10th March
The Morfa Mining Disaster Premonitions
Source: Alamy Stock Photos
On this day in 1890, the mine at Morfa Colliery near Port Talbot in West Glamorgan, collapsed following a subterranean explosion: 87 miners were killed. The death toll would have been greater if half the shift had not heeded the extraordinary set of supernatural visions that foretold the imminent disaster in the days beforehand.
Apparently the Red Dogs of Morfa, a pack of howling hell hounds, ran amock the previous night; a parade of phantom lights known as corpse candles paraded through the tunnels; a bloom of sweet sickly smelling corpse flowers filled the mine with its warning scent; a plague of fleeing rats was spotted running from the pit; ghostly cries were heard on the wind and phantom miners were seen trooping through the mine. For many of the living miners, these portents were enough and they stayed at home on the 10th. For those rational souls that dared the ghostly warnings, they perished in the foretold collapse.
