In 1944, as a ten year old boy, Newton Anderson dropped a lump of coal in his basement and found that it contained this bell inside. The bituminous coal that was mined near his house in Upshur County West Virginia is supposed to be about 300 million years old! What is a brass bell with an iron clapper doing in coal ascribed to the Carboniferous Period? According to Norm Sharbaugh’s book Ammunition (which includes several “coal anecdotes”) the bell is an antediluvian artifact (made before the Genesis Flood).
The Institute for Creation Research had the bell submitted to the lab at the University of Oklahoma. There a nuclear activation analysis revealed that the bell contains an unusual mix of metals, different from any known modern alloy production (including copper, zinc, tin, arsenic, iodine, and selenium). Genesis 4:22 states that Tubal-Cain was “an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron…” Perhaps when his civilization came to an end in the flood, this bell was buried with a mass of vegetation that became coal and ended up thousands of years later in Newt Anderson’s coal bin.
The bell was prominently featured in the 1992 CBS docudrama production called Ancient Secrets of the Bible and is now part of the Genesis Park collection. For more detailed pictures of the bell and the demon-like figure on top. A handful of other such accounts have been recorded, including the intricate gold chain found in coal (Sanderson, Ivan T., Uninvited Visitors, 1967, pp. 195-196.) and the cast iron pot found in a coal seam at the Municipal Electric Plant in Thomas, OK (now archived at Creation Evidence Museum).
