Jim Grabowski — a steelworker who fell into a vat of molten steel at Jones and Laughlin Steel Mill in 1922 — allegedly haunted workers at the site of his death, according to Thomas White, author of “Forgotten Tales of Pittsburgh” and a historian at Duquesne University.
“The foreman said about 30 or 40% of the workers completely believed that it was real,” White said. “I interviewed numerous people, and two of them said they physically saw the apparition of this melting ghost when they worked there.”
The story of Jim Grabowski is just one of many alleged hauntings in Pittsburgh.
Both the City of Pittsburgh and Pitt’s campus have long and rich histories that include ghost stories. There are rumors of supernatural activity at Pitt-affiliated buildings, including the William Pitt Union, the Cathedral of Learning and residence halls.
White explained why Pittsburgh is so rich with ghost stories.
“Pittsburgh has a lot of allegedly haunted places. It’s very densely packed for ghost stories, and Western Pennsylvania in general has a lot of ghost stories,” White said. “Almost every building downtown has something weird that supposedly happened there.”
During the 20th century, the steel industry fueled Pittsburgh’s economy and shaped the City’s identity, employing nearly 100,000 people at its peak. White believes the tale about Grabowski has persisted because of this history.
“The steel industry is very dangerous — thousands of casualties a year in the steel industry,” White said. “It was so common that the steelworkers wrote a poem about it.”
White said these ghost stories also served as a cautionary tale for steelworkers.
“When you tell a young person to be careful up on the scaffolding, they’re not going to pay attention. When you tell them about the hideous, melted ghost that fell into the vat of steel, it catches your attention, and it reminds them of how dangerous the work is,” White said.
White said he believes ghost stories are a way of remembering people who were historically underrepresented in history.
“If you don’t count Civil War ghosts, if you look, for example, at ghost stories in Pennsylvania in the 1800s, 60 or 70% of [them] are [about] women. And then, the other 30% are usually immigrants, Native Americans or African Americans. You usually don’t find dead, white, Protestant, lawyer ghosts,” White said.
As for the places ghosts inhabit, White said oftentimes, the way people tell these ghost stories shows more about them than it does the dead.
“I think often the place tells more about how the living perceive [the stories] than the dead,” White said.
A number of places on Pitt’s campus allegedly have ghosts of their own. The William Pitt Union — formerly the Schenley Hotel — is allegedly where a Russian ballerina died. Some students and faculty believe that her ghost still lingers in its walls. Additionally, Bruce Hall is rumored to have a ghost after a woman allegedly committed suicide there in the 1920s.
The allegedly haunted Early American Room is located on the third floor of the Cathedral and is one of the oldest Nationality Rooms. It was reported to be haunted after a custodian cleaning the upstairs bedroom saw a quilt overturned and a depression in the pillow, as if someone was sleeping in it. Some visitors said they saw the cradle located in the room rock by itself.
Michael Walter, manager of education programs, Nationality Rooms and Intercultural Exchange Program, explained why the Early American Room gained this reputation.
“The Early American Room was one [room] that the second director of the program, Maxine Bruhns, wanted to promote as being haunted,” Walter said.
Walter said Bruhns placed her late grandmother’s quilt in the room and was later told by a custodian that the quilt was inexplicably overturned. This event, Walter said, was what led Maxine Bruhns to believe the room was haunted.
Walter said the ghost story is no longer told on tours because some visitors would only schedule tours to hear about the rumored ghost in the Early American Room.
“[The ghost story] was taking away from the interpretive richness of the nationality rooms at large and the very unique history of that room,” Walter said.
According to Walter, the Early American Room has no origins with Bruhns and her family, but rather, was commissioned in 1938 by George Hubbard Clapp, former president of the Board of Trustees.
“Her grandmother has no connection to the University of Pittsburgh. [The ghost story] was really propelled by the force of Maxine’s personality,” Walter said. “With Maxine gone now, it just doesn’t make sense to talk about Maxine’s grandma’s ghost.”
Walter said the Early American Room is the only Nationality Room with a haunted reputation.
“Nobody has ever expressed that they’ve had some [paranormal] feeling or anything like that [in the other rooms],” Walter said. “We do have a lot of people that come on tour, and they have an emotional connection.”
Walter believes guests’ fascination with haunted folklore has to do with “answering the unanswerable.”
“It’s a fascination with things from the past,” Walter said. “I think that’s what animates every culture to have these stories that are metaphysical and morbid.”