This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/Mythycal on 2026-08-06 05:57:05+00:00.

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The name’s Malichi, but almost everyone calls me Kai.

From 2014 until the fall of 2019, I inspected underground mines.

Most people hear “mine inspector” and picture someone wearing a hard hat while walking through tunnels with a clipboard. That’s not entirely wrong, but it leaves out most of the job.

I inspected active limestone mines, underground storage facilities, and old tunnels beneath properties where someone wanted to build a house, road or commercial building. Sometimes I worked up to 1000 feet underground. Other times, I crawled through openings barely wide enough for my shoulders because a farmer had discovered a hole in his pasture and wanted to know whether his cattle were going to disappear into it. Or a wolf’s den.

My job was to identify unstable roof conditions, failed supports or beams, dangerous gases, flooding, and any evidence that the ground above might collapse.

The equipment I carried consisted usually of a gas monitor, measuring tape, camera, marking paint and a 20 oz scaling hammer. The hammer was used to tap the roof and walls of a tunnel.

Solid rock usually produces a sharp, clean sound.

Loose rock sounded hollow, and sometimes echoes.

You learned to hear the difference quickly.

You also learned that not every hollow sound came from loose rock. But we can chat about that later.

I didn’t grow up wanting to inspect mines.

I grew up near Fredericktown. My father worked maintenance at a limestone quarry, and 2 of my uncles spent most of their adult lives in the Lead Belt. Underground work was just something people did.

My father hated that I followed him into it. He didn’t expect me to be a doctor. But he sure didn’t want me working the mines.

He once told me, “The ground didn’t care whether you were a good person, whether you had children or whether someone was waiting for you at home.”

“It only has to make one mistake,” he said. “You have to be correct every day.”

At the time, I thought he was talking about cave-ins.

Now though, I’m not so sure.

I began working for a private geological company in June 2014. Close to the Silver Mine that you can find in between Ironton and Junction City. We contracted with mine operators, insurance companies and property owners. I was 25 at the time, recently married and convinced that my associates degree made me smarter than the others who had spent 30 years underground.

It took about 3 weeks for that attitude to fade.

My first supervisor was a man named Dale.

Dale was 58 when I met him. He had a grey mustache, a permanent limp and hands that looked like they had been carved from old wood. He had worked in mines since the late 70’s. A no nonsense kinda guy.

He didn’t tell ghost stories.

That was important.

Most miners did. They talked about Tommyknockers, moving lights and dead men tapping from behind the walls. Most of it was something to pass the time.

Dale never participated.

If someone mentioned hearing voices in an empty heading, he blamed the ventilation.

I’ll try and explain terms that I’ll be using. A heading in a mine refers to a tunnel that’s been driven through to reach a mineral deposit. It allows miners to access ore and set up further workings.

If someone saw a light where no light should have been, he called it a reflection.

If equipment moved by itself, he said someone had forgotten where they left it.

That was one of the reasons I trusted him.

The first strange thing happened less than a month after I started. July 2014.

We were inspecting an abandoned limestone mine. A small town called Edina. The mine had closed sometime in the early 90’s, and a company was considering using part of it for underground document storage.

Old limestone mines are often shaped like enormous grids. The miners remove sections of rock while leaving large pillars behind to support the roof.

Some chambers are wide enough to drive several trucks side by side.

The mine was dry, stable and boring.

That was exactly what we wanted. That was our favorite.

Dale and I had been underground for about 2 hours when we reached the northern end. According to the map, the workings ended at a solid wall of limestone.

Dale marked our location while I checked the roof.

I struck it with my hammer.

Sharp. Solid.

I struck the wall a 2nd time.

Sharp.

I moved a few feet to the right and struck it a 3rd time.

Three knocks answered from the other side.

I lowered my hammer.

Dale looked up from the map.

“What?”

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?”

I hit the wall again. Three strikes.

We waited.

Three knocks came back.

They were evenly spaced.

Dale walked over and put his palm against the limestone.

“Probably another heading behind it,” I said.

“No way.”

He checked the map.

