The Hauntings at Sloss Furnace

Brown, Alan. Haunted Places. Jackson, Mississippi: University Press of Mississppi, 2002. 19-25. Print.




Many of us who live in Alabama have grown up with the belief that Sloss Furnace is haunted. Many people have died at Sloss, but there is said to be only two ghosts that take up residence at Sloss. One of the ghosts is the spirit of a young girl who came to Sloss in the 1900's. The girl was unmarried and pregnant and felt like an outcast because to be pregnant out of wedlock back then was a huge deal. She had sneaked in to the gate and walked over to one of the furnaces while the men were pouring iron into the sows. The men were very busy and "they caught sight of her climbing to the top of the ladder, but it was too late. She had jumped off of the latter and plummeted into the molten iron" (23). Shortly after her suicide a ceremony was being held at the furnace where local politicians and company executives were listening to a speech given by a company official, when suddenly a white deer ran by. This deer is believed to be the ghost of the young girl. The other ghost is the spirit of Theophilus Calvin Jowers. Jowers was given a job of removing the old bell of Alice furnace No. 1, dropping the bell into the furnace, and replacing it with a new bell. Jowers was standing too close to the top of the furnace and lost his footing and fell down into the furnace along with the bell. Furnace workers reported feeling a chill in the air when they stood on the bridge at the Alice No. 1 and also reported seeing Jowers ghost in the sweltering heat.

My aunt worked at Sloss Furnance during her freshman and sophomore years of college because she is an art major and wanted to learn a thing or two about cast iron. She's never been one to believe in ghosts, but after working at Sloss for two years she's changed her mind. She said that when she was standing near the machines or near the furnaces that you could hear unexplained noises and feel a cool chill through the air. She and a few of her freinds would stay late and roam around the furnace to see what all this paranormal activity was about. She never said anything about seeing apparations, but she said that she could feel a presence following her. She doesn't believe in ghosts to the extent that some people do, but she definitely thinks that there has to be something to all this ghostly activity that people talk about. After hearing her stories, I think she could just be freaking herself out. She insists that spirits really do exist in Sloss. She's never seen a white deer running through the furnace or seen the apparation of Jowers, but she says that many other people have died at Sloss and that those could be the spirits that she has encountered.