An Entrance to the Caves in Staffordshire, England:

The story is related in 'A History of Staffordshire, by Dr. Plot, who wrote the book in the late 1770's'.

A dull, ignorant laborer was diggin a trench in a field which lay in a valley surrounded on almost all sides by woods somewhere in Staffordshire. The sun had gone down and the laborer, who later related his experience, asserted that just as he was about to stop work, his pick hit a large flat stone. The stone had an iron ring mounted in it. He stayed and cleared the stone, which was in the form of a large oblong.

His attempt to pry the stone up was met with failure, but he utilized ropes he had brought to obtain more leverage and managed to slide the stone over. This revealed a stone staircase, which sloped down into the Earth. Since his first thought was that this might lead to an ancient tomb containing treasure, he gradually descended the stone stairway. While looking back, he could still see the sky glowing with the last light of the sun. His descent continued until he was about, according to his estimation, 100 feet underground. It was at this point that he suddenly reached a sort of landing.

The planet Venus had risen by this time and was shining directly down the shaft, so that he was able to discern the beginning of another stairway, which descended at a right angle to the first one. The possibility of a treasure in gold or jewels, made him feel his way in the darkness down another 120 steps. At the foot of these steps was a turn, and far below down another long flight of stone steps, he could see a pale but steady light.

While descending this long flight of steps, he heard the sound of some sort of machinery or the rumble of a large vehicle somewhere far in the distance. He paused, frightened, but the sound was gone and in the surrounding stillness, he forced himself to go forward toward a light which glowed unnaturally in the bowels of the Earth.

Reaching the end of the steps, he found himself in a large stone chamber, the roof of which seemed far above him and the walls of which he could not see even by the light of a globe, whiich glowed on the floor before him. Suddenly a hooded cowled figure appeared from some side passageway. This being pointed what he described as a baton-like object--or as we would understand it, a tube--at the light and destroyed it with a thunderclap, which echoed and reechoed through immeasurable subterranean passageways.

The frightened laborer could not remember how he got out of the tunnel or up the stone stairway, when he related his story. Any attempts to get him to visit the valley again were unsuccessful. Others who searched for the digging were unable to locate either because of the terrible and rainstorm which occurred that night. This ripped and washed the vegetation of the valley away, leaving only the bare earth with no trace of the trench, the stone or the staircase. Because of this, the Staffordshire entrance has never been located again.