Description Of Place: Falling under the purview of Cherokee National Forest, Ashton is roughly twenty-two acres of forgotten houses and structures that were abandoned in 1948. The old cobblestone roads through town are overgrown and obscured by vegetation, weaving through a crowded pathway of large trees, wild foliage and fallen timbers. The old street signs for Baker, Candlestick and Butcher Streets are still present but rusted and tarnished by years of weather or consumed by vines. Described as frozen in time, many of the houses are almost intact but in varying states of deterioration. 

At least four of the twenty-six recorded structures are large two-story structures, the Old Mayor's House, the old Peckshire Place, the Williams estate and a fourth structure whose past ownership has not been identified. The style of architecture for several of the buildings appears to be in a post-Colonial Federal-style appearance except for the Williams House which has a Gothic Victorian stone and brick structure replete with a church-like spire and attached green house overcome with rust and broken glass as well as numerous weeds overtaking the exterior, loosening the brick work and pulling down an entire chimney system. However, it is still in a much better shape than most of the structures, some of which are sliding and crumbling off their foundations. Several of the houses are missing doorways or have collapsed roofs.

The two-story Old Peckshire House with its old Federal style and once vast grounds has slowly decreased in size over the years as the clearing it once rested on has been decreased in size as trees have filled and taken over the roadway toward it. The interior is almost intact with old furniture and possessions still resting covered by white sheets since it was locked up in 1953. The mayor's old house in comparison, however, shows the signs of habitation with trash, debris and old clothing strewn through the house and bedrooms still askew from former squatters living in the structure in the Sixties.

Of the other structures, the old town library is virtually inaccessible as foliage and wild brush have created an impasse against reaching its interior. An old market directly to its east side has crumbled to the ground under a fallen tree, a cash register on a counter jutting up through the opening of the roof down over the structure. North of the mayor's house is an old Ranger's station under the control of employees from the Tallahassee dam, and not far from that is one of the suspected military bunkers believed to dot the area. While there is no proof the Federal Government had underground bunkers here, it is believed the above ground vaults are actually the covers of old coal mines sealed off to the public. 

Ghostly Manifestations: Over the years, motorists driving along Interstate 129 in Eastern Tennessee south of Knoxville have witnessed something strange wandering along the road just before old Route 16. The forgotten mountain road was closed down in the Seventies because less than a mile ahead where the asphalt ends is an old steel bridge over the Little Tennessee River which no longer exists. The bridge collapsed back in the Seventies under a record snowfall, cutting off access to a tiny hamlet deep in the mountain preserve that rests untouched since the last people lived there in the 1960s. Headlights shining on the barricade blocking the old route sometimes catch signs of something else known as the legend of Laura Cavender.

No one knows who Laura Cavender was or if she even existed, but others know her as the ghost of Lavender. According to legend, she and her boyfriend were driving through the area one rainy day to nearby Ashton when they slid on the muddy road, slid down the embankment or over the bridge and met their fate in the turbulent river below. For some reason, the legend favors Laura coming back to search for her lost lover. Dressed in a long white dress, she runs out in front of cars, causing drivers to hit their breaks suddenly, but when they go to search for her, she's never found. She's usually seen just wandering the road in front of the barricade, sometimes attracting the attention of curious on-lookers trying to give her a ride. She's been described as very beautiful. Long blonde hair, eyes as blue as frozen gems and perfect white skin, she doesn't speak much, nor does she respond very talkative because by time drivers lose sight of old Route 16 in the rear view mirror, Laura has usually vanished from the car.

Furthermore, Laura doesn't need to be invited to accept rides from strangers. This stretch of road is believed cursed with recurring accidents on Interstate 129 often occurring a few miles from old Route 16 since 1982. Legend goes that drivers that do not stop to offer Laura a ride or check on her have often discovered her headless specter sitting in the backseat accompanied by the powerful stench of decomposition. The shock of her visage causes drivers to veer off the road in terrified fear. It is not completely out of the range of possibility for Laura to wander headless by the roadside either. 

While there is no historical records or forgotten vehicular accident reports to prove that anyone named Cavender ever died in a car accident in the area in the Fifties, many think the apparition nick-named Lavender is actually connected to the remote town of Ashton being reclaimed by the local forest. Ashton has yet to appear in any modern road maps. Access is virtually impossible unless one is given to rafting down the river to reach it or riding ATVs twelve miles over land over old logging runs from Tellico Plains, twenty miles away on the other side of Cherokee National Forest. It was once an actual prosperous mining town, but today, it's a heavily wooded valley far from the sounds and restraints of normal civilization.    

