On 10 May 1897 a fire broke out underground at the Snaefell lead mine, high up the valley above Laxey. The smoke and carbon monoxide spread through the workings, and around twenty miners died. It was the worst mining disaster in the island's history.
The bodies had to go somewhere. In the nineteenth century innkeepers were bound to take in corpses when asked, because their cellars were cool, and the cellar of the Bridge Inn in Laxey was used as a temporary morgue for the dead of Snaefell.
The pub's description today says, lightly, that there are rumours of a resident ghost. Local tradition connects it to the miners laid out in the cellar. No account has been found of what anyone has actually seen or heard, so this stays a rumour attached to a real and grim piece of history.
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