Haunted Gary

by Ursula Bielski

  The massive presence of the steel industry—with most of U.S. Steel’s operations now overshadowed by Arcelor Mittel—continues to reign over the city of Gary and the southernmost point of Lake Michigan, despite the shrinking and saddening of the once-mighty settlement below. The folklore of the mill—including its ghost stories—has also declined with the population of workers. Still, some of the old stories are told of the days when the steel mills formed the entire structure of life in Gary and when death by the mills was still a very real occurrence, typically sudden and horrifying. Loss of digits and limbs, men crushed by railroad cars, decapitations—more than five hundred steel workers have perished at the Gary plant since 1906. Rumor has it that tragic accidents and deaths are still extremely common but unpublicized by these highly secured, locked-down corporations. Nonetheless, when someone dies, supernatural stories often follow, the dead perhaps making the cause of their fates known despite exceptionally secretive conditions.

  Millworkers during the Steel Strike of 1919. Courtesy of the Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana University Northwest.

  Gary steel workers, 1939. Courtesy of the Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana University Northwest.

  One of the most feared fates in the mills is of falling into “the Heat”: the vats or “ladles” of molten metal. The steel can reach a temperature of almost three thousand degrees, and a human body will apparently disintegrate in the substance in a matter of seconds. The question of what to do with the ladle after such a mishap is one that allegedly continues to be a problem: Should the mill use it anyway, since there’s no trace of the unfortunate, vaporized body? Should it be disposed of respectfully, despite the tremendous loss in product—about 150 tons of steel?

  One worker talks of a woman who lost her husband in a ladle accident and demanded a body from the mill, wanting to give him a proper burial. Being unable to provide one, the company reportedly cut out a man-sized chunk of the ladle and sent it to the funeral home. The mortician sealed it in the chosen casket and convinced the widow to have a closed-casket funeral.

  Stories have circulated for years that ladles containing human remains are sometimes buried in Lake Michigan, leading to stories of fishermen off the Gary coast picking up men in the water who regale their rescuers with chilling stories of being burned alive—before disappearing before the fishermen’s eyes. According to one such witness, it was in the early 1970s that he was fishing offshore of U.S. Steel in the early spring and saw a figure in the water about one hundred yards away. Powering up his motor, he headed toward the figure and wondered if it was possibly a man he’d heard about on the radio who had gone missing while swimming at Miller Beach two days earlier. The riptides in the Dunes are notorious, leading to several deaths in any given year, as are cases of those who attempt suicide in the lake by various means and either fail to drown or change their minds. As he neared the figure, he saw that it was, in fact, a man, not at all struggling or looking at all frightened, pained or fatigued. The fisherman stopped the boat and dropped anchor. Throwing a rope to the man in the water, he pulled him into the ladder and helped him onboard. As he heaved him onto the deck, the rescuer noticed that the figure’s clothes were work clothes—long pants, long-sleeved shirt and even work boots, all sopping wet.

  It was so odd. I almost laughed because the clothes were so weird for this guy being in the water off a beach area. I was used to seeing swimmers swimming off their boats and stuff like that—beach clothes. Of course, things just flash through your mind, and all I could think was that he was a worker on a barge or a ship of some kind and fell overboard, but there was not a boat in sight of any kind, not even rec boats or other fishing boats, as it was still really cold for the year. This guy had to have been there for a long time, but he seemed completely fine, wasn’t even shivering. He had close-cut hair, but he dried his face with the towel I handed him and then smiled this big smile and looked right at me. And he said, “No more work for me!” I asked what happened to him, and he didn’t say anything, just shook his head, except that he was tired. I took him down to the bunk below and asked if he wanted food, and he said no and wouldn’t drink water. So I told him to just lay down and I’d radio for a police car to meet us onshore. And I went up and called and told them what happened and powered up the motor to go in. And when we got there I talked to the cops for a few minutes, and one of them went down to talk to the guy and he was gone. So we thought he came up and wandered off, but there was no one around at all. They even drove around the area while I waited there, but we never found him. A few years later, I heard the stories about people picking up people off the shore at the mill, and I will tell you it gave me the heebie jeebies.

  Sometimes deaths in the mill leave behind evidence of the event in the form of disembodied voices or smells. One worker said that after his coworker was crushed by a rail accident, he’d frequently hear a male voice say, “Hey!” in his ear as he was working near the death site. Another worker told of working with a buddy who had had his skull pierced while working in a “continuous rod” mill and died instantly. For months afterward, workers would smell a strong smell of cigars at the death site from time to time. The deceased worker had been known for always smoking part of a cigar at lunchtime.

  Another worker shares an incident in which a worker fell into the Heat According to the tale, the plant processed the steel anyway. Now, every time a ladle is poured, the dead worker’s face appears at the top of the pool of molten steel.

