Asheville Historic Haunts

Driving Miles 22.5 miles

Drive Time: 1hr+

What is it that gives Asheville and Buncombe County so many ghost stories? Tales of the haunted, the creepy, the eerie, and the outright macabre mark the landscape here with sites that locals love—or fear. Asheville, situated on high ground near the confluence of two rivers, has a lengthy history of human occupation. It has seen skirmishes and wars, influxes of tourists and tuberculosis patients, booms and busts, and plenty of tragedy. Asheville and the surrounding mountains have also hosted numerous writers, musicians, and folklorists who have promoted (if not possibly created) some of these legends. Perhaps these are some of the reasons lore permeates the streets, hills, and valleys of Asheville and Buncombe County. You can see many of these sites for yourself, if you dare.

Location: 283 Victoria Road, Asheville

Parking: Park in the small visitors gravel parking lot behind the house.

Note:  The museum is open and behind-the-scenes guided tours will be available soon as of 11/1/23. 

Built c.1840 as Asheville's first large, brick home, the Smith-McDowell House—or "Buck House" as early locals may have known it—has seen its share of frightening, eerie, and possibly ghostly activity. The mansion, with its spacious and cold basement, its numerous upstairs rooms, closets, and cupboards, contains several nooks and crannies where one can easily imagine the shadows may contain something more. Throughout its occupation the structure has housed many owners or renters, and a few inhabitants have met their fates here. The house and grounds have been the confines of several dozen enslaved people, the site of Civil War raiding, host to sick tuberculosis patients, and home to a Catholic school for boys.

James Smith, a business owner of various enterprises, built his fortune on enslaved people's backs. Likewise, this house (his "country house") was probably constructed with enslaved labor. By 1850, Smith enslaved at least 44 people and his son in law, William McDowell, inherited and added people to the list of enslaved who lived and worked on this property and its surrounding fields against their will. During the prelude to the American Civil War, white enslavers grew increasingly fearful of revolts, especially after John Brown's Harpers Ferry raid in 1859. In response to this uprising, William McDowell organized and took command of the Buncombe Riflemen militia unit. The riflemen also formed a Committee of Vigilance designed to apprehend suspected abolitionists or put down any insurrections.

During the war, the house also saw its share of sadness and violence. William was away with the army, leaving Sarah—his wife and James Smith's daughter—to take care of the estate and its inhabitants. In 1865, as the war neared an end, the McDowell's youngest child, