According to the World Coal Association, the process responsible for the formation of coal began 360 to 290 million years ago. With this in mind, it would seem absolutely impossible for any human artifacts to be found within this ancient substance; but incredibly, many items have reportedly been found in such deposits, either buried inside the coal itself or found buried deep down within coal veins found in mines which have been tunneled out far beneath the Earth’s surface. OOPArts found in coal and stone are some of the strangest of unexplained artifacts.

An OOPArt in Illinois Coal

On June 11, 1891, an Illinois newspaper reported the unusual discovery of a modern artifact found embedded in a lump of coal that had originated from a South Illinois mine, which the Illinois State Geological Survey said had formed between 260 and 320 million years ago, at some time during the Carboniferous Period. The bizarre report printed in The Morrisonville Times went as follows:

‘A curious find was brought to light by Mrs. S.W. Culp last Tuesday morning. As she was breaking a lump of coal preparatory to putting it in the scuttle, she discovered, as the lump fell apart, embedded in a circular shape a small gold chain about ten inches in length of antique and quaint workmanship.’

Example of a gold chain. ( CC0)

According to the report, Mrs. Culp initially suspected that the chain must have accidentally been dropped into the coal container, but as she went to pick up the chain she saw that it was actually still attached to the coal itself.

The news article read:

‘the idea of its having been recently dropped was at once made fallacious, for as the lump of coal broke, it separated almost in the middle, and the circular position of the chain placed the two ends near to each other; and as the lump separated, the middle of the chain became loosened while each end remained fastened to the coal.’

Finding a human artifact such as this with the possibility of being crafted hundreds of millions of years ago raises the most unlikely of questions , should we choose to accept that a) the object was actually located inside the coal as reported and not simply discovered alongside it and b) the geological age of coal itself has been accurately dated. Should these two factors prove to be correct as they initially appear, one must then question civilized man’s place in history.

Lumps of coal. (Duncan Harris/ CC BY SA 2.0 )

The Out of Place Iron Pot in Oklahoma

A remarkable iron pot was allegedly found inside a large piece of coal in Oklahoma back in 1912, and is now being kept at the Creation Evidence Museum at Glen Rose, Texas. On January 10, 1949, a photograph of the iron cup was sent to Frank L. Marsh of Andrews University, in Michigan, by Robert Nordling who wrote, ‘I visited a friend’s museum in southern Missouri. Among his curios, he had the iron cup pictured on the enclosed snapshot.’

The iron cup had been displayed at the private museum along with the following signed affidavit made by Frank J. Kenwood in Sulphur Springs, Arkansas, on November 27, 1948:

‘While I was working in the Municipal Electric Plant in Thomas, Okla[homa], in 1912, I came upon a solid chunk of coal which was too large to use. I broke it with a sledge hammer. This iron pot fell from the center, leaving the impression or mould of the pot in the piece of coal. Jim Stall (an employee of the company) witnessed the breaking of the coal, and saw the pot fall out. I traced the source of the coal, and found that it came from the Wilburton, Oklahoma Mines.’

The iron pot OOPart found in coal with the affidavit. ( Metallicman)

The Wilburton mine coal is about 312 million years old according to Robert O. Fay of the Oklahoma Geological Survey.

A Brass Bell Discovered in Virginia Coal

Another bizarre and anomalous coal discovery was made in 1944 by Newton Richard Anderson, who was ten years old at the time. Tasked with stoking the furnace at his home in Buckhannon, West Virginia, Anderson went down to the basement one evening and picked out a particularly large lump of coal which he placed onto his already loaded shovel. The large piece inevitably wobbled and fell to the ground, splitting in two as it hit the hard floor. Protruding from one of the broken halves was a slender metallic object; so setting aside the piece containing the unusual item, the curious boy threw the remainder into the furnace.

Using a croquet mallet, Anderson bashed the bituminous coal lump that had been mined in Upshur County not far from his house, and extracted what appeared to be a small and ornate brass bell with an iron clapper, before cleaning it with lye and a scrubbing brush. Again, the coal from that particular mine is supposed to date back to around 300 million years ago.

An ornate brass bell was found in 300 million year old coal. ( s8nt.com)

The bell was tested using neutron activation analysis (NAA), a nuclear process used for determining the concentrations of elements in various materials, and the results revealed an unusual mix of metals which included copper, tin, iodine, zinc, and selenium, proving they were different from any known modern alloy production.

In order to validate his claims, Newton Anderson took a polygraph test in 2007, which he passed comfortably.

Newton Anderson’s 2007 polygraph test proves he was telling the truth about finding the bell inside coal. (Author provided)

More Mystery in the Figure Atop the Bell

The figure atop the bell which Anderson discovered is strikingly similar to that of the Hindu deity Garuda, which is commonly placed on top of Ghanta bells used in Indian, Tibetan, and Nepalese worship. These bells are generally made from brass and are usually adorned with a figure.

