patrick and Clarence were about to leave when something shook the earth underneath them.

It seemed to the twenty or so men still in the tunnels as if the earth had tilted to the right. The next they knew, rock was pouring down on them from above. Most of the men were killed outright in the cave-in, buried under tons of rock. Others who had escaped on the far side of the collapse, ran off to the surface to find help to dig back in.

Clarence awoke with blood on his scalp and himself plunged into utter black. Only a single flame a few metres away lighted the cave. The wall ahead had collapsed, trapping Clarence, Patrick and one other miner in the end of the tunnel. The top and sides of the cave-in were still slightly open, but not enough so that a man could crawl through.

Patrick lay near the torch with the other miner. The unfortunate miner had a large rock that had crushed his leg below the knee and he whimpered in pain as Patrick tended to him.

"Lucky for us there's a bit of a hole there." said Patrick when he saw Clarence had awakened, "or else we'd soon run out of air."

Clarence mopped at his brow and queried, "Can we dig ourselves out?"

Patrick gave him a pitying look. "An you want to be the one to clear through this rubble with nothing but a shovel, yes. Look around; that's all we have that's not broken." Indeed, truth matched his assertion. "Just wait for the lads. We've got air in here and we can go a night without food. We'll just have to wait it out."

The three men huddled around the warmth of the torch and waited, Patrick trying his best to stem the flow of blood from the wounded man's leg. Clarence tried to remain calm, but was deeply frightened. As time wore on, Patrick knew the wounded man would not live to see the dawn if he did not recieve medical help. By the eleventh hour, that unfortunate miner had fallen unconsious and was bound to die.

Patrick and Clarence, still whole, knew there was nothing left to be done for him, said prayers over him, and determined to wait it out. Patrick was a little less upset. He was frightened, but had been in similar situations before and at least didn't panic. Poor Clarence was a bundle of nerves. Eventually Patrick declared that they had to extinguish their light, lest the fire burn up the oxygen faster than it could trickle in.

Clarence watched in horror as the last thing he saw that night was Patrick grimly beat the fire out against the rocks. For a while a mild glow came from the ashes, and both men sat close to each other and the air-bringing fallen wall. Then there came nothing.

To maintain their spirits, Patrick kept talking, urging Clarence to keep conversation with him so that he'd know that they both were alright. Clarence, of course, was shaken to death, fearing not only dying under rock, or being trapped in darkness with a corpse and near to no air, but also the thought that at any moment he might feel a pair of cold, long fingers touch his skin.

By one o'clock the next morning, men had begun to round themselves up to go in and save their co-workers. But the men in the tunnel had no way to know that. They sat in darkness so absolute that they could not even tell they were still alive could they not hear the pound of their hearts and the voices with which they talked to each other. Patrick stayed hopeful, asking questions to keep the younger man sane, reassuring him over and over that they'd be fine. Clarence responded with short comments and noises of affirmation, interjecting when he could with responses to Patrick's questions.

In the next few moments, the conversation continued as it had before:

"Don't you worry, lad," Patrick was saying, "Just a few more hours till dawn, and the men will be soon to rescue us."

"Umm-hmm."

"Stay awake, there. You don't want to nod off in a place like this."

"I won't."

"Is your head still hurting, lad?"

"No."

"How about that...uhh!"

The gasp came from Patrick's lips. Clarence waited a moment,
listening for sounds of the larger man's movement. There was nothing. He could see absolutely nothing, not the nose on his face. And he could hear no more than his fluttering heart.

"Patrick?" Clarence called.

There was no answer. Clarence turned his head, called again, fearing that maybe a loose rock had tumbled down and struck him.

"Patrick?"

Nothing.

Worried, his breath coming in gasps, Clarence reached out to where he knew Patrick to be, to see if he were alright.

A first finger curled around his outstretched wrist. A second, then a third, then a fourth followed. Clarence screamed in terror, and a thumb rounded the wrist and completed the grasp and held him.
Clarence tugged and shrieked and pulled and the grasp that held him in total darkness. Rising as best he could and shouting at the top of his lungs, he heaved backwards, fear lending him supernatural
strength. At once, the thing's grasp tore free, and Clarence lunged into the darkness, running down the corridor. Almost a moment later he ran into a rock face in the utter nothingness of the dark mine. He righted himself, cowered against the wall, and waited. For moments, nothing happened. Then a chill wind sprang up and brushed past his face, then past his hands. It was a single wind, not a full breeze, that caressed his bare skin. A light weight, as if a hand lain down, touched Clarence's shoulder.

He took off again, no wind left to scream, all into running. He sprinted into the darkness, unable to see, unable to speak, only dreading the chill hands that he felt only steps behind him as he raced into the darkness of the mine shaft...

...And tripped over the prone body of the unfortunate miner. Clarence caromed headlong, struck his head solidly against the rock wall, and fell unconscious.

When Clarence awoke it was on a bed on the surface. A fellow miner's wife was tending to his head, which had been bruised and bloody. She smiled at him. Clarence's face flooded with horror as memories of where he'd been came back to him. He rose stiffly, demanded to know what had happened.

The miner's wife answered him. "Why, when the men dug back through, they found many of the dead lying twisted under the rocks. They eventually found you lying next to a man whose leg had been crushed. They thought you dead along with the others, but when you showed signs of breathing, they brought you here to be cared for."

"What of Patrick?" Asked Clarence. "He was with me in the mines most of the night when..." he could not repeat what he had felt and experienced. "...when we became separated in the darkness."

She looked at Clarence with a quizzical look. "Why, you must be mistaken. No one was found with you besides the one man."

Clarence insisted that she was wrong, that Patrick *had* been there too, when she cut him off sadly. "No, you don't understand. Patrick could not have been with you. They found his body crushed under all those rocks. Poor Patrick must have been one of the first, to die."

Clarence fell onto his bed and wept.
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Shanachie