Case file · Folklore / legend
Knockers and mine ghosts of the anthracite country
Pennsylvania's hard-coal miners, many of them Welsh, Cornish, Irish and Slavic, kept beliefs about knockers, ghostly warning lights and rats that fled before a cave-in, collected by George Korson in Minstrels of the Mine Patch (1938).
1938 CE · 40.82, -76.20 · status: legend
The account
The Cornish 'knocker' or tommyknocker, a mine spirit whose knocking could warn of danger or lead to a seam, travelled with migrant miners to American coalfields.