Halloween exclusive: Ghost hunting at Sloss Furnace

By Webb Dillard

BIRMINGHAM — On Sept. 5, I accompanied several members of the ghost-hunting organization G-City Ghosts to Sloss Furnace in Birmingham. I know many of you may have gone down to the furnace in October for the haunted house, but this trip was not open to the public. For a fee, private groups like G-City Ghosts get a mostly free roam of the 32-acre Sloss campus.

I am not going to tell you I was really excited about the prospect of wandering around the furnace in the dark, because I wasn't. Especially since, according to G-City Ghosts founder Bo Starkey, Sloss is considered one of the most haunted places in Alabama.

When we arrived at the furnace we were greeted by Ron Bates, a Sloss security guard. He took us to the main office to sign the necessary paperwork. Once we finished, Bates took Starkey and Smith on a brief walk through the area. The rest of the group, including myself, unloaded the ghost-hunting equipment.

Bates, Bo Starkey and Mike King were gone about 15 minutes. When they returned there was already a reason for the group to be excited. Not only had Starkey seen an apparition, but Bates witnessed it, too.

Bates thought they'd stumbled upon a trespasser. He told me he yelled at the person and explained that the property was closed. Starkey then ran directly to the area where they saw the “trespasser,” but no one was there. When the three met back up with us, the whole group was abuzz -- except for me, of course, especially since they have already witnessed “something” and we had only been there, on-site, for about 20 minutes.

Besides the apparition, Starkey explained to the group what he experienced in Lower Engine House No. 1. He said that as soon as he entered the room, an unexplainable sickly feeling suddenly came over his body. Bates and King confirmed they had the same feeling. They said it felt like they were going to vomit.

We split up into two groups before leaving the main office. Starkey was training a new member, so I went with King, and D.J. Starkey instructed them to take me directly to Lower Engine House No. 1.

Sure enough, when the three of us entered, I felt sick. Honestly, I did. The air in the building just seemed extremely heavy. The first room in the building was lit, so we could see everything pretty easily. However, the room we were about to enter was consumed by the blackest darkness I had ever seen. Once inside the huge open area of the engine house, things got really creepy; an endless maze of steam pipes zigzagged around the building. Three-story-high catwalks and stairwells intertwined with the pipes.

My group stayed in the Lower Engine House for about an hour, and witnessed two unexplainable events. First, the new batteries in the D.J.'s camera were suddenly drained of power. He had only taken 10-15 pictures, so the batteries should have been fine. Second, as we were descending the stairs that led to the catwalks the electro magnetic field (EMF) meter in D.J.'s backpack went absolutely haywire. D.J. grabbed the meter and began trying to pin-point the source of the disturbance.

He pointed the meter at a steam pipe a few feet away from where we were standing and it went off again. Then, he ran the meter directly over the pipe and got a much more active reading about two feet from the first hit. King's audio device picked up something unidentified at the same moment. As D.J. continued down the stairs, he stopped, reached back up to the steam pipe with the EMF meter and got absolutely nothing. At first, I thought the pipes must have been grounded somehow, the meter picking up something from a ground wire. But once D.J. tested the pipe again with the meter and got nothing, I was a little shaken.

We finally met back up with Starkey and the trainee, and I joined their group. We proceeded back into the Lower Engine House. I was supposed to show Starkey where the EMF meter had acted up. I can't tell you if what happened next was real, but I was extremely uncomfortable as events unfolded.

Starkey had given me a HI-8 video camera to operate, which immediately began shutting off, all on its own. The button was still in the ON position, so I don't know how the thing turned off. I was in RECORD mode on two separate occasions when the thing simply stopped working and shut down. I asked Starkey if his camera would shut down in STAND-BY mode and he said no, and we both agreed that it definitely shouldn't shut down in RECORD mode.

Since I had already been through the building, Starkey asked me to show him and the trainee the suspicious steam pipe. As we were making our way up the catwalk, I heard something I could not explain. I wasn't sticking around near the spot where I heard it, either. Starkey and the trainee were on the catwalk above me, and I floated up the stairs. Starkey said, “Webb, what the heck happened?”

“I heard something, brother, and if it's getting me it's getting you, too!”

It was a slight waft of air. It didn't sound mechanical, but it did sound like someone or something made the sound. Either way, I wasn't real pleased hearing it, if you catch my drift.

Something else strange happened less than five minutes later. Starkey was walking ahead of us. He suddenly exclaimed, “Oh my god! Oh my god! How did I just see that? How did I just see that?”

Starkey said he'd just watched a shadow walk outside the third-story window. He shined his flashlight onto his arms and all you could see were chill bumps. The weirdest thing is the fact that there was no way for anyone to walk outside that window. There were no catwalks, no balconies. Nothing.

After nearly three hours on the job, I was ready to go. Once were got back to the base station outside the main office, the group started to go over the audio we'd captured when D.J. discovered something on his tape.

I distinctly remembered a conversation between D.J. and King when we'd first toured the engine room that started out “Hey, Mike.” Mike had answered D.J. and nothing seemed out of the ordinary at the time. However, as D.J. played back the tape, we discovered someone or something repeating the words, “Hey, Mike,” over and over. It was very faint but we could hear it, plain as day.

After the group finished a short break, I decided to leave. It was about 20 past midnight. Starkey and his group stayed until 2:30 a.m. According to Starkey, the rest of the night was quite eventful. They saw another apparition and took hundreds of photos.

Later on the phone, I asked Starkey what he felt his group accomplished at Sloss.
“I definitely feel that there is some sort of paranormal activity taking place out there,” he said. “It was a great learning experience for everyone in the group, including myself. There was so much activity that night that it was hard to tell the difference between 'normal' and 'paranormal.'”

I also asked Starkey about the future of G-City Ghosts.

“What I personally want to happen is to get our name out there and gain the trust of the public as a legitimate investigative group when comes to the paranormal,” he said. “As far our next big investigation goes, we have already done a preliminary walk-through with the curator of the St. Augustine Lighthouse in Florida.”

He said the lighthouse is well-known for its hauntings and has been featured on the Sci-Fi Channel program “Ghost Hunters”.

“We also welcome anybody here locally to call us if they have suspicion of a haunting somewhere,” he added. “Anyone interested in joining our organization should feel free to contact me, as well.”

(Author's note: G-City Ghosts is non-profit organization committed to finding the truth through research and scientific method. For more information on G-City Ghosts contact Bo Starkey at 256-458-5058. Starkey encourages anyone interested in the paranormal to contact him and discuss joining the organization.)