Dispatches from Occult Asheville (Patreon)

So, I'm in Asheville, North Carolina and I randomly bump into this Buck Allen character at a gas station. We're both supporting evil eyes --him on his bracelet, me on my mojo bag. "Sedona?" he asks, indicating said bag.

"It came with my cabin," I tell him. "Prior owner traveled with USAID the world over and left all kinds of crazy stuff."

"Ah," he nods knowingly. "What about the hat?"

"Close --Bisbee, Arizona."

"Oh yeah, I know Bisbee."

We get to talking. Turns out he used to produce films locally in Central Florida, including the old USA Swamp Thing series, which I adored growing up. He's got a friend living near Ocala he's been meaning to call, one who's working on a documentary about Cassadaga. I of course spent a lot of my profane youth in 'Daga, especially after the Witching Hour, in the cemetery and Lake Colby Park. Below is from my guerrilla camping/paranormal investigation there circa 2009:

This is back when I first started VISUP, which is short for Volusia Investigative Society for Unexplained Phenomena. All these years later, it's evolved into this.

This is one of the threads spinning through my mind as I engage Buck in conversation. He thinks the universe manifested me to remind him to give his friend a call. He tells me he doesn't believe in ghosts because there is no time --Everything is happening all at once, so there can be no death. "I tried explaining this to Bucky Fuller and those guys --how this is so obvious in places like this, with lots of quartz. But it's so hard putting into words, how everything is now."

I know the feeling. I'm trying to find the words to explain to him that I know exactly what he's trying to tell me, that there's almost no point in even saying it aloud.

In many ways, this encounter perfectly summed up my time in Asheville.

The Paris of the South

I've been blessed to visit many amazing places these past few years. Closest to my heart are Bisbee and Somerset, KY --it would be hard for any place to replace those. But I don't think I've ever been as pleasantly surprised by anywhere as I was by Asheville.

I'd been to Asheville before, but as a young child with my parents during one of our summer journeys. The visit would have occurred during the 1980s, prior to our move to Florida. I vaguely remember touring the Biltmore back then. Walking the length of the estate was exhausting for my elementary age self, though I recall being delighted by the non-alcoholic "wine" they had at the vineyard for kids.

It wasn't nostalgia that brought me back to Asheville in 2023. As is my wont, it was Nazis, geomancy and cults the piqued my interest. And I certainly wasn't disappointed on that end. But what I wasn't expecting was to be so utterly smitten by Asheville, especially its downtown.

The town is knee-deep in Appalachia, but with a legacy of NYC-style architecture imported from the Yankee bluebloods that flocked in droves during the turn of the prior century. So, I was expecting it to look impressive and it did. But what I wasn't expecting is how groovy the whole area is.

The downtown is packed with amazing, local coffee shops and bakeries, much of it using locally sourced food. It has a vibrant live music, as well as weekend drum circles and street performers. Amazing used book, record and clothing stores are everywhere. There are even some impressive occult shops not besieged by New Age love and light.

In other words, it was like I was back in Bisbee. It was down right eerie at times, down to the persistent good vibrations. Don't get me wrong, gentrification is much further along in Asheville, but it still has that special something that characterizes these magical pieces of Americana.

Here I was thinking this was going to be another stuffy resort community, a la Lake Geneva (WI). I suppose I should have noted its reputation as the "Paris of South." Bisbee sees itself as "Paris in the Desert." I've never been to the actual Paris, so I can't say how either measures up. I can just say they're both fabulous, eerily similar, but uniquely distinct as well. Chalk it up to the carry over from Appalachia into the American West after the Civil War. The Dragoon Mountains and the Smoky Mountains are a long ways apart  but probably attract the same kind of rugged and enchanted souls.

In more recent decades, the towns progressive, New Agey glaze probably owes a fair debt to the celebrated Black Mountain College (with apologies to Thomas Wolfe). Established in 1933, the school didn't even last a quarter of a century. But despite it's door's being shuttered in 1957, it left an undeniable mark on American culture during the Cold War and beyond.

The school wasn't just a liberal arts college, but an experimental one to boot. John Dewey gets much of the credit (as he often does) for the ideological inspiration behind the school. But from the beginning, it received an influx of faculty from the legendary German art school commonly known as Bauhaus. That school was shut down not long after the Nazis came to power. Many of the staff fled to the US and some notable figures such as Walter Gropius, as well as Josef and Anni Albers, ended up at Black Mountain.

The faculty and students did much to advance the avant-garde in American arts in the postwar years. Among the most notable were architect and futurist Buckminster Fuller; abstract expressionist artist Willem de Kooning (Black Mountain was actually a Mecca for abstract expressionism during its run); pop artist and Warhol associate Ray Johnson (whom was recently discussed on The Farm in relation to the "Golden Suicides"; filmmaker Arthur Penn; and experimental composer John Cage. One-time Rector Charles Olson helped establish the Black Mountain School of poets, an entire movement inspired by the college. Further, Black Mountain's legacy lives on as a precursor and prototype for many alternative colleges of today such as the University of California, Santa Cruz; Naropa University; and The Evergreen State College.

For much of its run, the school was a pipeline and grooming round for the cutting edges of the NYC art scene. But the connection between NYC and the Paris of the South started during the late nineteenth century. An influx of monied figures from New York and other northern eastern powerhouses profoundly transformed the sleepy little community. Leading the charge was one of America's most powerful and little acknowledged families, the Vanderbilts.

This resulted in Asheville being known as "Little Gotham" by the early twentieth century. Here's a portrait of downtown from then, courtesy of its imposing Masonic lodge:

The downtown still retains a bit of that feel:

Predictably, it has a reputation for being one of the most haunted cities of the South. Haunted Asheville has even gained a bit of a national following thanks to the efforts of head paranormal investigator Joshua P. Warren, a longtime staple of cable ghost hunting shows. Inevitably, I signed up for the tour.

My guide, Tadd McDivitt, turned out to be a real gem. Haunted Nashville's "Chief Occult Researcher," Tadd has a background in, and passion for, classical language and anthropology. Hence, we were hit it off the bat from the get go. It went so well, I swaged a private tour of the Masonic lodge after the ghost walk wrapped up. It made for some fascinating conversation.

Of course, I had to ask Tadd about the longstanding rumors of Ashville possessing both underground tunnels and a Satanic cult. Surprisingly, he confirmed the former (but not some of them ore fantastical claims concerning the tunnels) and didn't discount the latter. It turns out, the Haunted Asheville team occasionally consults with the police on alleged occult crimes --they're who authorities bring in to confirm if something seemingly ritualistic is the work of an actual occultist or teenage glue sniffers. I wasn't totally shocked. I noticed a few curious things here and there during the ghost walk

But even more striking was Tadd's side gig during the early 1990s: working for the gaming company White Wolf Publishing. I've been running into this outfit a lot lately. It's most well known for the Vampire: The Masquerade. I touched on this RPG at length while exploring Kentucky's most notorious vampire cult on The Farm with JJ Vance and also during the epic RPG presentation I did with Christopher Knowles. So you can imagine my surprise upon learning that not only had Tadd worked on The Masquerade, but he was even dispatched to Orlando by the company to do damage control after Rod Ferrell's arrest.

I may have been more surprised had I not already started becoming accustomed to these types of experiences in Asheville. My encounter with Buck Allen had occurred the prior day, after all. But it further heightened the sense of inevitability I felt in venturing here.

The Three Castles

But enough synchro-mystical musings. Tadd will be appearing on The Farm soon to fill you guys in on his paranormal dealings in Asheville and time with White Wolf. For now, I'd like to focus on something more tangible: Asheville's three "castles." These marvels were all constructed prior to the Second World War and display the kind of architectural artistry fast disappearing from these shores in the twenty-first century.

Actually, I was unable to view the most mysterious of the castles directly. In fact, few have in recent decades. The closest its had to a formal name is Overlook Castle (seriously), though the locals are prone to calling it Seely's Castle after the original owner/builder. Fred L. Seely was the son-in-law of E.W. Grove, the man credited with transforming Asheville into a popular tourist destination during the early twentieth century. Curiously, Grove's father was a Confederate veteran who served under KKK founder Nathan Bedford Forrest. This is interesting in light of another figure we'll consider a little further down.

