I've told this story before, but I'll tell it again here because this seems like the place for it, and the curiosity of it never gets old to me.
One night, many years agoi when I was a young man, I'd been to visit a young lady who lived a couple miles from me. In those days, I walked just about everywhere I went. It was a warm summer night, so a perfect time for a walk anyhow. So about 10 PM, I was on my way back home, going down the rather long driveway from the young lady's house. It was on a hillside above the head of a holler, and sort of wrapped around the mountain.
At one distinct point, I suddenly heard a "clanking" noise coming from the ground right beneath my feet. It sounded like machinery clanking along, or kobolds beating out sword blades with a hammer on an anvil, just a rhythmic, mechanical, clanking noise.
One step forward from that spot, and the clanking noise vanished. One step back from it, and the noise disappeared, too. it was only when I stood on that one specific spot that I could hear it, and I heard it every time I stepped on that spot.
The only possible hollowness under that spot would have been a warren of caves. No mines there, and therefore no mining machinery to generate the sound. All of the mines were to the north of the Clinch River, in the Cumberland Plateau, a good distance away and separated from that spot by a river and fault lines. Likewise the railroad - it was to the north of the river, servicing the mines... and had it been rail traffic, I would have heard it in the air rather than coming from underfoot.
I stayed there and played for around a half hour, stepping forward and backwards trying to isolate the noise and figure out what it was. I never did get it figured out. This was in a very rural area of Russell County, VA, itself a very rural county, at the upper end of an area called "Glade Hollow", a long valley that was 8 or 10 miles long altogether.
I never did figure out what caused the noise, to this day. Just another curiosity.
.
One night, many years agoi when I was a young man, I'd been to visit a young lady who lived a couple miles from me. In those days, I walked just about everywhere I went. It was a warm summer night, so a perfect time for a walk anyhow. So about 10 PM, I was on my way back home, going down the rather long driveway from the young lady's house. It was on a hillside above the head of a holler, and sort of wrapped around the mountain.
At one distinct point, I suddenly heard a "clanking" noise coming from the ground right beneath my feet. It sounded like machinery clanking along, or kobolds beating out sword blades with a hammer on an anvil, just a rhythmic, mechanical, clanking noise.
One step forward from that spot, and the clanking noise vanished. One step back from it, and the noise disappeared, too. it was only when I stood on that one specific spot that I could hear it, and I heard it every time I stepped on that spot.
The only possible hollowness under that spot would have been a warren of caves. No mines there, and therefore no mining machinery to generate the sound. All of the mines were to the north of the Clinch River, in the Cumberland Plateau, a good distance away and separated from that spot by a river and fault lines. Likewise the railroad - it was to the north of the river, servicing the mines... and had it been rail traffic, I would have heard it in the air rather than coming from underfoot.
I stayed there and played for around a half hour, stepping forward and backwards trying to isolate the noise and figure out what it was. I never did get it figured out. This was in a very rural area of Russell County, VA, itself a very rural county, at the upper end of an area called "Glade Hollow", a long valley that was 8 or 10 miles long altogether.
I never did figure out what caused the noise, to this day. Just another curiosity.
.