Centralia Pennsylvania. Current population: 10. One of the most prominent ghost towns in America. The reason? A massive coal fire burning below the surface. In 1962 a landfill was set ablaze to celebrate Memorial Day, and the fire was never properly extinguished. The landfill was directly on top of an old coal mine that was supposedly filled and properly capped. When the ashes from the fire weren’t quite extinguished they smoldered underground for an unknown period of time before being exposed to the open air and setting coal dust ablaze. This dust led directly back to the mines creating a massive labyrinth beneath the town.
I was tasked by a geological research team to map out the remaining mines untouched by fire to give a better approximation to the extent of the fire. In summer 2013 I began my expedition to the town that no longer even has a zip code as of 2002. I don’t think a garbage fire is to blame for the underground inferno…or the evacuation of the town above.
I arrived on the outskirts of Centralia at the end of a highway that literally continued straight into a dirt mount. The road simply ended. Due to the risk of collapsing shafts, and the inherit risks that the fire I brought one of our interns with me. I’ll refer to him as “Tim,” Tim was a PhD candidate (has since earned it) at Penn State and had been doing research about the effects of mine fires on the surrounding crust of the Earth. He’d placed small, very accurate seismographs around the area of Centralia and studied the results over several years. Tim thought very far in advance; halfway through his bachelor’s degree he began placing the seismographs so that he’d have solid data for his PhD thesis.
Tim noticed that the fires would bake and crack the earth above occasionally, but nothing unusual occurred until early 2013 when one of his seismographs began recording data that was akin to something digging the earth directly underneath. It was almost as if someone was using a boring machine directly beneath the seismograph, heading straight up. The Earth’s crust can change, distort, and tear in odd manners, but this was something that I’d never seen before. After less than two days the readings had gone off the scale and we’d begun to assume something was wrong with the seismograph, our fears were nearly confirmed when the machine suddenly stopped broadcasting. We went out to inspect…and it was gone, a perfectly circular five foot diameter hole in its place.
Shortly thereafter the government contacted us. They tasked us to map the remaining mines using a GPS tracker that had a built in safety feature; if we began to suffer ill effects from carbon monoxide (from the coal fire) the tracker would emit a high frequency ping to any other trackers nearby, and an obnoxious screech to anyone within earshot.
Once we left the truck behind and continued towards the mine on foot, things took a turn for the weird. I saw one of the residents of the town, but he didn’t seem all there. He looked out from the porch window of his dilapidated house and basically stared straight through us. His look was akin to the “1,000 yard stare” of combat veterans. We waved at him, as we were walking within fifty yards of his house and he yelled something at us, but we couldn’t hear him. I raised my hand to my ear in the universal “we couldn’t hear you” gesture and he yelled louder, “you won’t want to go in there…the mines ain’t kind to visitors!”
The man looked to be a few steps past crazy, so we took his brief rant with a grain of salt and continued to our destination, which was only about a quarter mile past the man’s house.
The woods had an unnatural feel to them; the trees seemed stunted in many places, and there were numerous vents created by the subterranean fires, of course. These openings in the Earth’s crust were usually pretty easy to spot; they were puffing out smoke in some places, and generally they were devoid of vegetation. This, however, was not always the case. Some of these chasms were hundreds of feet deep and had stopped smoking…an open maw on the surface of the Earth with no warning whatsoever. Tim nearly walked straight into one that was overgrown with a fallen tree bridging the two sides.
The smoke that emanated from the ground cast eerie shadows everywhere you looked. It was almost as if something was hiding within the smoke, but I dismissed that as me simply being paranoid. This town had been nearly abandoned since the 1980’s, and the only people that remained were, from what I could see, mostly crazy.
Finally I saw something move that I knew wasn’t smoke. I knew it wasn’t my imagination because I saw it move a small fern-like bush as it hid. Something was in the woods with us. As I moved towards the rustled bush I felt myself begin to fall. I had walked over a small drop-off that was directly above one of the fiery chasms that wasn’t actively smoking. I lucked out and managed to grab the edge as I fell in. Tim was able to pull me out before either of us succumbed to the carbon monoxide gasses emanating from the pit. Our walk towards the mine continued in silence.
The mine entrance was overgrown with thick vegetation and gated off by a rusted fence. Thankfully the lock had long since rusted and fell off as we’d never have been able to open it with our key as rusted as the thing was. Inside was an absolute labyrinth of partially collapsed tunnels that gradually sloped downward. My map, circa 1930, showed that the mine had a spiral series of shafts that went several hundred feet deep before the main shaft hit a water pocket, dooming all of the miners in the near vicinity.
