Mining communities had a rich store of underground ghost lore, and in the early days of the Llynfi valley's coal industry the local press reported it with a straight face. Rachel Taylor found this account in The Silurian, a Brecon newspaper, for 15 November 1845.
The haunting was at a level, a drift mine driven into the hillside, called Lefel y Ty Gwyn Bach, near Maesteg. About three years earlier a collier had been killed there in an accident. Work at the level was stopped a year after his death, and the workings stood idle until they were reopened two years later.
The reopening came with what Taylor calls "a fanfare of paranormal activity". The men heard heavy chains clinking in the dark. Tools were picked up and thrown by nothing they could see. Most unnervingly, workers were thumped on the back as they cut coal. One of them, after taking such a blow, set off after whoever had struck him. What he found was "a tall figure, pallid and emaciated", which grinned "a ghastly grin" at him and then vanished.
The dead collier is not named, and the level's exact location is not known; the point shown is approximate. The story is recorded here with respect for a real death at work that the men who knew him clearly had not forgotten.
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