Subterranean Centaur Scare

It is approximately the 7th of March, 1913 - and hundreds of sweaty men bustle about in the Chickasaw Mine of Kittanning, Pennsylvania. They are presumably quite desperate to see the sunlight, but the circumstances under which they would be made to in just a moment would haunt them for the rest of their days. Violent hoofbeats and a ghostly light seep their way into the subterranean darkness, signalling the arrival of a bizarre spectre unlike any other...

## The Incident

The hoofbeats (which I have presumed must've been present) got louder and louder as the surreal form moved from room to room in the mine, ordering all of the workmen to abandon their tools and leave the mine in a '*sepulchral voice*'. Terrified and likely utterly dumbfounded at the sight, the workers poured from the entrance of the mine in droves, setting a new record for the speed at which a mine could be evacuated.

As my description of hooves might imply, this entity was not your average humanoid ghost. Instead, it was described as having a torso **like that of an emaciated man** and the lower body of a horse. It was a centaur. In one hand, it carried an odd object compared to a dinner pail - from which issued **lurid gleams** of phantasmal light.

One John Martel worked as the driver of the mine motor, and was allegedly at his place on the machine when the spectre came for him. It apparently manifested from nowhere, before pointing one of its bony fingers at him and uttering a single word - **GO**. Martel found himself unable to move for a moment, seeing as he was literally paralysed with the utmost terror. As soon as he was once again capable of movement, he screamed in horror before dashing away from the creature - moving rapidly along the tracks towards the light streaming in from the mine's entrance. Momentarily glancing back the way he came, Martel could see that the motor - now apparently somehow driven by the centaur - was in hot pursuit. By the time Martel finally burst out into the safety of daylight, he could still see the motor (now empty) close behind him.

The miners refused to go to work the next day, and as of the time when the story was originally published (In the March 9th, 1913 edition of the *Philadelphia Inquirer*), it had yet to be decided how business should proceed in the Chickasaw mine. The centuar was apparently seen as some kind of ill omen. One of my sources has speculated that perhaps this was an exceptionally-bizarre excuse for the miners to escape work, but then again there would surely be some less-fantastical stories that they could've invented for this purpose...

## Sources

I originally found this story in an issue of *Fortean Times*, which sadly only included a very-much abbreviated version of the tale and then didn't offer me any realistic way to track down any more information. I still published an article on it, but this rewrite comes now that Albert Rosales has been able to find the full story through newspaper clippings. The newspaper clippings are of course blurry, seeing as they were snapped from a website that would usually be behind a paywall - but I was able to find another source online which simply repeated what the newspaper said about the incident. Here is that source!

## Newspaper Clipping Gallery

The most extensive (and sadly least clearly scanned) newspaper clipping on the topic.An overview of the story provided in an unnamed newspaper at the time. It's an abbreviated version of the story told in the other sources.