Histories and Castles Founder Traces Welsh Ghost Story to Nevada County Gold Mines

Written by Simon Williams

Simon A. Williams, founder of Histories and Castles, has been published in The Union, the Grass Valley, California newspaper serving Nevada County. The guest column, titled "The Shaft They Wouldn't Seal: A Welsh Ghost in Nevada County's Mines," traces the American mining legend of the Tommyknocker back to the Coblynau, a mine spirit from Welsh folklore, and follows the belief as Welsh hard rock miners carried it across the Atlantic to the Sierra Nevada goldfields.

The piece centres on a 1956 account from a Nevada County mine, where miners are said to have asked their bosses to leave a worked out shaft open a little longer before it was sealed for good, in case something was still down there. Williams argues this moment shows the belief was not treated as colourful talk long after anyone took it seriously, but as a real factor shaping a real decision underground, more than a century after Welsh and Cornish miners first brought the tradition to America.

"That is not folklore treated as story," Williams wrote of the sealed shaft. "That is folklore treated as fact, carried three thousand miles and more than a century from its origin in rural Wales and still, at the mid point of the twentieth century, shaping a real decision underground."

The column links back to two Histories and Castles articles for readers who want the fuller picture: why so many Welsh families emigrated in the first place, and the mythology they carried with them. Williams also invited readers with Welsh mining ancestry in Grass Valley or Nevada City to get in touch, with a follow-up piece naming the families involved a possibility.

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