From the
Mountain X-Press (05/25/05)
Tracking by ectoplasm: Touring downtown's haunts with Asheville's ghost hunter
by Steve Shanafelt
Joshua Warren, our tour leader, and his assistant Caleb Hanks stand outside Barley's Taproom smoking a final pre-tour cigarette. As he chats with our small crowd, Warren emits the confidence of a well-practiced magician. He seems far older than his mere 28 years, and if he's nervous, he doesn't show it.
But he'd have good reason to be nervous, frankly. This isn't just some early-evening walk around scenic downtown Asheville. Tonight, we're hunting ghosts.
Warren is president of the League of Energy Materialization and Unexplained phenomena Research, or LEMUR, and he's spent the last 10 years in serious study of ethereal presences, phantom lights and other strange occurrences that most scientific researchers would likely dismiss as paranormal bunk. He's even written a book about area ghosts, Haunted Asheville (Shadowbox, 1996), which has since become the de facto guide for area spook seekers.
The tours remain a little rough, having started only a few weeks ago, and Warren is still in the process of training his guides. As a result, the aura is anything but frightening. In spite of this lighthearted mood, though, Warren makes it clear that he takes his pursuit of the unseen very seriously.
He remarks: "One thing about this tour, as opposed to other tours, is that we are ghost hunters" (read: not everyday tour guides). His voice is as clear and professional as a radio announcer's – not surprising, since he also hosts the Saturday-night paranormal call-in show "Speaking of Strange" on AM 570 WWNC.
"Let's go."
As we walk toward Church Street, Warren begins telling us about the old unmarked graves said to have been paved over to make room for the roads. This street, he says, is home to many strange sightings. Before we get to the row of churches that give the street its name, however, our leader stops us and begins fishing around in the bag his assistant is carrying.
"Sometimes you get lucky," says Warren, pulling out a few strange items from the satchel. "You get to see something anomalous or ghostly with your naked eyes. Other times, if you take a picture, you get something you might not be able to see. I'll give you a demonstration of what I'm talking about."
He pulls out a tiny electric pocket fan, and turns it on. Like the twirling blades of the fan, he says, many extra-natural events happen too fast to see unaided. In his other hand is something that looks like a 1950s sci-fi movie weapon – a miniature strobe light. He flicks a switch and makes the beam hover over the whirring blades. In the flashes, we see what he means: frozen glimpses of ghostly propellers.
"Your camera's shutter speed," says Warren, "allows the invisible to become visible."
At this point, Warren's assistant begins passing out "EMF Meters," the tour's prime ghost-hunting tools. We are each handed a smallish box, roughly the size of a Zippo lighter, made of milky-white plastic. (According to Warren, they also glow in the dark.) On top is a thin antenna, flexible and coated in black plastic. There's a single, unmarked switch along the side. At the very bottom, next to the seam that joins the two plastic halves that conceal the inner workings, is a red light.
When that light turns on, Warren says, this tiny machine is detecting a powerful electromagnetic field.
"What we find is that there is some kind of strange connection between electromagnetic anomalies and the places where people experience ghostly activities," he explains.
We are told to keep an eye on our meters throughout the tour. If they come on, we could be in the presence of something not of this world.
Why Barley's has red pool tables
Warren leads us on a meandering tour of downtown Asheville. We walk by a building said to be plagued by apparitions of the falling bodies of Depression-era bankers; past unassuming hotels with histories of grim murders; through a placid city park that supposedly hosts the spirits of forgotten Civil War soldiers; and along a storefront allegedly troubled by, of all things, a phantom intercom system.
Not unexpectedly, concrete details are scarce. Most of these stories are rumors, or at best, curious anecdotes – but Warren doesn't seem bothered by this. Each new story is another hunt he has yet to go on, and tonight, we are his field researchers.
At one point, as we walk up Walnut Street, one of the EMF meters suddenly shudders to life. The red glow of the meter's light seems to be picking up something on the street just outside Gypsy Moon. For a moment, there is excitement.
After a brief examination, however, Warren tells us the meters are detecting the row of lights lining the window. Unless those lights are also haunted with the spirits of the waking dead, there's nothing more to see here.
Of course, not everything on the tour is quite as intangible as Warren's ghosts. Some of the stories are rooted in real blood – for instance, the strange events at Barley's Tap Room, which also serves as the tour's home base.
Here, we are told, is the scene of Asheville's biggest mass murder, a 1906 shooting spree that claimed the lives of five people, including two police officers. Step by red step, Warren leads us through a tale about a man named Will Harris, who killed his way up Eagle Street and down Broadway in a drunken, jealous rage.
These bloody events, Warren says, center around the very site where Barley's now stands.
Warren then tells about brief snippets of spooky happenings inside the bar, from unexplained sounds and ghostly voices to the odd story of the seemingly possessed service elevator. Ghosts or no ghosts, these are good yarns spun elegantly around a real-life tale of horror. (Later, however, over drinks at the bar, Doug Beatty, Barley's owner – and partner in the Haunted Asheville Ghost Tours – confirms most of these stories, and adds a few of his own.)
At the end of the tour, we stare at a grainy post-manhunt photo of Harris' bullet-riddled corpse while Warren collects the tiny EMF detectors. They are for sale, he reminds us, just in case we'd like to do a little freelance ghost hunting of our own.
[Joshua Warren's Haunted Asheville Ghost Tour is currently available by reservation only, although regular hours will likely start this summer. The tour lasts 60 minutes, and involves light walking. $13/adults, $7/children age 14 and under. For times and availability, call 216-3383 or visit
www.hauntedasheville.com.
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This should be fun to look at from I-240!
This is also bringing more growth around the airport. Some of it welcome and some of it not. I worry that the fairgrounds could be sold-off for strip shopping or hotels. That road is not built to handle a lot of traffic and already the widening is on the board.
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