The Independent
VAN LEAR — Practically every person who has spent any time in the Coal Miner’s Museum in Van Lear has experienced something strange.
Some have heard voices. Others have seen faces and figures in the historic building, and many have felt the presence of a young girl who likes to sit on people’s laps or touch them on the arm or leg.
“It is very active. It is probably the most paranormally active place I’ve ever investigated,” said Joe Clark, a certified ghost hunter and founder of Commonwealth Paranormal.
People with an interest in the paranormal will soon have a chance to walk through the old doctor’s office building and draw their own conclusions during “The Coal Miner’s Museum — The History and The Hauntings” presentation on Saturday. Admission is $10, with “every dime of that” going to support the Coal Miner’s Museum, Clark said.
Clark, who has been doing paranormal investigations since 1994, said he and others have captured “numerous” electronic voice prints in the museum building, in addition to video and still photography of unexplained things. The ghost hunter said his team experienced their first phenomenon there last June.
“Tyler Holbrook had a necklace ripped from his neck by an unseen entity,” Clark said. “All he had was the scratch marks on his neck.”
Clark said he also asked an entity why it was there and received an obscene answer in response.
“We know of four people who died there, but there were probably more than that because it was built in 1913 and there were doctor’s offices in there,” Clark said.
Museum Director Tina Webb speaks of the building’s ghosts as familiar characters, despite more than a few spooky encounters.
“I was up on a big, rickety wooden ladder — painting at midnight and preparing for our town celebration — when I heard a man’s voice say, ‘Get down.’ I didn’t get down the first time. I ignored it and it did it again,” Webb said, admitting she heeded the second warning. Instead of being frightened, Webb said she was merely “annoyed because I had to get down off the ladder.”
Webb said she was also pushed into a candy counter while locking up the downstairs one evening.
“It made me mad — I cussed him,” she said.
Webb is on a first name basis with a few of the museum’s spirits. Elmo died and can still be found in the upstairs “model room,” which houses a railroad layout he helped build, she said.
“There’s also a little girl and she will sit in your lap every now and then,” Webb said, noting a teenage girl at the museum that afternoon reported an encounter with the little girl’s specter.
The History and The Hauntings program and tours will begin at 11 a.m. and continue throughout the day. The program includes presentations and workshops by 10 paranormal investigators, as well as a raffle with prizes including a ticket to a TAPS taping at a haunted lighthouse in Florida.
In addition to the museum’s spirits, the Saturday event will be an opportunity to help people learn more about the building’s histor, and tour will be family-friendly, Clark said.
“Hopefully nothing is going to happen to scare anybody,”
For more information, visit
vanlearkentucky.com or call (606) 789-8540.