History & local legend
Workers at Jones & Laughlin’s No. 2 Open Hearth on Pittsburgh’s South Side told new hires a story about Jim Grabowski, a man supposedly killed in the mill. In the tale, he catches his foot on a rigging hose while working on scaffolding and falls into a ladle of molten steel.
The cooled metal containing his remains should have been buried, but instead is left in a corner of the shop. When someone eventually cuts into the forgotten block, Jim’s ghost is released. Crews then hear screams above the furnaces and see a pale, heat-distorted figure running through walls.
The rigging crew receives the worst of his attention because a rigging hose caused the fatal fall. Workers supposedly take a longer route around the building to avoid him. Folklorist Thomas White describes the story as part of the mill’s workplace tradition, passed to newcomers alongside the dangers of the job.
Sources
- Pittsburgh Magazine, Sean Collier interviews folklorist Thomas White about Grabowski and the stories told to new hires
- The Duquesne Duke, Thomas White on the Two Shop story, scaffold, hose and rigging crew
- Historical Marker Database, marker at the No. 2 open-hearth pump house
- Riverlife, South Shore Riverfront Park and its surviving industrial features
- Library of Congress, Historic American Engineering Record of Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation’s Pittsburgh Works
- The Duquesne Duke (1975), contemporary report of George Swetnam’s 1970 interview with a millhand who heard a call for help and laughter
