It is widely believed among researchers that almost all caves, mines, crevices and deep depressions are anomalous places. People encounter ghosts in them and hear strange sounds.
It has long been noted that in caves and mines, abnormal sounds appear during any work. Often these sounds are repeated or imitated by those produced by workers.
In Lechugilla Cave, New Mexico, in 1998, workers were arranging one of the cave halls for tourists to visit. Mainly, stalagmites and other formations on the floor, obstructing the passage, were demolished. About an hour after the start of work, people heard the same sounds that they made, but coming from under the ground.
At first it was thought that there was another underground hall, even larger in size, under the dome of which the sounds of works echoed. However, studies have shown that there are no voids underground in this place. The strange sounds at first accurately, with only a second delay, copied the rumble of hammers and saws. Then they started to change. For one blow of the hammer made by the worker, the bowels of the earth responded with two, three, or even several of the same muffled blows.
Abnormal sounds were recorded on tape. But the experts who studied them did not find anything strange in them. According to their conclusion, these were the usual sounds made by mining equipment …
The abnormal sound was demonstrated by one seasoned speleologist to a group of novices, whom he led through the Kungurskaya cave in the South Urals. Walking through the cave, he stopped at times and began to knock on the wall with a hammer. In one place, muffled reciprocal knocks were heard, sounded somewhere beyond the walls. At first they repeated, like an echo, the knock of the caver, but then they began to reproduce not a knock, but some kind of metallic clang, as if a huge hammer was striking an anvil in the depths. Soon this answering sound no longer matched the knocks made by a person. It seemed as if some kind of mechanism had turned on.
Something similar in this and in other Ural (and not only Ural) caves is often noticed. These frightening sounds make an eerie impression not only on novice cavers, but also on experienced people.
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The elusive tomminokers
The phenomenon of abnormal sounds is well known to miners. Since ancient times, a belief has taken root in their midst that some supernatural beings live in the mines. In Germany they are called kobolds, in England - nokers, in the USA - tomminokers. Kobolds are evil spirits, unfriendly to people, they are guilty of collapses, explosions and floods. But nockers and tomminokers are more often neutral towards people, sometimes they help, but they also like to joke, and their jokes are often evil.
Tomminokers from Stephen King's novel
These creatures tirelessly work at the bottom of the mine or behind its walls, making the same sounds as the miners. They say that sometimes invisible knocks are heard right in front of a working miner, as if someone is breaking through to meet him. It seems that a little more, another half hour of working with a pick or a jackhammer, and the rock wall separating both tunnels will break, the tunnels will connect and the workers will see each other.
But time passes, and the return knocking begins to recede, becomes more muffled. Miners dislike such places and try in every possible way to appease the spirits who are believed to work here: when they leave, they leave them some food.
Auditory hallucinations?
The phenomena associated with mysterious sounds also occurred in the mines of Russia. In 1947, at the Severnaya mine, in Kemerovo, miners began to hear strange sounds outside the walls. As if there was someone working as a pick. But outside the walls there could be nothing but the rock!
I must say that shortly before these events, a large collapse occurred at the mine, which killed over fifty miners. Therefore, strange sounds were immediately associated with the souls of the dead. Most of the workers were prisoners. Many of them, frightened by the ominous phenomena, refused to go down into the mine, preferring arrest to work. A detachment of armed guards descended into the mine. They also heard frightening sounds and even fired in their direction, but they did not see those who made them.
Scientists usually attribute such incidents to hallucinations - visual and auditory. They are caused in people by darkness, silence and a sense of isolation from the outside world. There is a version that hallucinations in caves and mines are caused by some radiation that originates in the depths of the earth.
However, hallucinations in caves, and even more so in mines, are far from everyone and not always. In addition, hallucinations, whatever they may be caused, cannot be recorded on a tape recorder, and meanwhile, the sounds of "work" tomminokers, as a rule, fit well on tape.
Apparently, modern scientific methods are not suitable for explaining such mysterious phenomena. This requires a radically new scientific paradigm, a new quality of the whole of natural science. Hopefully, this paradigm will be developed and proven already in the present, XXI century. So, they will also reveal the ominous secret of the Tomminokers.