 I'm Lieutenant Dick Chasen, this hadn't been a routine case and to find the answer I've had to put a lot of little pieces together. Today I am at the Lackawanna coal mine tour here in good old Lackawanna county and I'm going to go 300 feet down into the earth and an actual coal mine, I'm pretty excited about it. I did this a lot when I was in school, I remember taking field trips here when I was like in the first grade and I did not appreciate it then but something tells me I'm going to appreciate it a lot more now. So let's go do this. Oh boy, I can see they're loading up the little elevator shaft. This is the back side, the little yellow car is actually going to take us down into the earth. Hello. I don't know much about coal but I just like the fact of going down into the ground. That's what I like the most and tickets are fairly cheap, it's only $10, can't go wrong with that, $10 to dissent 300 feet into the ground inside where you have to buy the tickets you can see all these murals of what it was like working in the mines. Look at how cool they are. That guy seems very serious. We have to go down into the shaft now but I cannot have my hat with me, instead I'm going to wear this little pretty thing, help, please put the bunion on my head, there it is, there we go. Now we're going to put our heart health on and let's go. You stay here with the minions, I'll be back, I love you. It's my sister Bonnie by the way, this is our little mine cart right here, it's very tight in here, my head, it is very, no we're not ready, no I'm already ready, we're locked in. Oh boy, we're going, sunlight is fading away, oh it's telling us the length of how far we're down, that noise, we've made it, yeah, the sitting quarters in here, it's not the greatest. I had to resort to sitting, follow your heart, but we are here, deep down in the ground, look at how old everything is, it's kind of scary, I don't know if these beams are actually holding us up, lots of questions, lots of questions I have to ask. So fun fact I found out, these poles, they're not holding the ceiling up, they're warning, so if these start, they're called warning poles, if they start to crack or splinter, you know the ceiling is coming down on you, kind of creepy, and they have like a little map of like where you are, so we're in the Clark bed, so we are 366 feet down, but there are three more shafts that go down even lower, 528 feet, that's crazy, we are right here though, and we came down on a 190 degree slope, thank you. This is the actual other mine that I was telling you that's below us, look how deep that goes down, I dare you to go down there Bon, there's just so much water running down here too, it's so cool, here's a look up at the shafts above us, and look at that they have a little man working, well he's not a little man, he's a big man, and he looks like he's up to no good, so quiet, I apologize if the audio is off on here a little bit because like I said it's very quiet, and plus I'm getting an echo from my heart look at this, they got a little bench, you can take a sit down if you're getting tired the ceiling is getting very close to our heads here, wow, look at these, this is awesome, this is what they would use to haul some of the coal back up the mine, that's not creepy, look at these cool guys working over here, but fun fact you can see a little canary in the cage here, it's not a real canary obviously, but this mine was built in 1860 and actually they used canaries to actually detect methane in the air because methane is the number one cause for mines to explode, so the canaries would actually sense it in the air, make a lot of noise, pretty cool, obviously we've come a long way and we actually have detectors now, but back in the day it was the canary, look at all this cool stuff, look at the dynamite, if you needed to get in contact with someone up above you would use this old nifty phone here, a little bit moldy though, so I'm not gonna test it out, but look how cool that is, I got separated from the tour group talking about the canaries and now I have to find them, so this makes it extra creepy for me, I hope they didn't go far, oh boy, there was the bench I was sitting on, I think that's the way we exit, oh lordy, oh found them, they painted the ceiling orange right here so you can watch your head because it is boom boom, very close, we are so far down we have no service and the battery died, like I said before this mine opened up in 1860 so their practices were pretty barbaric back then, but as you can see a little kid here displayed by this wonderful mannequin was actually sent to the mines to work, kids were sent to the mines to work at a young age and they used donkeys and mules to actually haul the coal all the way back up that shaft that we came down, that is crazy isn't it, my only question is doesn't it look like that little boar is holding a wooden stake, are there vampires down here, oh boy, I like where they put these people because the backdrop is pretty unbelievable, look at that, you can just hear the water running and he's about to blow something, that's dynamite, very creepy spot right here, as you can see some you know coal or rock actually busted through the wall right here, I gotta stop getting separated from these people because it's actually pretty creepy being down here without having someone like an immediate location of you, so this tour itself we're actually walking underground, like I said we're at about 366 feet below ground level and about a half a mile stretch of mines so it's getting pretty crazy, they do have like outposts every once in a while so you can check in, this guy's doing some paperwork, look at that, but this would be his office, that does not belong nor that Walmart bag, look at these guys right here, I have to give it up to coal miners because I would never do anything like that, like that is tight working and if you look straight back up you go all the way out to the surface just through this little pathway, craziness, this was actually starting to be another pathway for the coal mine and I think this is what they're using to clear this stuff out, now this hasn't been operational since 1960 so it opened in 1860 and actually produced coal all the way up until 1960 and then it was just left the way it was and then they came in and they added some safety features and stuff like that to make it kind of like a museum tour, what we're doing right now, so we found an air duct in here, oh boy, that is scary, so this would be where the children actually started around seven to eight years old, they'd be in charge in here to watch out for the doors, this is very awesome, oh boy, lost the group again, the ceiling is getting really low, I now see why it's important to wear these hard hats because like if you walk on this side there are some points where like I literally just like click, like you legitimately hit your head, here is a coal shaker and it would literally shake and vibrate and separate the coal from the rock but like you would have to climb up here and then go all the way back there, that is scary, so we made it to the end of the mine shaft here, look at that, now we're gonna backtrack our way back out because it's a one way, it's coming down that 190 slope, that 190 slope, this is pretty awesome right here, you can hear a lot of like roaring because this is an air shaft, this is actually going all the way up to the surface and letting air come down in here and sucking it, that's very like gross, this actually reminds me of like the walking dead, I can imagine like seeing a sign that says dead inside, look at this cool little peg thing, so this would like say if the person was in the coal mine or if they were out never leave anyone behind, not you, you're coming with us, it's kind of cold down here, they said the average temperature would be around 58 degrees but it's wet, it's damp, miners got sick a lot and I could never be a person that did this, kudos to coal miners I have to say, fantastic, time to head back up inside the little yellow car, very very tight feeling, we are back, that was pretty awesome, as much as I love this hat, I think it's time to get my summertime hat back, that was actually very fun, like I said when I was a kid and I came here I didn't appreciate it that much, but now I thought it was amazing, they're actually sending a tour down right now, so you can see by the coal wire here, that's all that's you know controlling that little yellow cab there, pulling it up and then dropping it down slowly, craziness isn't it, once you get done with your tour you actually get a little certificate, a miner certificate and on the back it shows you what the wages were for coal miners back in 1902, look at this like 18 cents an hour, 11 cents an hour, even an engineer made $78 a month, wow times have changed, that's gonna do it for me, hope you guys enjoyed, I can't tell now because I didn't edit the vlog yet, it's still being recorded right now, but I think the audio and actually the lighting came out pretty well, I'm like very happy with it, I don't know though yet I had to see the vlog, but it was a lot of fun and learned a lot of nifty stuff, so love the life you live and we'll see you next time, bye