"Do you want to see Ashton?" Anna Peckshire is the slender red-haired assistant curator for the Blount County Preservation Society. Many of her duties and responsibilities are usually spent cataloging and researching through stacks of old files and newspapers to document the antiques and relics sent for preservation in the county museum, so to actually get out to do field work is a routine she looks forward to enjoying. When the forgotten town was rediscovered in 1993, she was one of three county employees to reach the location and document its level of neglect to evaluate for preservation.

Access to Ashton is restricted by permission of the Federal Parks System. Although not a historical site, the surrounding grounds are controlled by the parks department and they control who gets to visit and who can't. This also protects Ashton from vandalism and makes it difficult for anyone else trying to find it. While members of the CGS were waiting for permission to do an on-site investigation, Anna gave investigator Steve Barnette a few names of locals who knew about the town. 

"My grandmother lived in Ashton in the Sixties." Kyle Langley is a sixty-something living in Maryville who recalls visiting his grandmother during the summers of his youth. "She was a flower child left over from the Sixties, and one of the last residents who ever lived there. She had this small tiny cottage just one house short of the city limits down from this stone wall that surrounded the town. Beyond the wall was the old town cemetery, and by then, it was already old, I figure, with tombstones going back to the Civil War. Not having anyone to play with in that town, I used to explore that cemetery a lot during the day, but I wouldn't go near it at night. I always had the feeling someone was watching me from it."

In Mrs. Langley's day, one could look out from her property to the series of houses dotting the partially wooded area, but over the years, those trees have grown out and obscured much of the area as well as expanded to create this leafy canopy that covers almost all of town. Several of these trees are oak and pine trees in excess of three hundred years old, and in the day, there are rumors of shadows flitting quickly between behind the trees in a hurry. Kyle repeated a story that his grandmother once watched the shadow of a man  calmly walking the length of Grimace Block toward the old postal inspector's house, disappearing behind a tree and never reappearing beyond it.

"Grimace Block is actually just a circular lane that runs around the Brothers Houses." Rudy Von Krantz IV, a retired newspaper editor and raconteur from Chattanooga, clarifies. His grandfather lived in the Von Krantz house across the street from the mayor's house on Candlestick Road in the Sixties. He has never been to Ashton, or Spectre as the homeless vagabonds of the Sixties called it, but he is the family historian for seven generations of the Von Krantz family and all their tales and legends.

"The Grimace brothers, Vic, Eddie and Dave, to my understanding show up in Ashton in 1967, and stayed there until God knows when." He continues. "And I suspect their spirits are still in their houses. My grandfather lived a stone's throw from them and described them as a rowdy bunch in competition with each other. Gramps liked to throw a lot of parties in his house, and those guys were always showing off some new talent or another. Vic thought of himself as a swashbuckler and was always attacking physical objects like trees and bushes, slashing them up with these rapiers he created himself. Eddie was like an undiscovered sports star, he could kick a hornet's nest over one house and through a window, and Dave would show how strong he was by lifting anything around him that he thought would make him look superior to his brothers. Rumor is they fell for a girl and got into a big ruckus about it tearing up each others houses. That there's anything left of those houses is a miracle, but according to gramps, their spirits are still up there beating each other up and tearing into each others houses. You can hear wails of anger from the empty structures and get pelted by small rocks flying out of the windows. If you stick your head in Eddie or Vic's house, you're very likely to see their face peering back from a shadow."

Among other stories Rudy has shared is that of Sheriff Budrick Nelson, who was constable for Ashton from 1935 to 1942. His old patrol car still sits abandoned under the extended roof of the old Ashton Courthouse, and legend claims he can still be seen sitting in the rusted wreck as people walk into town from the bridge. A deserted school bus parked near the old library also seems haunted by shadows peering from the windows. In fact, walking the old sunken streets and wilderness infested town provokes a sensation of being watched.

"There's a very awkward feeling of being in that town." Anna Peckshire confesses. "On my visit there, I took more than five hundred photos documenting the state of the structures there, and in under a quarter of them, you see these balls of light in darkened rooms and shadows from empty desolate rooms that don't make sense. It's very eerie in the day with the trees blocking out the sun that I can only imagine how bad it is at night when all the available light is completely missing."

Bradley Bellick, a former employee for the Blount County Preservation Society, was another of the attendees that accompanied Anna to the old ghost town. Since his visit, he has since formed the Appalachian Area Paranormal Society (AAPS) and has revisited Ashton without authority at least twice but alludes the number might be higher. More concerned in recent years with UFO activity and accounts of a supposed cryptid he calls a "Snake-Rat" in the woods around Ashton, he has the largest collection so far of photographs showing supposed spectral presences in Ashton as well as video of a presence he caught in the mayor's house. The video seems to reveal a seated figure at an old desk sitting frozen in time for seventeen seconds before turning their head to the photographer, who then gets startled and drops the camera before running out of the house screaming. Unfortunately, the footage has been exorbitantly digitized to enhance the figure, making it difficult to completely analyze the figure.

