Encounter Atlas
Knockers are the mine spirits of Cornwall and Devon. Miners described them as about two feet tall, with big heads, long arms, wrinkled skin and white whiskers, dressed in tiny miners' clothes. Their knocking in the rock was said to lead miners to rich veins of tin, and later to warn them of a coming collapse. Miners threw the last bite of their pasty down the shaft for them.
Cornish and Welsh miners, nicknamed 'Cousin Jacks', took the knockers with them to the mines of Pennsylvania, California, Nevada and Colorado, where they became tommyknockers. Some Cousin Jacks would not enter a new mine until they were sure the tommyknockers were already there. In the American West they came to seem more like the ghosts of dead miners than little elves.
Belief lasted well into the 20th century. In 1963 the organisers of Grass Valley's Fourth of July celebration in California asked Herbert Hoover, who had begun his career in a local mine, to explain tommyknockers to them; he wrote back describing them as gnomes that warned miners of rock falls.
What witnesses report
- Knocking in the rock with no one there
- Tools or food going missing
- Candles blown out underground
- Warning raps before a collapse
Famous cases
- 1963Herbert Hoover writes to Grass Valley about tommyknockers
Grass Valley, California - 1994Tommyknocker Brewery named after the mine spirits
Idaho Springs, Colorado
Seen the Knockers?
Tell us what happened. Every report is read by a person before it goes on the map, and you can stay anonymous.
