History & local legend
The former Good Shepherd thrift store in Nazareth stood in a shopping center built over the old fairgrounds racetrack. That history supplied an explanation for the disturbances employee Debra Borgo remembered from her time there in 1996 and 1997. Borgo was eighteen when she began asking coworkers why the lights went out and came back on, and why merchandise sometimes fell from the racks.
Veteran employees told her that a driver killed at the track still haunted that part of the property. In an account published by Weird Nazareth in May 2009, Borgo supplied the name Jackie McLaughlin. He was a thirty-year-old stock-car racer whose fatal crash occurred on the Nazareth half-mile track on August 23, 1964.
The store later operated under the Via name. The shopping center occupies the former racing grounds.
Sources
- Weird Nazareth, former employee Debra Borgo’s personal account, May 2009
- Garden State Vintage Stock Car Club, Jackie McLaughlin’s Hall of Fame biography
- Nazareth Borough, 2018 heritage newsletter identifying the former fairgrounds oval with the shopping center
- Nazareth Patch, local store profile and street address
- Via of the Lehigh Valley, 2008 acquisition of Good Shepherd thrift shops
- USGS, 1964 Nazareth quadrangle showing the original track
- Esri, 859 Nazareth Pike address
