We had high hopes
for some paranormal activity on a recent trip to Asheville, NC over
Halloween. We were staying in a Bed and
Breakfast in an older neighborhood, we’d planned to go on a walking ghost tour
downtown, and a visit to an historic cemetery near the B&B was on our
itinerary. While we had a wonderful
time, paranormal activity minimal.
I’ll start with
the ghost tour. While the guide was
entertaining, we were a bit disappointed as it just didn’t seem to measure up
to other tours we’d taken in other cities.
One this one, we heard a lot of intriguing stories, but they seemed to
be just that, stories with very little legend or tales out there in the public
forums to substantiate that which we were told.
While I didn’t experience any “odd” feelings during the tour, there was
one thing of note that we couldn’t readily debunk. While standing outside of the Thomas Wolfe
house, a house that dates back to the 19th century, we were told
that there was no HVAC system in the house.
This was an important fact because we observed drapes and shades in
multiple rooms, both upstairs and down, move as if being blown by air from an
HVAC vent. The movement was very subtle
and not rhythmic at all. There was a
slight wind blowing that evening and I suspect if the seals were bad around
windows, the breeze could perhaps account for this movement, however, I would
find it extremely ironic that this would affect multiple windows. Paranormal?
I can’t say it was, but I can’t say it wasn’t either. This one will have to remain a mystery.
There was one
other strange occurrence surrounding the tour – multiple photos taken on a cell
phone at various points of interest along the route, were inexplicably erased
from the phone. We didn’t do anything to
remove photos in mass, as evidenced by previous photos that remain on the
phone, yet every photo taken that night did not appear on the phone when we
went to review them. I suspect it could
be user error, however, I find it strange that no other photos were deleted. It seems to me that if photos were deleted by
accident, others would have been affected as well. Again, I cannot draw any definitive
conclusions from this, but it was unusual to say the least.
The visit to
Riverside Cemetery was a bit more promising.
The grave sites are spread out over 87 rolling acres that border the
French Broad River. We made a quick
visit during the afternoon of the 30th, but returned with our
“equipment” just before dusk on Halloween night. We took multiple photos which, on review, did
not turn up anything of note. We also
made multiple recordings seeking EVPs but heard nothing on the recordings out
of the ordinary. We did however both
hear what sounded like footsteps behind us at one point shortly after getting a
spike on the EMF meter, and upon turning to look, saw no one anywhere in sight
that could have been responsible for the sound.
The voice recorder was running at the time and did pick up our comments
to one another about hearing footsteps, but the sound of the steps themselves
was not picked up. This was when we were
around gravesites of small children and when we asked fi anyone was there to
look after the children, we received several large spikes on the EMF meter,
some of the largest spikes we’d ever had.
The readings were not consistent, which would indicate some type of
legitimate electromagnetic emissions, but rather were sporadic and seemed to
occur at times when we asked questions.
We had no other visual or auditory evidence to substantiate the spikes, (other
then the hearing of footsteps), but the readings on the meter certainly
indicated anomalies.
While I was
disappointed that we didn’t receive any recorded evidence during our trip, we
did experience some unexplained occurrences.
Did we encounter family members of Thomas Wolfe moving the curtains in
his childhood home, and did we hear the footsteps of a mother or father walking
amongst the gravestones of their children?
Perhaps. For now, it will have to
remain in the realm of the unknown.
Dickens
