This mine is known for being both cursed and haunted, wrote
Virginia Lamkin on the Seeks Ghosts website
The Magpie mine is located in the Peak District of Derbyshire, just south of the village of Sheldon. It's shut down today, but many visitors come to see it at the weekends. And some at night.
It is a well-preserved example of the lead mining industry history in the district. The Magpie mine was mined for 300 years, but trouble came to the district in the 1820s and 30s when a dispute occurred over one vein of lead.
Miners from the nearby mines, Maypitt, and Red Soil would periodically break through on each other’s workings. When this happened, one side would light a fire underground to smoke the others out.
Tragically, in 1833, a fire lit by the Magpie miners caused three Red Soil miners to die. These Magpie miners were tried and then acquitted of the charge of murder because of “lack of intent” and “conflicting evidence.”
It is said the three widows of the Red Soil miners, bitter about this verdict, placed a curse on the Magpie mine. Many felt this curse took hold, for after the murder trial, floods and fire plagued the Magpie. In 1880, the Magpie Mining Company even changed its name in an attempt to rid the mine of this curse. However the name, Chaffinch Mine, never stuck.
The mine continued to be plagued by floods and people’s belief in the curse, and in 1835 it was closed down. However it reopened four years later and continued to produce lead until its final closing in 1954.
A side story to the curse is the fact that after the three Red Soil miners lost their lives the Magpie gained a reputation as being haunted—supposedly by these three unfortunate men.
One well-documented encounter with this activity occurred in 1946.
A survey team working in the Magpie spotted a man holding a candle further down the shaft. This figure vanished as they watched it.
But later, as the team emerged from the tunnel, late in the evening, under a starlit sky, one team member managed to get a photograph that shows a ghostly figure standing in a deep puddle of water with the Milky Way magically reflected in its surface. Whilst the mine's preservation society have pulled together much historical information and artefacts, unfortunately this photograph seems to have vanished.
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