There has been no tougher or more dangerous job in history than coal mining.

It's a profession that has seen more deaths and more legends than any other in American

history.

It's a job that hinges on life and death and the suspense of waiting for something terrible to happen.

Mining for coal is created extraordinary tales of violence, bloodshed, murder, labor troubles, and ghosts.

The struggles of the working man against the power and greed of the coal mine owners have created stories of deadly drama,

while the dangers the men face beneath the earth tell their own stories of heartbreak and horror.

It's been said that during the heyday of coal mining in the late 1800s and early 1900s,

at least 75,000 men died beneath the earth of Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and throughout the Appalachians.

Death seemed to be everywhere.

Most miners didn't live past 40.

They died in accidents, disasters, explosions, cave-ins, or from the slow, cruel death of the Black Long.

It often seems as though nature takes a revenge on those who steal the riches from her belly,

working the Black scene deep beneath the earth where there's no escape when things go horribly wrong.

Is it any wonder under such deadly circumstances that coal miners created a trove of superstitions

that hopes they might ward off the terrors that waited for them in the dark?

If you saw a dog or a black cat or a woman, especially a red-headed woman, in a mine,

it usually meant that someone was going to die.

Saw a white rat, an accident was going to happen.

Never ever whistle in a mine.

Never work on good Friday because it would mean disaster for your family.

And never change jobs on any other Friday.

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