The winged figure on both Anderson’s bell and a Nepalese bell reveal a stepped design with a ribbed grip and a figure on the platform praying in a kneeling position. The latter has been catalogued as originating somewhere between the 18th and 19th centuries.

Figurine on the handle of the hand-bell. ( Metallicman)

Could the anomalous artifact discovered in a lump of coal possibly reveal the presence of a Vedic influence in North America hundreds of millions of years ago? It might seem completely implausible following the rigid framework of Darwinist thought, but Vedic literature is in sync with such timescales spanning back into great antiquity.

OOParts in Mines

The following examples of OOPArts reveal manmade walls reportedly found deep within coal mines, where evidence of human manufacture should simply not be present.

W.W. McCormick of Albilene, Texas kept a document recording his grandfather’s account regarding a stone block wall that was exposed whilst mining for coal. The document read, ‘In the year 1928, I, Atlas Almon Mathis, was working in coal mine No. 5, located two miles north of Heavener, Oklahoma. This was a shaft mine, and they told us it was two miles deep.’ It was in ‘room 24’ of this mine one evening where Mathis had blasted coal loose using explosives that he would discover physical proof of ancient civilized activity below the ground.

Representative image inside a coal mine. (Hylgeriak/ CC BY SA 3.0 ) This coal mine is "Gruve 2" in Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway.

‘The next morning there were several concrete blocks laying in the room. These blocks were 12-inch cubes and were so smooth and polished on the outside that all six sides could serve as mirrors’, wrote Mathis. If the coal was Carboniferous, as would be expected, this would mean that the wall dates back to at least 286 million years.

Another wall-in-coal-mine story was reported by author and astronomer M.K. Jessup, ‘It is . . . reported that James Parsons, and his two sons, exhumed a slate wall in a coal mine at Hammondville, Ohio, in 1868. It was a large, smooth wall, disclosed when a great mass of coal fell away from it, and on its surface, carved in bold relief, were several lines of hieroglyphics.’ (Jessup, M.K. - The Case for the UFO. Garland, Texas, Uaro Manufacturing Company, 1973.)

Looking at OOPArts Found in Coal and Stone in a Larger Context

If told in isolation, then one might feel rightly inclined to ignore tales of modern artifacts found in ancient strata, but these accounts should be considered as part of a larger context.

In 1844, a curious report appeared on June 22, in the London Times which mentioned the bizarre discovery of a gold artifact in Early Carboniferous stone dated between 320 and 360 million years old. The newspaper report was as follows: ‘A few days ago, as some workmen were employed in quarrying a rock close to the Tweed about a quarter of mile below Rutherford-mill, a gold thread was discovered embedded in the stone at a depth of eight feet.’

Workers at the entrance to a W. Va. coal mine: a "drift" mine. ( Public Domain )

Eight years later, on June 5, 1852, another unusual report surfaced, this time appearing in the magazine Scientific American :

‘A Relic of a Bygone Age – A few days ago a powerful blast was made in the rock at Meeting House Hill, in Dorchester, a few rods south of Rev. Mr. Hall’s meeting house. The blast threw out an immense mass of rock, some of the pieces weighing several tons, and scattered fragments in all directions. Among them was picked up a metallic vessel in two parts, rent asunder by the explosion. On putting the two parts together it formed a bell-shaped vessel. . . On the other side there six figures of a flower, or a bouquet, beautifully inlaid with pure silver, and around the lower part of the vessel a vine, or wreath, also inlaid with silver. . . This curious and unknown, was blown out of the solid pudding stone, fifteen feet below the surface. . . The matter is worthy of investigation, as there is no deception in the case.’

Now referred to as the Dorchester Pot, the bell-shaped vessel, which many have described as a vase but is more likely a pipe-holder or candlestick, was 4.5 inches (11.43 cm) high with a diameter of 6.5 inches (16.51 cm) at the base and 2.5 inches (6.35 cm) at the top, with a thickness of about 0.12 inches (3 mm).

19th-century pipe holder from India, Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya . ( Public Domain )

Italian author Biagio Catalano pointed out that the ‘vase’ was almost identical in appearance and style to an Indian pipe-holder which is being housed at the CSMVS Museum in Mumbai, India. The similarities between the Dorchester Pot and the Indian artifact are so striking that a link between the manufacturers of both must exist somehow. Yet it would still remain somewhat mysterious to find an Eastern relic beneath the ground in America during the 19th century.

The pudding stone, now called the Roxbury Conglomerate, is of Precambrian age according to a more recent U.S. Geological Survey map of the Boston-Dorchester area, dating the stone which allegedly contained the vase-like container to 600 million years old.

Top Image: This iron pot is allegedly an OOPArt found in coal. Source: Monte Aldone

By J.P. Robinson

Excerpt taken from ‘The Myth of Man: Hidden History and the Ancient Origins of Humankind’. For more information, you can visit the author’s website, facebook page or Amazon author page .