We entered the first shaft (main number one) and immediately the temperature began to increase. I knew we’d need our portable respirators before long; I just hadn’t expected to need them yet. The ambient temperature outside was nearly 80° F, and inside a mine it would normally be closer to 50° F…it was well over 90° F and rising. This was a good indicator of how close the fire really was; by my calculations, the ambient temperature in the mine would be close to 120° F near the waterline.
The depth of the water was such that it would have washed out or flooded the bottom quarter of the mine, but there should be enough room for us to gain access to the portions of this mine where the fire would hit first. It wasn’t an “if this mine caught fire,” it was more of a “when.” The mines around and under Centralia were just too close together, and the coal seam was too large for any nearby mines to be spared. It would likely burn for another two and a half centuries.
After donning our respirators we headed deeper into the main number one shaft. The shaft would periodically open into larger chambers where pillars of coal had been mined around and supported with large timbers. Occasionally one or more of these would be collapsed, leading me to question the structural integrity of the ceiling supporting millions of tons of coal and rock above our head…but we trudged on.
In the second such open chamber I saw a plume of smoke emitting from the wall. My eyes darted away from it, and as soon as they did I could see movement that didn’t match the smoke. Something black as the surrounding coal was standing directly beside the wall, so close to the opening that if it were human it would have almost instantly succumbed to carbon monoxide poising and passed out. Whatever this was just stood by the opening and watched us walk by. I didn’t dare look at it directly for fear that I’d illuminate it with my headlamp. I couldn’t take that risk. We came within about twenty feet of it, and I guess Tim just couldn’t see it.
Just as we passed by the thing I saw it slide between two pillars and disappear into the wall. Before it left I saw it grab the pillar and I noticed three massive claws on its “hand.” I knew we’d have to return to that room…I just wasn’t looking forward to it. We exited the cavern without incident, but afterwards I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were things scaling the walls just out of sight.
Finally, after another half an hour we could hear running water. Apparently the underground water that the 1930’s mine had hit was some sort of creek or stream. We were probably about 200 yards from the water when Tim stopped dead in his tracks and pointed straight ahead. I didn’t get a good look at whatever he saw, but I saw a shadow, and I knew that Tim could finally see what I saw. He was deathly pale, and just managed to slightly turn his head sideways to look at me before something climbed to the ceiling directly behind him. He heard it and darted the way we’d came.
I had no plans on lingering in the mine, but my own terrified curiosity got the better of me; the water shouldn’t be running. The records indicated that the 1930’s crew hit a pond, an underground pool of, essentially, stagnant water. Somehow the water either interconnected with another waterway in the passing eighty years, or the records were wrong. Terrified as I was, I knew I was mere feet from finding out.
I turned the last bend, maybe twenty feet and ten seconds from where Tim had turned tail and ran…only to see a rather large flow of water moving perpendicular to the cavern. The shaft continued on the other side of roughly fifty feet of water. The water was near the boiling point as I could feel the immense heat resonating from its surface.
On the other side stood a black creature. When I shined my light on it fire seemed to resonate from its eyes. I was running the other direction instantly. I heard its feet hit the ground on my side of the bank and I broke into a full sprint. I could hear its footsteps, and although I was panting through the respirator in the extreme heat I couldn’t hear it breathing at all. I ran up the incline towards the exit, but the creature seemed to have more stamina than I and I began to falter. A dark shape emerged from directly beneath one of my feet and seemed to grab my boot as I stumbled towards the room where I’d originally seen the beast.
As I passed through the first room where I saw the creature I heard a loud screech and my GPS lit up a pinged beacon…from inside the wall…I continued to run. I felt fire on the back of my neck, and I could see daylight from ahead, only, I didn’t think I could make it. The fire grew worse and worse even though I knew the temperature should be decreasing, and right as I exited the mine I felt the flames overcome me and I fell into darkness.
Tim revived me some minutes later and indicated that we were both suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning and that we needed fresh air in a bad way. After a few minutes and many scared glances at the mine we decided to leave. I asked Tim where his GPS unit fell and he responded that it was still in his pack. Confused I asked him to show me. Sure enough Tim’s GPS unit was in its rightful place. I pondered why mine had malfunctioned and as I looked at it I could clearly see a dim ping moving around beneath the surface. I decided to take one last look down the main shaft of the mine before we left. Tim stayed outside.
Once back in I could see about 200 yards straight into the main shaft. I peered off the side of the drop off and not twenty feet below lay a charred GPS unit exactly like ours with three charred scrapes on it. As soon as I saw it a black clawed hand raked the unit back out of view and I was immediately running towards the surface lest the owner of the hand know how to fly.
We contacted the government with the results of our first excursion and informed them of the unusual pings. They mentioned nothing. Upon a little further digging by Tim…apparently we were the second team to map the area; the first being four months prior…they did not return.
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Credits to: photofreecreepypasta
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