Ghost miners..

[colly0410]

Been reading about illegal 'ghost miners' in South African gold mines: They somehow sneak in the cage to get underground then stay there for months at a time in old districts, finding then refining ore they find kicking about. The legal miners bring them food & drink & I presume take out the gold, what happens to all the poo & wee they produce I can imagine; it's dumped up an old roadway lol.... Don't suppose anything like this has ever happened in coal mines - unless someone knows different...

[smshogun]

Not heard that one but many pits with an adit usually had trouble with people accessing the mine illegally, some were human and some were animal and I never saw an adit which was fenced off or protected, I have seen kids walking down adits as we were riding the cable belt out of the pit on several occasions and of course we would cover our white helmets and have our lamps turned off and make them jump as we approached them.