This is an IHeart podcast.

Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb.

And I'm Joe McCormick. And, hey, it's still October, so our Halloween season stuff continues.

Today, we're kicking off an expedition into the mine shaft to talk about monsters and spooky legends associated with mines and mining.

That's right. This one should be a fun one.

We're going to be, especially in this episode, we're kind of revisiting some ideas that we've

discussed more briefly in the past. I did a monster fact that touched on some of this,

and we've also talked a little bit. We've got a little bit into the mines in search of the

supernatural beings and traditions,

but we haven't really mounted an expedition on this level before. So yeah, this one should be good.

So as we've covered on the show before, whenever humans venture where they don't quite belong,

they inevitably encounter monsters of one form or another. There are monsters of the deep

forest and the deep ocean, of the desert and the snow, and there are monsters, too, that haunt

places of human construction. Obviously, our tombs, the necropolis, even spaces like empty

bathrooms at night and lonely expanses of country road,

these places too may be home to monsters and monstrous spirits and other entities.

Each in their own way, these are all places of mystery, and the monster is in some ways an answer to that mystery. And in discussing

monsters, ghosts, and legends associated with mining, we're dealing with a very fascinating

environment, because on one level, the solid earth beneath our feet or deep within the heart

of a mountain, is exactly the sort of place where we do not belong. It's either we're talking about the grave,

or we're just talking about solid earth that affords us no place to exist, or in another level,

...