Grove's most celebrated contribution to Asheville is the historic Grove Park Inn. Ten US presidents (though not always while holding that particular office) have stayed there. Woodrow Wilson appears to have been the first to spend the night. Obama was the most recent.

It was not the hospitality industry that Grove or his son-in-law made their fortunes off of, however. Both men were talented chemists, and had risen to prominence working in the pharmaceutical industry.  Grove founded the Paris Medicine Company in Tennessee and made a fortune off of a malaria medication.

Seely was not as successful as his father-in-law when he married into the family, but proved to be an effective manager. For over a decade he successfully ran both the Grove Park Inn and Biltmore Industries, Inc. (which Seely and Grove acquired from the Vanderbilts during 1917).

Seely built the Overlook between 1912 and 1914 on land Grove gave him on the exclusive Sunset Mountain. During Seely's lifetime, there were persistent rumors of political intrigues involving the castle. Seely attended Princeton and befriended Woodrow Wilson while he served as the school's president. Later, Seely became a major fundraiser for Wilson.

One of the most incredible allegations concerning the castle relates to the infamous stroke Wilson suffered during his second term. The president was left largely incapacitated after late 1919, leaving his wife and/or "Colonel" Edward House effectively running the country for the remainder of his term. As the story goes, a stand-in was used for Wilson at the White House during this time while the president was quietly being kept in the Overlook's master bedroom by his old friend Seely. There's not a lot of support for this, however.

There is much more credence to the Overlook's purported links to the Teapot Dome scandal. As the story goes, crucial documents relating to the scandal were locked away in a massive safe housed in the castle's west wing. There does seem to be some support for this. A filing on the castle's behalf with the National Registry of Historic Places notes that Harding's cabinet did meet with the president there at the height of the scandal.

The Seelys owned it until 1949, when Seely's widow (and Grove's daughter) sold it to the Asheville-Biltmore College. The castle served as the school's main campus until 1961, when it decamped after outgrowing the grounds. Since, it has three known owners, including a Pentecostal church called Overlook Ministries. When the castle returned to private hands during the mid-1980s, public access was lost. Few have been fortunate enough to get a clear view of it since then.

As far as Asheville's rumored Satanic cult goes, the allegations typically link it closely to the Overlook. These claims seem to have first gained national attention around 2001, thanks to an online document entitled "Satanism Exposed in America Today" by Pamela Schuffert. Therein, Asheville is described as the "satanist/pagan mecca of the east coast."

For the most part, it's pretty standard conspiracy claptrap from that era. Naturally, Fritz Springmeier's "13 Bloodlines of Illuminati" gets a lot of play (the Vanderbilts are one of those bloodlines). Asheville was said to be housing train cars complete with shackles, to transport Christians to FEMA concentration camps. Besides Asheville, large numbers of Satanists apparently reside in the surrounding Smoky Mountains. Schuffert claimed several attempts were made on her life in those mountains. As for the Overlook, Schuffert describes it as one of the main ritual sites. Child sacrifice is especially popular within its walls.

That the Overlook was once used by a Pentecostal denomination known for speaking in tongues may have contributed to the mythos. Beyond that, the notorious US Route 23 runs through Asheville. Stretching from northern Florida to the tip of Michigan, various stretches of this highway have gained a nasty reputation for high volumes of trafficking in recent years. And the high security around the castle surely only contributes to the mystery.

Needless to say, I quickly withdrew from here. Fortunately, the next stop for the day, and the second of the three castles up for consideration, proved to be much more inviting.

Known as Zealandia, it was the first of Asheville's three castles to be constructed (circa 1889), though how castle-like its original incarnation was is debatable. A local constructed it after spending 30 years in New Zealand earning his fortune (hence the name). It was only after Sir Phillip S. Henry, an Australian born diplomat, acquired the residency in 1904 that it truly became a wonder. Henry transformed the spot into a Tudor Revival style dwelling.

