National Coal Mining Museum

The National Coal Mining Museum for England occupies the site of Caphouse Colliery, which began operations in the 1820s and continued until 1985. Now a heritage museum, it offers underground tours through authentic Victorian and modern mine workings 450 feet below the surface. While the museum celebrates mining heritage, staff and visitors have long reported that some former miners never truly left their workplace. The underground sections in particular are hotspots for paranormal activity, with experiences occurring so frequently that they’ve become part of the site’s unofficial history.

Tour guides and maintenance workers have repeatedly encountered a male figure in old-style mining clothes who appears in the underground galleries before vanishing. The apparition is most commonly seen in the 1820s tunnel section and near the stables where pit ponies were once housed. Visitors on guided tours have photographed unexplained mists and light anomalies in areas where the air should be completely clear. The sound of coal being cut and loaded - using methods and equipment no longer present in the museum - has been heard by staff working alone in the tunnels, along with voices speaking in Yorkshire dialect and the clatter of vintage machinery.

Above ground, the winding house and lamp room also experience activity. Objects move overnight, doors lock and unlock without explanation, and footsteps are heard pacing the wooden floors when the building is empty. Security cameras have captured dark shadows moving through locked galleries, and motion sensors trigger in the early hours with no visible cause. Perhaps most unsettling are the accounts of children on school visits who speak to “the nice man in the helmet” and point to empty corners of the underground tunnels, describing a figure that adults cannot see. Staff believe the museum’s ghosts are protective presences, former miners still watching over their workplace and the visitors who come to learn about their dangerous profession.