Hey Tim, do you have a link for the miners experience?
I've got a whole bunch of them, Vault
Just have a quick look and see if you want me to post them
..................................................................................................
Which brings us to the events on August 13,1963, at Sheppton, located in the anthracite coal belt of Schuylkill County in eastern Pennsylvania where the famed
Sheppton Mine Disaster and Rescue transpired. Three men were trapped some 330 feet beneath the earth after the collapse of a mining shaft. Some two weeks later, on Tuesday, August 27th, two of the miners,
Henry Throne and
David Fellin, were brought safely to the surface, after rescuers successfully drilled a 17 1/2-inch and later 28-inch borehole into their chamber, while the third miner,
Lou Bova, being trapped in another part of the mine, regrettably perished.
The story of Throne and Fellin's survival and rescue were enough to captivate the world's attention, but
it was what they claimed they saw and heard, while entombed, that fascinated the public, statements which both men swore as to their authenticity, both separately and publicly, emphatic declarations which they took to their graves, though others believed they had simultaneously witnessed the same
hallucinations.
David Fellin's 'affidavit' was printed in the
Philadelphia Inquirer on August 29, 1963, wherein he remarked how, "Now they're trying to tell me those things were hallucinations, that we imagined it all.
We didn't. Our minds weren't playing tricks on us. I've been a practical, hard-headed coal miner all my life. My mind was clear down there in the mine. It's still clear."
Fellin went on to remark, how some of the things he and Throne saw, they couldn't explain in words, while on the other hand, he stated that, "On the fourth or fifth day,
we saw this door although we had no light from above or from our helmets. The door was covered in bright blue light. It was very clear, better than sunlight. Two ordinary looking men, not miners, opened the door. We could see beautiful marble steps on the other side. We saw this for some time and then we didn't see it..We saw many other things like that that you couldn't explain. But I'm not going to tell you about them because I feel too deeply about all this."
Both men would also claim that they were visited by Pope John XXIII, who had died some ten weeks previously, prior to the mining disaster, and that the deceased pontiff had in reality stayed with them a full eight days!
http://www.newswebreader.com/alt.folklore.urban/WHO-SAYS-THERE-AINT-NO-GOD/1868
https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...nepage&q=trapped miners 1963 sheppton&f=false