In 1909, work was completed on a stagecoach bridge leading up to the manor that has become the subject of popular urban legend. One of Asheville's most enduring ghost stories involves a phantom woman who supposedly haunts the bridge. Often, she's referred to as "Helen" and is said to be a Zealandia servant or local who hung herself from the bridge after losing her child. While there's little support for this story, numerous supernatural encounters have been reported on or near it over the years. I will say, it certainly is eerie, that's for sure.

Fittingly, I visited the bridge on 4/20. In keeping with the spirit of the day, I opted for a little guerilla exploration. I was wearing a suit, after all.

While it may not be up to it's past glory, Zealandia is still there and still a site of activity.

Having cruised around the Asheville area most of the day, I returned to my AirBnB, dropped some acid and managed to make it through a conversation with the owner in a semi-coherent fashion. On the whole, it was quite a lovely 4/20.

Biltmore, Nemours, and Lipstick Traces

As for Asheville's most famous castle, I visited the Biltmore two days later in the company of Programmed to Chill's Jimmy Falun Gong. During a trip to Wilmington/Philadelphia region late last year, I toured the DuPonts' Nemours Estate, which is similar to Biltmore in many ways.

The DuPonts are another of Springmeier's Illuminati bloodlines. Within the Wilmington area are the sister cities of Arden, DE and Rose Valley, PA. As I noted before here, both of these communities stand accused of harboring Satanic cults for years now. These claims may have first arisen around the same timeframe similar charges were made about Asheville and the surrounding area. Of course, both communities are closely associated with an American dynasty that opted to build an imposing manor. In the case of Nemours, it's easy to discern some of the inspiration:

Nemours literally shares the same grounds as the Nemours Children's Hospital. They're within an easy walking distance of one another. While I don't mean to come off as sensational, the recurring "Wild Hunt" theme is present throughout the entire estate, and especially pronounced in the landscape gardens. The "Temple of Love" is a shrine to Diana, or Artemis, as she was known in Greece.

In modern times, she's often been likened as the "mother" manifestation of the Threefold Goddess. The moon goddess Selene often fills the "maiden" role while the witch-goddess Hekate is undeniably the crone. As for Diana, she is most commonly associated with the countryside and the hunt. Her sanctuary in Ancient Rome, off the shores of Lake Nemi, was known as Diana Nemorensis, translated as "Diana of Nemi," and sometimes as "Diana of the Woods."

The name of Nemours estate supposedly comes from the region of France. This is where the DuPont family hailed from originally, hence their long association with the word. Nemours is said to derive from the word "nemora," meaning woods. The DuPonts clearly made the connection with Diana's original sanctuary in Italy. The grounds of the estate is effectively a celebration of this.

And yes, in case you're wondering: the shrine to Diana Nemorensis was the sacred grove of Ariccia. For those of you unfamiliar with this grove, it was presided over by the Rex Nemorensis, or "King of the Wood," Diana's personal priest. The line of succession for this post involved quasi-ritual murder. Basically, anyone could be the King of the Wood if they could slay the current claimant. It was this curious custom that inspired Frazer to develop his "Killing of the Divine King" in The Golden Bough.

Which makes the decision to not only locate a children's hospital next to this shrine, but to name it Nemours, all the more peculiar. These are the dilemmas one faces when exploring these estates in person. Armchair debunkery is one thing. But when you experience these things first hand, note what is around, and consider the kind of time and resources that went into building them, the picture is far more cloudy.

So, how did the Biltmore measure up then? Well, the grounds are certainly no match for Nemours' Diana/Wild Hunt extravaganza. But in fairness, I've been told that renovations on the grounds several years ago dramatically changed the architecture.

As for the actual house, that's another story. Just dig on the exterior for a moment:

My initial interest in revisiting the Biltmore was driven by the obsession I've developed around certain architects. In the case of the Biltmore, the main visionaries behind it have turned up a lot in my research, due in no small part to both hailing from hereditary Society of Cincinnati families. The architects in question are two of the most celebrated American products in that field: Richard Morris Hunt and Frederick Law Olmstead.