“There’s nothing behind this wall but sixty feet of rock.”

I hit the wall once.

One knock answered.

Twice. Two knocks.

I smiled nervously.

“Somebody’s screwing with us.”

Dale grabbed the hammer from my hand impatiently.

He hit the wall five times in an uneven pattern.

Knock.

Knock-knock.

Pause.

Knock.

Knock.

The answer came immediately.

It repeated the exact pattern.

Dale didn’t smile.

He handed the hammer back to me.

“We’re done with this section.”

“What do you think it is?”

“Water.”

“That doesn’t sound like water.”

“Then it’s rock.”

He started walking away.

I followed.

As we reached the next intersection, five more knocks came from somewhere behind us.

The same pattern.

Dale never mentioned it again.

I did tell my father though.

He listened quietly and then asked where the mine was located.

When I told him, he said, “Don’t knock on things if you ain’t know what’s knocking back.”

I laughed.

He didn’t. His eyes seemed to pierce through me as my laugh faded.

During my 1st year, I heard plenty of sounds that seemed strange until someone explained them.

Water running through fractures could sound like whispering. The kind that you don’t understand but doesn’t freak you out either.

Air moving through a borehole could whistle like a person calling from far away.

A borehole is hole drilled in the earth that helps allow mineral resource extraction.

The roof sometimes cracked with a noise like a gunshot.

Metal pipes grew and contracted.

Loose stone slid across the floor even when no one touched it.

Underground, sound didn’t behave the way it did on the top. It traveled through rock, disappeared into open chambers and returned from directions that made no sense, even to an experienced miner.

That was what I told myself about the knocking.

In February 2015, Dale and I were sent to inspect an old lead mine in St. Francois County. Somewhere close to Farmington.

The mine had been closed for years. Decades. A landowner had discovered water flowing from an old drainage tunnel and was worried that the workings extended beneath his property. Collapses are often the culprit.

We entered through a horizontal opening cut into the side of a hill.

The tunnel was narrower compared to the limestone mines I had been inside. Timber supports lined portions of the passage, although most of them had rotted or collapsed.

The air smelled like wet clay and rust.

We were only supposed to travel about 800 feet before reaching a flooded section.

At 600 feet, we found fresh boot prints.

The prints were deep and sharply defined in the mud. As if they were just created.

Someone had walked farther into the mine.

No prints came back out.

Dale crouched beside them to get a better look.

“Could be the property owner,” I said.

“He said he’s ain’t never been inside.”

“Kids?”

“Maybe.”

We followed the tracks deeper.

They were made by an old style work boot with a wide heel. The person had taken unusually long steps, as if they’d been running.

The prints continued until the tunnel ended at a pool of black water.

They went directly into it.

I shined my light across the surface.

The water filled the passage from wall to wall.

“Maybe there’s a ledge,” I said.

Dale shook his head.

The old mine map showed that the tunnel dropped nearly 30 feet beyond that point.

Anyone who walked into the water would have disappeared almost immediately.

We called the landowner and asked whether anyone was missing in the towns.

No one was reported to have been missing to his recollection.

The sheriff’s department sent 2 deputies and a dive team. They found no body.

They also found no footprints near the entrance except ours.

According to them, the tracks began nearly 500 feet inside the mine.

The official explanation was that they were old prints preserved by the stable conditions underground.

That was possible.

What wasn’t possible were that the prints were filling slowly with water while we watched.

Later that year, I started hearing the footsteps.

They didn’t happen in every mine I was in.

They usually occurred in older mines where the air was still and there was no active equipment.

I would be walking with Dale or another inspector and hear someone behind us.

A slow, dragging step.

Another step.

If we stopped, it stopped. If we continued, it followed.

Whenever I turned around, the tunnel was empty.

The first few times, I assumed it was an echo.

Then, during an inspection near Joplin, I heard the footsteps while standing still. This was a first.

Dale and I had stopped to examine a fractured support pillar.

Something approached from the darkness behind us.

Step. Drag.

Step. Drag.

It was moving slowly, but it was definitely getti...

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