Goblins, Knockers, and the Things Beneath Us: Dark Folklore of Underground Beings Worldwide Part 2

0:00 Speaker 1: Hello, dear listeners, Welcome back to part two of our Goblin series. Tonight, we are not looking up. We are looking down, because long before flying saucers, before radar blips and grainy footage, people across the world were already telling the same story and whispers not about invaders from the sky, but about neighbors beneath the ground. Miners, farmers, shepherds, children warned by grandparents who would never explain why the rules mattered, only that they did. Don't whistle underground, don't throw stones into dark holes, and if something knocks you, pretend you never heard it.

0:41 Speaker 1: The first sounds In the tin mines of Cornwall, men worked in darkness so complete it erased the idea of time. Lanterns barely pushed the blackness back, the rock pressed close, the earth breathed, and, sometimes long before a collapse, miners heard it knocking, soft at first, careful, almost polite. At first. They thought it was another crew working nearby, but when they called out, no one answered. The knocking continued anyway, always ahead of them, deeper in the mine. Some miners believed the knockers were warning spirits, tapping to save lives.

1:20 Speaker 1: Others believed They were tricksters who mimicked sound, lured men into dead tunnels, and hid tools for sport. Either way, miners learned to leave offerings, bread tucked into crevices, milk poured onto stone, coins left where no human hand could reach. Those who didn't tended to be the ones whose lamps went out first.

1:43 Speaker 2: The hidden people who never left.

1:47 Speaker 1: In Iceland, the stories never became folklore. They remained instructions the hold of folk. The hidden people were not legends meant to entertain. They were neighbors who shared the land, but not the rules of visibility. They lived inside hills, inside boulders, inside the places humans decided were empty simply because they couldn't see inside them. People still reroot roads around certain rocks. Construction still halts when machinery breaks repeatedly for no clear reason, and when accidents cluster around one place, no one laughs it off.

2:24 Speaker 1: They apologize. The hidden people are not cruel, but they are old, and old things expect respect.

2:32 Speaker 2: The ones who whistled back.

2:35 Speaker 1: Across Central and South America, parents warned children about the duendes, small figures with oversized eyes and backward feet, said to live in caves, forests, and abandoned tunnels. They whistled, not cheerfully, not loudly, just enough to be followed. Travelers told stories of hearing whistles echoing underground, growing closer, then stop abruptly, as if something was waiting to see whether curiosity would win. Some who followed the sound were found days later, disoriented and terrified, unable to explain where they'd been.

3:12 Speaker 1: Others were never found at all. Appalachia already knew by the time Kentucky was settled, the hills already had rules. In Appalachia, people didn't name the underground beings. Naming things invites attention. They simply called them them. The little watchers in the hollows, the ones who lived beneath the ridges, the knockers who answered back if you made too much noise. Underground children were taught to step lightly near cave mouths, Hunters were warned not to fire into sinkholes, and when dogs refused to approach certain places no one forced them.

3:50 Speaker 1: They listened. Reframing the goblins of Kentucky, which brings us back to Hopkinsville and the strange night in nineteen fifty five, when small beings emerged from the woods and stared into windows like they were unfamiliar with the concept of glass. The so called goblins didn't rush, didn't attack, didn't chase. They hovered, peaked withdrew, returned again and again. They behaved less like invaders and more like something displaced, something curious about the surface but uncomfortable in it, as if whatever had fallen from the sky or struck the ground had forced them upward, briefly into a world they didn't belong in.

4:34 Speaker 1: When the noise became too violent, they retreated downward.

4:39 Speaker 3: Tonight's episode is brought to you by Absolutely Not Caving, the world's leading underground avoidance lifestyle brand. Have you ever thought, Wow, that whole looks interesting.

4:50 Speaker 2: Wrong?

4:50 Speaker 3: Thought at Absolutely not Caving. We believe caves are just basements for things that don't pay rent and don't want roommates. Our services include a personal friend who slaps your phone out of your hand when you try to google is this cave safe? A mobile app that screams nope anytime you approach a sinkhole, and our premium feature knock Detection. If something knocks underground, we knock you unconscious. With common sense, experts agree, nothing good starts with hey let's see what's down there.

5:24 Speaker 3: Curiosity did not just kill the cat. It also disappeared three miners, a hiker, and that one guy who said, watch this absolutely not caving, because if it whistles back, you've already made a mistake.

5:38 Speaker 2: Why the stories all end the same.

5:40 Speaker 1: Way across cultures, centuries, and continents. These stories rarely end with victory. They end with silence. People stop digging, stop exploring, stop asking questions. Not because the beings leave, but because humans learn where the boundary is. Folklore is not a warning about monsters. It's a record of consequences. So tonight, dear listeners, remember this. Not everything strange comes from above. Some things were here first. And if you ever hear knocking beneath your feet, not on a wall, not on a door, but inside the earth itself, that is not an invitation.

6:22 Speaker 1: I'm amy. This has been the Strange History Podcast. Sleep lightly, stay on the surface, and let the old things keep their dark