Hunt and Olmstead contributed their fair share of geomancy and sacred architecture to various estates, parks, and public buildings over the years. Hunt may well have been the most celebrated American architect of the nineteenth century. But the Vanderbilts appear to have held either man in higher esteem than any of their peers. Biltmore has a "family room" featuring life size paintings of many prominent Vanderbilts. This is a fairly common feature for American estates during this era. But I'm not sure how many of these monied families felt the need to include life size portraits of their architects among their celebrated ancestors:

Jimmy's parents had suggested that the affection certain members of the Vanderbilt family felt towards these two men went beyond Platonic. It's easy to see why they would think that.

And as it turns out, there may have been a same sex relationship between a member of the Hunt and Vanderbilt families. A number of love letters written by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and intended for Esther Hunt, Richard's daughter, have been uncovered. Just how far the relationship went is debated, but Gertrude's mother eventually forbid her from contacting Hunt after a time. After a famous trial, Vanderbilt Whitney ended up with custody of Gloria Vanderbilt. For those of you unaware, that's Anderson Cooper's mother. Anderson's brother, Carter Vanderbilt Cooper, Gloria's other son from what was marriage number four, committed suicide at the age of 23 under curious circumstances.

But to return to the Biltmore. Arguably the most impressive room in the estate is the banquet hall. Its also the largest room in the house, measuring 42ft x 72ft and featuring a 70 foot high barrel-vaulted ceiling. It's every bit as impressive as it sounds, especially the room's massive organ:

Here's the fireplace that resides opposite the organ:

And here's the rest of it:

The library was impressive too, and not just because of the 10,000 books it's said to contain:

For me, one of the most striking rooms was designated solely for housing tapestries:

Nemours has these same, Flemish style tapestries, also heavy on Greco-Roman symbolism:

The same is also true of the Larz Anderson House, the headquarters of the Society of Cincinnati in Washington, DC:

Not that some kind of strange cult inspired by the paganism of antiquity would persist among America's most revered families, mind you. Obviously, they just had a thing for Flemish tapestries. Just like how this isn't a relief of a Minoan snake goddess in one of the guest bedrooms (of which the house contains 33, the main 1 3 being on the second floor):

It gets a little harder to ignore this stuff when one ventures down into the basement. Certainly, the descent sets a certain mood:

Then you come to the "Halloween Room" and suddenly, things are far less clear. The best rationalization put forward for this room is that the Vanderbilts only used it on certain occasions, such as Halloween (hence the name) or New Year's parties.

I was already clued in about this room thanks to the ghost walk I took the prior night. Tadd and the locals seemed convinced the actual purpose of this room was to conduct séances. Tadd does a fantastic job of breaking this down in my interview with him, so I will defer to that.

And so concludes our tour of Asheville's three castles. I'll add a few additional observations about Biltmore:

• It would have been incredibly isolated when the Vanderbilts were most active here, i.e. the early twentieth century up through the WWII
• Despite the incredible effort (and expense) that went into constructing Biltmore, the Vanderbilts were rarely here
• Many of the rooms do not appear to have been designed for actual use, but to display artwork. Or, in the case of tapestry room, to potentially tell a story

These factors, combined with the artwork and features like the "Halloween Room" will do little dispel notions that Biltmore was constructed for ritualistic purposes. And frankly, "ritual purposes" is the most probable explanation for many aspects of the estate. If that seems to far out for you, let's consider one final, little talked about, aspect of Asheville's legacy: William Dudley Pelley.

The Business Plot

For those of you unaware, Pelley was an early New Age guru. During the late 1920s, while working as a screenwriter in Hollywood, he had a near death experience (NDE).  From this, he developed a keen interest in metaphysics. Among other things, he claimed to have been contacted by beings from Sirius.

He relocated to Asheville in 1932 and established the Galahad College and Press to promote his concepts. After Hitler came to power in 1933, Pelley rapidly drifted into right wing extremism. Pelley had been a fierce anti-Semite since spending time in Russia shortly after the Revolution. But the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe floored him.