  Still another worker talks about the haunting that began after a laborer fell into the melting pot, which is connected to the furnace:

  He had tripped on a slippery patch of ash and couldn’t get his footing and went in. Everyone was just in shock. They shut off the furnace for a few minutes just because, but there’s nothing you can do at that point. After it happened, there wasn’t a day that went by that the furnace didn’t shut itself off. They would go nuts trying to fix it, calling specialists in, even the manufacturer to complain. It would seem fine and then it would happen again.

  Stories of such accidents are also joined by rumors of murder in the mills. As one millworker observed:

  It’s so dangerous, and so many things happen accidentally…it’s the easiest thing in the world to off a guy and not even say anything. Guys disappear sometimes, and they just assume he fell in somewhere or whatever. I heard there was one guy who was messing with another guy so much that the guy dropped an air hammer on him from three floors up.

  In one case dating back to the 1960s, two workers reportedly had such hatred between them that they seemed always on the verge of physically attacking each other. According to the story, there was a woman involved, and one was bitterly jealous, while the other was openly arrogant about his relationship with her. One day, the latter fell five stories and crushed his ribs against a piece of machinery, causing internal bleeding that killed him in minutes. The only witness to the “accident” was his relentless rival, who said he had seen him “standing there one minute, gone the next.” Some exposed electrical wires along the ground were pointed out by the survivor, who suggested that he must have tripped.

  According to his co-workers—none of whom believed his story—he quit soon after the incident, claiming that something had tried to push him to his death at the exact spot where his rival had plummeted to his end.

  CHAPTER 2

  ST. MARY’S MERCY HOSPITAL

  When I was first invited to write this book, one of the first things I did was to ask my “Hoosier” friends and colleagues—other paranormal investigators—if they’d done any work at locations in Gary. Surprisingly, very few had. Though a number of our friends turned out to be from Gary originally, little was known about the supernatural legends or realities of their hometown—with one common exception. Almost every Indiana investigator—and many from Illinois and Michigan, for that matter—had spent at least a few hours in St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital, a massive, dilapidated medical center building near the heart of the city.r />
  Opened just after the turn of the nineteenth century and dedicated two years after the city’s founding in 1908, the hospital was like many of Gary’s institutions at first, starting truly out of need as no hospital had been built to accommodate the steel industry workers and their families. At first, the “hospital” was, like many hospitals of the time, more of a smattering of small homes with whatever equipment and service could be provided by the Sisters of St. Francis, who saw the need and set up shop. Very quickly, the hospital grew to serve the burgeoning population. It would be only two years before the first of many expansions of the facilities. But though the need was high, funds were scarce. A five-story brick structure slated for building at Tyler and Sixth Streets was only partially constructed when the Sisters stopped the construction due to lack of money. It sat unfinished for a year until a local bishop asked another order of women for help in targeting funds for the hospital’s completion. After a further year of work, the hospital was dedicated in 1914.

  First days of St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital, 1908. Courtesy of the Calumet Regional Archives, Indiana University Northwest.

  Generations of growth followed the opening. Gary was thriving, and with it came the need for medical care. Donations of land allowed for even greater expansion of the hospital just a few years later, adding more than one hundred beds. In time, hundreds of additional beds, a nursing school and highly specialized departments evolved. In the 1970s, the hospital would gain international fame as the birthplace of Michael Jackson and his siblings.

  The first sign of decline came in tandem with the hospital’s fame. With the loss of key bases of the steel industry, the need for personnel quickly tapered. Before 1970, the School of Nursing was shuttered. But it was not yet the end. The new decade also brought new hopes, and a restructuring mid-decade added the West Wing (home today of the police department) and a new name: St. Mary Medical Center. But despite changes, the decline continued.

  In 1993, St. Mary’s was sold to an out-of-town corporation. The name was changed to Northwest Family Hospital and its operations restructured to target Gary’s bourgeoning population of poor, offering government-aided care to the needy. But the new owner lasted only two years before being forced to close.

  St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital in its better days. Author’s collection.

  A grass-roots effort began, led by a local judge determined to keep the hospital from closing, but regulations and time prohibited any foothold. Private interests also lacked the money to keep the hospital running. Though the current owner agreed to sell the hospital for one dollar, no one could produce the millions needed to keep operations in order, even for a few days. Hundreds had already been laid off, but hundreds remained on the payroll.

  In October 1995, the emergency room at the hospital was closed forever. There was no turning back. In November, after almost a century of service to the people of Gary, the hospital first known as St. Mary’s Mercy was shut for good. The next year, a massive sale was held, open to the public, who scavenged for file cabinets, medical equipment, furniture and anything salvageable.

  In the years to come, attempts to make use of the barren but massive structure continued. In 1998, Mayor Scott King asked the city to support a plan to use the hospital building as the new department of public services. Response was tepid at best, but the plan was finally approved, blessing a $15 million proposed buildout.

  But though the initial plan was completed (the police department moved in in 2003 and remains there today), further plans for the empty main building would never pan out. Proposals by the sheriff to use the structure as a rehabilitation center were scrapped; the county was as broke as the city, and nothing could be approved. Since its closure, the main hospital has never reopened.