"According to Bradley," Anna continues. "He has heard sounds of partying from the old Krantz house followed by the sound of a gunshot. He has observed lights going off in succession from the windows of the Williams House, and heard voices following him in the old Peckshire House." Anna is insistent she is not related to Ben or William Peckshire who helped found the town, but she does confess her relatives have lived in the area for several generations. "He has also insisted that at night that the old houses seem to come alive, practically becoming brand new and glowing completely whole as if time was reversing and restoring them, but then, I'm kind of dubious about a lot of the stories he tells."

History: Originally a coal mining community, Ashton was founded around 1780 in what was then going to be the state of Franklin. Originally known as Coal Field, it was named Ashton by politician William S. Ashton, a supporter of John Sevier, who became its first mayor. Franklin was formed out of the territory of North Carolina west of the Appalachians in order to pay off debts from the War of Independence, but it's cessation was rescinded and it reverted back to North Carolina. The area was eventually ceded to Congress, who extended the territory's boundary to the Mississippi and instead named it Tennessee. Ashton was going to be the gateway city to the area, but access over the Appalachian Mountains to the town from North Carolina was never rendered feasible.

Over the years, Ashton was often erroneously named Cashton and eventually Cashtown, particularly during the Civil War, where it was largely sympathetic to the Union. It was home to several prominent citizens, including lumber barons William and Benjamin Peckshire, wealthy land-owners Nathan and Abigail Williams and Roy Montgomery Burns, a Tennessee statesman who became mayor of Ashton in 1895. The Williams built several large expensive homes in the area, but the local lumber interests soured the coal mine industry in the area, and by 1897, population had fallen as low as 273, making it a prime location for manufacturers of illegal whiskey during Prohibition. In 1942, the Federal government purchased the town under the Manhattan Project, purchasing the properties from the last remaining citizens and relocating the residents. They admired the town for its remoteness and accessibility by air and water, using the old houses as residents for scientists and specialists in atomic research to develop nuclear age weaponry, but after the war, the town was all but completely abandoned. It was completely forgotten under President Eisenhower's Highway Project in 1956. It is believed several military bunkers built out of the coal tunnels were left intact.

Around 1967, the forgotten town was taken over by homeless hippies and flower children, reportedly by a spirit that they followed through the woods. They made their homes in the caves and empty houses, but they must have become disillusioned or affected by the isolation because when surveyors and workmen from the nearby Tallahassee dam rediscovered the town in the late Eighties, it was completely abandoned, and the neglect and condemned buildings were further deteriorated from before. The Route 16 bridge had collapsed under the weight of a snowfall in 1973, further isolating the ghost town to visitors except hunters and hikers in Cherokee National Forest.

Identity of Ghosts: In addition to many of the names here, Rudy Van Krantz IV has proffered several more names of several former Forties residents of Ashton he has able to identify from his research. Among them, Luigi Moroello, a former Vaudeville magician and his brother, Mario Moroello, a former Army engineer who worked as a plumber in his retirement. Luigi departed Ashton in 1940 ahead of the Federal acquisition in 1942 with Natalie Duquesne, his former neighbor whim he had taken as a bride. Mario was one of those relocated in 1942 along with Ellen Peckham, who stayed in what Bellick calls the Artist House between the Krantz House and Duquesne House on Baker Street. Rudy believes Ellen's real name might have been Peckshire, making her a niece or relative of the Peckshire Brothers.

Other residents include Andrew Bundy, the local post master general, and Jane Hogan-Wyndham, who both lived on Butcher Street from Ricardo Howell, a retired horticulturalist, whose residence included two large greenhouses. On the far side of Ricardo beyond the foundations of an unidentified residence was the home of Jane Connor, who served as deputy under Sheriff Nelson.

Chris Cooper and Carter Hofstadter, Bellick's co-researchers in AAPS, have also been looking into research about Dount Cracula, the public persona of the "flower child" movement that took over the remnants of Ashton in the Sixties. His true identity is completely lost to time, but it is believed it's his voice heard chanting and moaning in the massive ruins off Lower Baker Street across the old lane from the Artist House.

"Newspaper reports from the time identify him as kind of a character." Cooper adds. "He talked to spirits, ran naked in snow storms and swam in frozen rivers. Between 1963 and 1967, he had no more than thirty-seven arrest reports for disturbing the peace in Knoxville before disappearing into the woods around Ashton with fifty-seven followers. No one knows what happened to him, but if you ask me, I think his remains are entombed in some sort of shrine somewhere in that town."