He still maintained a keen interest in metaphysics, however. Indeed, he was probably a crucial figure behind the I AM movement, which is still going strong to this day. I recently did an epic, two part deep dive into Pelley and I Am, which can be found here and here.

Among other things, Hitler's rise inspired Pelley to found his own version of the Brown Shirts in 1933. He called his outfit the Silver Legion, though they were often referred to as the "Silver Shirts" because of their attire. Much like their precursors in Italy and Germany, the Silver Legion soon took on a paramilitary character. Headquartered in Asheville, the group acquired an estimated 15,000 members by 1934. Pelley wasn't able to sustain this level of support and by 1937, the Legion was down to 5k or so members. But, that's still significantly larger than modern day right wing militias.

The Legion remained based out of Asheville until 1941, when it was dissolved in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor. Pelley was arrested in Asheville for sedition the following year. He spent WWII and several years afterwards in prison. The old Silver Legion headquarters is currently an LGBT friendly juice bar in West Asheville:

What's especially interesting about Pelley's time in Asheville is a particular event the Vanderbilts were implicated in that unfolded around the same time. It's commonly referred to as the Business Plot. As the story goes, between 1933 and 1934, General Smedley Butler was approached by several Wall Street figures to lead a coup against FDR. Butler pretended to go along with the venture while amassing evidence, and exposed it the following year. Congressional investigations began during 1934 and a final report was issued in 1935.

Typically, when the plot is mentioned at all, its often depicted as a comedy of errors by the hapless plotters. But at least one figure who came forward to confirm it, FDR's friend and Society of Cincinnati member Cornelius Vanderbilt IV, indicated the plot was far more serious than is often realized. And one can just imagine where he was getting his information from.

So, let us return to Pelley and Asheville. He founds the Silver Legion in 1933, the year preparation for the coup supposedly begins. By the following year, he has 15k members, which roughly coincides with when the putsch was planned for. And the Silver Shirt numbers remain strong until Pelley's disastrous presidential run in 1936, just as the scandal around the Business Plot is dying down.

What's especially interesting about this is the location of Pelley's publishing house: Biltmore Village. This is what the building that used to house Pelley's press looks like in 2023:

And this is the entrance to the Biltmore estate, taken from the same spot I took these photos of Pelley's old publishing house:

While Pelley's headquarters was in West Asheville, the publishing house was the largest and most active property he had in Asheville. It was instrumental in aiding him in building up his 15k strong Silver Legion. And here they resided, in a town with a train line that led directly to the DC area. In fact, the old Biltmore Train Station is literally the very next building passed Pelley's old publishing house on Lodge Street!

The entrance to the Biltmore, Pelley's publishing house, and the train station are all with a mile or less of one another. Let that sink in for a moment and reconsider the time line of the Business Plot from above. All I'm saying is there was a large paramilitary in Asheville, often active right next to the train station, that could have been transported to DC in a matter of hours from here...

Its a funny thing. I often come to these communities to debunk the conspiracy theories surrounding them. And to be sure, the Satanic cult stuff rarely holds up beyond a precursory examination.

But some times, I wish it would. More often than not, I find myself confronting mysteries that are far stranger than Satanic cults and Illuminati bloodlines.

While I've yet to encounter anything compelling in regards to said bloodlines, there's no question the hereditary Society of Cincinnati turns up in a variety of strange places. And Asheville appears to have witnessed some major political intrigues (the Teapot Dome scandal, the Business Plot) during the interwar years. It really did possess a militant cult with paramilitary characteristics during the Pelley era. And while I doubt the Biltmore Village train station will be used for FEMA concentration camps anytime soon, plans may well have been drawn up to use it as part of a coup during the 1930s.

At the same time refugees from Germany's Bauhaus were setting up shop at the Black Mountain College. The same school that was instrumental in launching American abstract expressionism, which was later weaponized by the CIA during the Cold War culture wars. And I'm not even going to raise the possibility that the denizens behind Black Mountain were fans of the Exquisite Corpse.

Truth is stranger than fiction indeed.