Derbyshire, 1880

In another case recorded this week the ending was not so happy, especially to one of the parties concerned, resulting as it did in an appeal to the County Magistrate, and in three months' hard labour to the astrologer involved. The scene is shifted from the Highlands [prev. story] to Derbyshire, and the two chief actors are not crofters but colliers. It would appear that one Levi Cooke eked out his income as a collier by the proceeds of such soothsaying as he could manage to secure. 

A brother collier named PAtrick Smith loses £90, and he, accordingly, knowing Levi's acquaintance with black art, applied to him, asking who had the money. Having heard Patrick's tale of his misfortune, the wise man consulted a book, looked grave, and wrote something mysterious on a slate. He was at last able to inform the anxious inquirer that the money would be returned. The person who had taken it would bring it back. For this satisfactory information Smith paid the astrologer two shillings. Ten days pass away, and yet no money comes back. Another call on the necromancer results in another assurance that the money would certainly be returned. Meantime, as if to make matters doubly sure, the professional man gives the loser of the money a round piece of glass to look through, but nothing came of it - at least no money to Smith.

Somehow or other the police were induced to make a call on the wizard, whose house was found to contain a large number of mystic lore, including "Celestial Philosophy," "Orion's Prophetic Guide and Weather Almanac," and several copybooks filled with discourses on astrology. There was a note which ran thus:- "She can have prescriptions from me, and advice for 14 stamps each time until the evil spirits are expelled from her blood and body." Letters were also discovered showing that this learned collier's patients had as much confidence in him as had ever one in his family physician.

What the collier made off his clientele may be supposed to have been considerably more than collier ever made in the mine even in the palmy days of chicken and champagne. But the efforts of the best and most beneficient of the friends of the people are sometimes very ungraciously received. The great unpaid did not show that sympathy with this philanthropic collier that might have been expected from so enlightened a body, the result being that Cooke, like other benefactors born too soon, has been laid up in prison, not to be restored to his native village till three long moons have rolled away. [...]

Dundee Courier, 16th July 1880.

Ollersett pit, Derbyshire (1912)

Wraith in the Mine.

Two men on the night shift at Ollersett coal pit, Derbyshire, when creeping on all-fours underneath the dipping rock roof, observed an object standing a few feet away lifting up its arms and uttering loud screams.

The men were paralysed with fright, and before they had recovered from the shock the apparition vanished. Two nights later a white-faced miner, in a state of collapse, stated that he had also seen the wraith. The ghost was reported to be headless, and to resemble the form of a woman, but this was probably due to the fact that some years ago a woman's body with the head severed from the trunk was found in the pit.

The ghost turned out to be a pure white badger, which had made its home in the mine.

Dundee People's Journal, 31st January 1914.

Pit Ghost: Uncanny story from New Mills.

The inhabitants of New Mills woke on Saturday morning to find they had in their midst what was termed "a real, live, although headless, female ghost."
The story was that two or three of the miners int he small colliery at New Mills, when working during the night, saw the ghost, and heard its blood-curdling screams until they were nearly frightened to death. They declared it lifted up its arms, uttered loud screams, and then vanished into thin air, and that it was the ghost of a woman who is said to have been brutally murdered in the vicinity of the pit very many years ago, her head being severed from her body.
It is further related that soon after the murder the ghost appeared to the workmen who were attending to the engines during the night, but that it was "laid" by a local preacher, and had not appeared since until last week.

Investigations, however, throw a somewhat different light on the affair. The hills around New Mills have for centuries been worked for coal; but the pits have been "set down one by one", until the only concern now working is a small colliery at Ollersett, in a wood just outside New Mills. It is an old pit, which has been closed for many years until about two months ago, when the workmen, some fifty in number, were transferred from the Pingot pit, close by, which was closed. The proprietors are the Ollersett Colliery Company, whose manager is Mr. Jas. Ramsbottom.

Interviewed, Mr. Ramsbottom welcomed the opportunity of giving his version of what he considers "nothing but bosh." "Then there is nothing in it, is there?" "Nothing whatever, and I am surprised anyone should believe such rubbish in these days." Mr. Ramsbottom admitted that two of the men stated they had seen something in the pit, and had heard noises, and this had been construed into a ghost.
"Then they have heard noises?" "Yes, noises had been heard, and there was certainly 'a funny noise' in the shaft, but it was caused by the air current. It was 'a whistling sound,' and no doubt sounded a bit dismal. Sometimes it 'goggled,' but it was nothing whatever but the pump. It was a wet shaft, and when water fell down the inside from one ring to another it set up a funny noise, which echoed through the pit as if someone was talking. 'To say it is anything more is ridiculous,' added the manager. 'I have been there twenty-three years, and have never seen or heard anything but what I have told you, although I have gone through the place hundreds of times, both alone and with company at all hours of the night."

There is no record anywhere, writes our representative, of any woman having been murdered there. But many years ago a demented woman dashed a child's brains out against a tree, and sixty years ago several colliers were suffocated in the mine.

Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Monday 26th January 1914.