Deep beneath Wyoming’s mountains, where daylight disappears and superstition takes hold, miners swore they were not alone. In the darkness of coal shafts and gold tunnels, ghosts whispered warnings, phantom animals stalked the living, and illusions led men to sudden death.

In this episode of Pioneers of Outlaw Country, we descend into Wyoming’s haunted mines—where an apparition of lost love guided a prospector to a fortune, but other spirits brought terror instead of treasure. 

From tommy knockers tapping in the walls, to a ghost mule that attacked without warning, to a phantom elevator cage that sent seasoned miners plunging to their deaths, these are not legends passed down by campfire—they are stories recorded in newspapers and firsthand accounts from the men who worked underground.

 Haunted Mines: Wyoming History

The apparition of a lost love led an old prospector to a rich gold mine. However, most mine hauntings were more terrifying than helpful including a ghost mule who only brought fear while a ghost cage lead to death. 

When miners flocked to Wyoming in the late 1800s and early 1900s, they brought with them from the Old World their ancient superstitions of tommy knockers and ghostly apparitions.  These beliefs of the unknown had been created in the black abyss of their eerie world beneath the earth. Coal miner Joseph Husband wrote about working the mines in 1911. 

“The darkness of the underworld, the silence, the long hours of solitary work, are all conditions ideal to the birth of superstition.” 

This Harvard graduate had spent a year working in the coal mines beside men who survived the dangerous work through their beliefs in the supernatural. 

 However, this fear of the spirits that haunted the dark was not enough to stop Wyoming miners from rushing to a ghostly mine when it meant gold. 

 Welcome to Pioneers of Outlaw Country, Wyoming’s History. I am historian and author, Jackie Dorothy, and today we are descending deep into the earth to meet the ghosts that linger beneath our feet. This series of haunted history is brought to you by Rooted in Legacy, where we help you record, write, and preserve your life story, memoir, and family history—so your story is never lost.

 In 1903, Wyoming miners grabbed their picks and joined a gold stampede to a haunted gold mine in the Blue Mountains of Oregon. They threw superstition aside to claim their portion of the rich nuggets an old prospector was showing off.

The 1903 Kemmerer Camera ran a story with the compelling title “Ghost Helps A Prospector” where the reporter shared the true story of a rich discovery.

 “Old John” Willis claimed that he had been led to this wealthy gold mine by the ghost of a woman named Lucy, his lost love.  

“This woman has been with me in the spirit for more than twenty-five years. And to her lays my good fortune.”

According to the Kemmerer Camera, Willis has long been regarded as an eccentric throughout Wyoming and Montana. When he announced that he had named the mine the “Haunted Lucy,” he was looked on as “mentally deranged,” until he exhibited the nuggets.

Willis had just returned from a long visit in the Blue Mountains, Oregon, and the tale he told was regarded as remarkable, to say the least,” the Kemmerer Camera said. 

Willis had brought back a big sack nearly full of big nuggets, which have been examined by the assayers in Butte, Montana. They pronounced the nuggets to be pure gold, running nearly $22 to the ounce.

This was the first time that gold in any quantity has been found in the Blue Mountains, and a stampede happened immediately as miners headed to new fields.

“The aged prospector has interested two of the local bankers of this section in his find, and a party of workmen will proceed at once to the claim of Mr. Willis out in the hills,” the Kemmerer Camera said. 

Years before the gold discovery, Willis had been long considered a man of mystery in the west. That there was a romance in his life he has admitted, but the nature of it he never would disclose until Lucy led him to his fortune. 

Most mine apparitions, however, are ominous and may lead to rockslides and death rather than hidden wealth. Tommy Knockers, for instance, are supernatural creatures that could be heard tapping or knocking on the walls of the mine. While some miners viewed them as mischievous, others feared them and believed that these ‘knockers’ would purposefully attempt to collapse sections of the mine or cause fires. 

Journalists often would seek to find natural reasons to explain these creaks and groans of the earth rather than the supernatural. 

The 1903 Converse County used such deductive reasoning to explain away a haunted mine in Texas. 

“About 100 years ago, this mine was worked by the Spaniards and apparently it was abandoned suddenly,” the Douglas, Wyoming newspaper said. “Whenever the attempt had been made to explore it, the explorers have been met by a sudden and violent blast of wind accompanied by dreadful howlings and wailings suggestive of lost souls.”

Without any evidence, the reporter concluded that this mine probably tapped into a hidden reservoir of air controlled by an underground stream of water and was a “blowing cave,” the sound of lost souls thus explained. 

 Yet not even the foreman could fully explain the ghostly mule that tormented miners with its presence. Husband, in his 1911 book, “A Year in a Coal Mine”, reported that Croatian miners refused to work in a section of a coal mine due to this apparition startling them with its presence.

“This phantom mule would materialize silently from the wall of the entry, and with the most diabolical expression upon its face, creep quietly down behind its intended victim. The phantom mule would sink his material teeth deep into the miner's shoulder; and death would follow.”

Husband thought that the ghostly mule was actually the sudden white glare cast from the headlight of a locomotive far down the entry. The Croatians refused to work in that particular area of the mine and were sent to another section. New men, just arrived from Bulgaria, were sent to work the section where the white mule lived. If they ever saw the mule, they never reported it to their superiors.  

Another deadly ghost was reported in the 1901 Laramie Republican.  The “Ghost of the Cage” was about a deadly trap that plagued miners deep in the earth.

This reporter worked in the mine himself for years and saw first-hand the devasting effect these phantom cages had on his co-workers. He believed it was just an optical illusion although he hinted it may be more.

In the early 1900s, there were hundreds of elevator accidents according to an old inspector. He said that very few of these deadly accidents were from the breaking of cables of brakes. 

The victim would step into the shaft on his own accord and plummet to his death.

The reporter said this was the miner thought he saw the elevator car in the accustomed place, and when he stepped on what he thought was solid floor he went to his death. Years before, he was out in a mine and witnessed one of the accidents.

One of the oldest men in the employ of the company, a man who had been following mining for half of his life and knew this mine as he knew the streets of Leadville, ran a car of ore over the edge of the shaft on the third level and was dragged down to the bottom with it.

The miner was mortally injured, but before he died, he told the doctor that he saw a “cage” at the shaft. 

Since that time, the reporter noted that there had been many accidents like that in the mines out west 

“Sometimes the victims were all killed at once, but those who survived always swore that they saw the cage. I have talked to old miners and they say they dread nothing more than the ghost of the cage.”  

The miners that this dreaded phenomena occurred to were men who had worked all their lives in the mines. The longer a man has worked in a mine, the more apt he was to see the “ghost of the cage. The reporter said that he firmly believe that those who lose their lives by stepping into open elevator shafts really see the elevator car.  

“It is one of the most fatal optical illusions in the world, but such it must be. The victim has become accustomed to seeing the cage at the shaft when he needs it, and the picture of it is fixed in his brain.” 

When the fatal step is taken that sends him to death, the miner really sees the ghost of the cage.

Whether led to a mine of riches or to their deaths, there are still miners in Wyoming and beyond who continue to this day to claim that deep within the earth, there reside supernatural beings and apparitions that cannot be explained away and are very real.  

Thank you for joining us in this exploration of haunted mines on Pioneers of Outlaw Country, Wyoming History. This is Jackie Dorothy joining you on this journey back into the 1900s of the Equality State! This series of haunted Wyoming history has been brought to you by Rooted in Legacy.

This was a production of Legend Rock Media.