Brandon Varner – Features Editor
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This spectre hoped to strike it rich at the Birmingham Race Track (Photo by Sarah Adkins).
This story is the first in a series about the places in Birmingham that are supposedly haunted. In the spirit of our ghost-ridden cover page, this week I’m taking a look at the Birmingham Race Course in Irondale, Ala.
A local institution that allows betting on both local and simulcast races, the Birmingham Race Course was opened in 1987. When it opened, the race course was known as the Birmingham Turf Club, according to the New York Times.
It’s not clear when the ghosts arrived, at least to this reporter. According to Callum Swift on HauntedPlaces.org, the Birmingham Race Course was built on top of an ancient Native American burial ground. At late hours, staff members have allegedly reported seeing shadowy figures standing out on the racecourse, hearing hoof beats and whinnying, along with other paranormal happenings.
In order to conduct my own investigation of the reports of phantoms and their pups at the Birmingham Race Course, I went to the track with Photography Editor Sarah Adkins on Saturday, Jan. 31, 2015.
“It looks like an airport without any planes,” Adkins said as we walked into the lobby. On the floor level, Club Quincy, outdated carpet design and the walls of LCD televisions do call an airport terminal to mind.
The televisions simulcast races from all over the country. Simulcasting is the practice of showing races that don’t occur at the track you’re visiting, and allows people to bet on those races from the comfort of their own city. The people inside the betting area of the track fit a similar profile for the most part. Many of the people in the Club Quincy level were middle aged and portly African- American gentlemen from the same socioeconomic class. I started to wonder if they believed in ghosts as well.
Most of the day was spent walking around every section of the track where we were allowed, looking for any signs of the paranormal. We may have been too early, as Haunted Places stated that all of the happenings took place at night. Strangely enough, the official website for the Birmingham Race Course had no mention of ghosts.
Every employee was busy at the track, but the inside area where the betting takes place was mostly empty. The second floor was desolate. This area was referred to as the “fine dining” area according to a security guard on the premises.
The more time we spent at the track, the more it began to feel like there was something missing. There wasn’t much communication at the track. Yelling, cursing, and a combination of the two were audible everywhere you went, the aggression was inescapable. The men and women at the track yelled at screens of racing horses and dogs from exotic locales like Tucson, AZ and Daytona Beach, FL.
After a while, I came to the realization that I wasn’t going to see any ghosts that day, but I wasn’t too beat up about it. Adkins and I had a doggone good time at the track and many interesting conversations about the ethical ramifications of the sport.
Though Adkins did not bet, she did pick up a guide to betting at the front counter. She told me there was a valuable lesson printed on the back. There it was, right next to a pixelated black and white picture of a dog, a poignant enough quote:
“If you came to have fun, you can’t lose,” the pamphlet said. The ripped up betting tickets covering the carpet told a different story.
