Fenway Park

America's oldest Major League Baseball stadium, opened in 1912. Home of the Boston Red Sox and the famous Green Monster. The park has witnessed over a century of joy, heartbreak, and legendary moments.

They called it the Curse of the Bambino—an 86-year hex that transformed America's oldest ballpark into a monument to heartbreak. But even after the curse was broken in 2004, something lingers at Fenway Park that no World Series victory can exorcise. The ghosts of Fenway remain.

When Fenway Park opened on April 20, 1912—five days after the Titanic sank—the Boston Red Sox were baseball's dominant franchise. They would win World Series titles in 1912, 1915, 1916, and 1918, with a young pitcher named George Herman "Babe" Ruth leading them to the last championship. Ruth had become the best player in baseball, a dominant pitcher who was also developing into the game's most fearsome hitter.

Then, on December 26, 1919, owner Harry Frazee—a theatrical producer who needed cash to finance a Broadway play called "My Lady Friends"—sold Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000. The Babe went on to become the greatest player in baseball history, leading the Yankees to four World Series titles. The Red Sox would not win another championship for 86 years.

The Curse of the Bambino became America's most famous sports hex. The Red Sox reached the World Series four times during those eight decades—1946, 1967, 1975, and 1986—and lost each one in Game 7. The 1986 collapse against the New York Mets, when a ground ball rolled through first baseman Bill Buckner's legs in Game 6, became the curse's most infamous chapter. Fans staged exorcisms outside the stadium. They placed a Red Sox cap atop Mount Everest and burned a Yankees cap at base camp. In 1999, the team brought Babe Ruth's daughter Julia Ruth Stevens to throw out the first pitch, hoping her presence might break the spell.

But it wasn't just superstition. Something was happening inside Fenway that defied explanation.

Members of the night cleaning crew have shared eerie stories for decades. When the light towers go dark and the stadium empties after 37,755 fans have gone home, they hear things. The crack of a bat striking a ball at home plate. The roar of phantom cheers from empty stands. A wailing sound that seems to emanate from the Green Monster, the 37-foot left field wall that has defined the park since 1912. They hear Babe Ruth taking batting practice—the unmistakable rhythm of swing after swing, ball after ball, echoing through a stadium where Ruth hasn't played since 1919.

No one has ever seen Ruth's ghost. But they hear him. They feel him. The rumor persists: the Bambino walks Fenway Park at night, forever practicing the swing that built the Yankees dynasty he should have built in Boston.

The legendary PA announcer Sherm Feller worked at Fenway from the "Impossible Dream" year of 1967 until 1992, his deep baritone voice becoming as much a part of the stadium as the Green Monster itself. His successor, Carl Beane, reported that Feller's presence never left the broadcast booth. Things fly off the desk without explanation. Objects suddenly disappear. The equipment acts up in ways that suggest an unseen hand.

Then there is Tom Yawkey, who owned the Red Sox from 1933 until his death in 1976. According to pitcher Bill "Spaceman" Lee, Yawkey has returned—not as a human apparition, but reincarnated as birds. Lee claims he has encountered Yawkey as a pigeon in the players' parking lot, as a crow perched on fences, as a red-tailed hawk that follows him through the woods. During the 1978 season finale—a devastating one-game playoff loss to the Yankees—a pigeon crashed directly into the seats as if making its presence known.

The day Ted Williams died, Lee says, a pigeon landed on the field and repeatedly blocked his path, as if the greatest hitter who ever lived wasn't ready to let go of Fenway.

In 2004, the Red Sox faced the Yankees in the American League Championship Series, fell behind three games to none, and became the first team in baseball history to storm back from such a deficit. They swept the St. Louis Cardinals for their first World Series title in 86 years. The curse, officially, was broken.

But the ghosts remain.

Fenway Park was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2012, cementing its status as a national treasure. At 113 years old, it is the oldest active ballpark in Major League Baseball—and perhaps the most haunted. When the lights go out and the crowds go home, listen carefully. You might hear the crack of a bat from over a century ago, swung by a man who was sold for $100,000 and never forgave the team that let him go.