Investigations: "Accessed by means of a dirt road from near Tellico Springs and almost an hour of ATV travel along old paths over hills, through dried creek beds and nearly endless wilderness, Ashton feels as if it is at the end of the world. Its distance very well protects it, and the old paths are so perplexing that it is very easy to get lost unless you really knew all these back trails." Investigator Steve Barnette revealed on behalf of the CGS. "Eventually, you come over a hill to see the edge of the trees in the distance and a small field with signs of what looks like a large barn in the far tree line, but that's not the destination. Instead, you gradually notice old cobblestone filling the path and then an old kerosene lamp post since converted for electricity sitting out here in the middle of no where. Its glass is intact, and the once bronze fixture is rusted, and then you pass what seems to be  a huge pile of brush and weeds choking a large mound. You look closer and realize its the old Ashton Library and Museum, now the base of a billion vines growing through the exterior, interior and roof like a giant chia pet."

Accompanied by Andrea Welch, Mike Lodge and Ed Brannion, the CGS is the first team to be allowed at Ashton to do a paranormal examination. "A mere brief few minutes is not long enough to take it the power of the forest to completely take over this tiny town. You drive on cobblestones hidden under leaves and brush, sections of it pushed up by large tree trunks. You drive by these once nice abandoned homes that could be restored but haven't seen sunlight since the trees grew over and embraced each other. A deserted child's tricycle is discovered half-buried to its handlebars. A rusted school bus on flat tires looks as if it's sinking into the earth, and then you realize the eerie creepy deafening silence. There are no birds singing and not a sign of life anywhere." Andrea adds.

The two-day overnight investigation began with a brief reconnaissance to familiarize themselves with the structures and choosing the best and most safe structures to explore and leave recording equipment. The Brothers houses, the old museum, Peckshire house, market and Sheriff's house were quickly dropped for being unsafe, and in the end, motion capture cameras were left in the mayor's house, old Langley House, Bundy and Howell house with much of the investigation focused in the old Ashton Cemetery at the end of Butcher Street. Today, it's barely a cemetery. The walls are shattered or nonexistent, old tombstones tilt or lay fallen in thick foliage and the lone mausoleum resting near a small creek has all but collapsed. It has basically been reabsorbed by the earth except for the few stones still standing erect and sections of wall reminding visitors of its former boundaries.

"We actually came prepared to stay in tents, but our decision was that the house on Butcher Street were still in fair shape." Ed reveals. "They were cold, they were drafty, but they didn't sway in the wind. What was spooky is that last house near the cemetery still had personal belongings in it. Clothes in the closet, a jacket on the door, canned goods in the cupboard and a dingy old period refrigerator filled with the stains of long decomposed food. I looked to Steve, and I thought what he was thinking.  - objects. If there was anyone who was going to appear for us, it might be the last person to own these things. Just perhaps their energies were still on their old possessions."

Through dusk, the team covered the grounds on foot, crossing to the mayor's house and back passing the Brothers Houses, often dodging items left in on the property, such as a rusted out stock car and ruined patio furniture. ("This place is an American Pickers dream or nightmare." Steve remarked.) Andrea tried getting EVPs from an old Indian motorcycle behind Vic's old house, but failed to get anything. As night approached, it became dark much quicker than expected, and the team had to use flashlights to work their way along Lower Baker Street and up Butcher Street back to the cemetery. Ed thought he saw lights in the house next to the old Moroello House but then refuted them as reflections from their flashlights. 

"Overall," Steve confesses. "What we did experience was not as extraordinary as we had hoped. We might have got some EVPs in the cemetery, but we did get numerous orbs. Our cameras in the target houses recorded sounds like footsteps, possible voices and ambient noises, but the only particular thing of note was that something switched off the camera in the Howell House. That camera still had a hour and a half worth of footage on it, and we had it placed where someone would have had to come through the boarded window to reach it."

"We did also get what looks like a figure of a female in a white dress during our late afternoon investigation." Ed points out. "As we were doing our reconnaissance, we got a brief image of a figure in white coming down the road from the Old Route 16 Bridge a mile and a half away on our hand held cameras, but it's just for a split second. Steve says its the light reflecting off an old street light, but I think its Lavender coming down the road to meet us."  

Source/Comments: "Ghost Saga/Ghost Tales" Video Game (2010) - Loosely based on Dudley Town near Cornwall, Connecticut and Historic Elkmont near Townsend, Tennessee; Activity based on Blackwoods Road near Franklin, Maine, Black Bridge near Ramapo, New York, Helltown near Burton, Ohio and Bodie Ghost Town near Bridgeport, California.

"American Pickers" TV Series - (2010 - Recent)