The History: Colonel James Withers Sloss, a north Alabama merchant and railroad man played an important role in the founding the city of Birmingham, Alabama by convincing the L&N Railroad to capitalize completion of the South and North rail line through Jones Valley, the site of the new town. In 1880, having helped form the Pratt Coke and Coal Company, which mined and sold Birmingham’s first high-grade coking coal, he founded the Sloss Furnace Company, and two years later constructed the second blast furnace in Birmingham. Construction of Sloss’s new furnace, originally called City Furnaces, began in June 1881, when ground was broken on a fifty-acre site. Sloss’s new Whitwell stoves were the first of their type ever built in Birmingham and were comparable to similar equipment used in the North. It included two blowing engines and ten boilers, thirty feet long and forty-six inches in diameter. In April 1882, the furnaces went into blast. Despite being dominated by black labor, the industrial workplace was rigidly segregated until the 1960s. Workers at Sloss bathed in separate bath houses, punched separate time clocks, attended separate company picnics. More important was the segregation of jobs. The company operated as a hierarchy. At the top there was an all white group of managers, chemists, accountants, and engineers; at the bottom an all black “labor gang”. The furnaces continued to operate until 1970.
Sloss received National Historic Landmark designation in 1981 and opened to the public in September 1983, as a museum of the City of Birmingham. Its collection consists of two 400-ton blast furnaces and some forty other buildings. Nothing remains of the original furnace complex. The oldest building on the site dates from 1902 and houses the eight steam-driven “blowing-engines” used to provide air for combustion in the furnaces. The engines themselves date from the period 1900-1902 and are a unique and important collection—engines such as these powered America’s Industrial Revolution. The boilers, installed in 1906 and 1914, produced steam for the site until it closed in 1970. Sloss is currently the only twentieth-century blast furnace in the U.S. being preserved and interpreted as an historic industrial site. |
The Claims: There are numerous claims about paranormal activity at Sloss Furnaces. Hearing voices, the sound of pipes/metal banging, screams being heard and actual apparitions being spotted have all been reported. It is claimed that the spirits are of a former worker (Slag) who fell into one of the furnaces while he was working the other is a former foreman who is said to be seen on the cat walks.
Our Findings: We investigated the Sloss Furnace on August 9, 2014. Let’s just say it wasn’t what we expected. While the complex may have 40 buildings, we were only given access to the bathhouse (now administrative offices) the furnace area, the powerhouse and of course the tunnel. The majority of the complex we had access to – and supposedly the most haunted – is actually open to the elements. It does have a roof but there are no side walls. Check the pictures in the gallery to see what we mean. Since the complex is bordered on one side by a very active railroad and on another side by the interstate, there was really no way to hold an accurate investigation. Noise from the railroad, the highway and the local neighborhood contaminated all audio evidence. We did catch some light anomalies in three of the photos. Because of the environmental contamination we aren't convinced they are anything other than 'interesting'. We saw nothing that would be even close to paranormal and had no personal experiences. Still…we can say we’ve been there! |