  The effects of two decades of disuse are sobering. The solid structure that once stood ready for re-appropriation is, today, a cavernous maze of peeling paint and rotted floors, dank stairwells and dangerous decay. The same lack of fiscal funds that closed it protects it from the wrecking ball—for now—but few believe the damage is even reversible anymore.

  I am fortunate to be a longtime colleague of J.C. Rositas and Len Miller, founders of the investigation group Heartland Hauntings and hosts of Shadows on the Wall Paranormal Radio. When J.C. heard about our project, he immediately contacted me to offer to share their stories and help me with the book. Incredibly, the two had investigated St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital countless times. Len is a Gary police officer, and as mentioned, the Gary Police Department is currently housed in the newer (and still intact) wing of the hospital. Not only is the hospital very haunted by the memories of the past, but it also seems to be quite legitimately haunted by a plethora of paranormal manifestations, which have intrigued investigators for many years.

  Ruins of St. Mary’s Mercy Hospital, 2015. Photo by John B. Stephens.

  It was one of the coldest days on record when we visited in January 2014. In the already dim light of mid-afternoon, the lights of the police station glowed comfortingly across the parking lot where I met Len and J.C. for our walk-through of the adjoining hospital structure, with its gaping doorframes and windows, frozen literally and in time, its heat and lights cut off since its closure in 1995. I came with a background of stories that had been told to us by numerous paranormal investigators, and the scene certainly seemed perfect for what I’d heard.

  Incredibly, before we even entered the abandoned part of the hospital, Len shared stories of the myriad experiences encountered by police officers in the occupied wing of the hospital, which now houses the Gary police headquarters, including the record offices in the basement.

  According to police who work in the building, numerous encounters have occurred in the basement, including the prevalent sound of a woman’s high heels clacking down the hall and across the floor, the sound actually going through a wall where a door used to be in the area’s hospital days. Also numerous are encounters in the basement men’s room, where officers have been using the facilities and have experienced the sound of another person coming into the room. Hearing the person enter another stall and close the door, officers are sometimes chilled to find that they are actually quite alone. Len remembers when he experienced it himself:

  I had gone into a stall and was about to do my business and actually saw someone going into the stall next to me—saw their feet walking in. I finished and went out and was washing my hands and happened to see in the mirror that there were no feet under any of the stalls. Well, of course that was suspicious, and I called, “Are you all right in there?” and there was no answer. I actually ended up going over and knocking on the door, but still there was no answer. I finally gave the door a little push, and it swung open. There was no one there. There was no way anyone could have left.

  The hallway elevator is another spot that most agree is very strange. Though there is no sensor of any kind, the elevator doors will automatically open when an officer approaches. Len says he got to the point many years ago of just saying, “Thank you” to whomever is opening the doors for him.

  We spent a good two hours in the abandoned, freezing shell of St. Mary’s, taking photographs and recording for audio in the morgue, the psychiatric ward and even in the maternity ward, where we were able to investigate the very room where Michael Jackson and many other Gary notables were born. Temperatures averaged about fifteen degrees Fahrenheit in the massive stone structure, and even then there were two occasions on which the temperature still dipped about fifteen degrees for several seconds. Audio recordings played back later turned up the sound of a woman laughing in the maternity ward, along with other sounds of a child humming, and in the psych ward some unnerving sounds of a man making gruff sounds, accompanied by the sound of some sort of struggle between two men grunting and shuffling.

  During one investigation, Len’s daughter Tori was touched inappropriately by an invisible presence. Later in that same investigation, another female member was touched likewise in the same room.

  J
.C. recounts an incident that occurred

  about two years ago, in 2012, I think. We were working at the location with a gentleman who wanted do a video production on the place, and as we were standing there talking, jokingly my daughter came up and put her hand on my back. I kept talking, and I felt it again, and I turned around to smile at her like, “ha ha, very funny,” and she wasn’t anywhere near me and said, “Dad, it wasn’t me that time.”

  The strong smell of flowers is also sensed in the building, even in deepest winter. And it’s not in any one place; it travels. Len says, “It smells like a funeral. Like a funeral home. All of a sudden it’s this strong smell around you. But just for a minute, and then it’s gone. And then it happens again in a completely different place.”

  Visual apparitions are also bountiful, along with those of the tactile and olfactory varieties. J.C. shares that one night he saw what looked like a woman in a white gown, who came out of a patient room, turned around and went back in. He went after her immediately, but there was no one in the room and no other exit. Police officers report seeing a small boy on the premises who disappears into thin air. And there are other stories of a man being seen on the road outside the emergency room entrance. According to Len, a young rookie cop was sent there to take a report in the emergency room. He was standing at the desk when several young people rushed in, carrying their buddy who had just been shot. They dragged him into the hospital, laid him on the floor and ran out, leaving him to bleed to death. The officer claims to have seen the man in the vicinity of the ER years after his death. Other stories are told of a man who was hit by a car right outside the entrance and died before he could be treated inside and of another man who was killed in a farming accident in the Small Farms area in the 1960s, who was seen at the hospital for some time after his death on arrival at St. Mary’s.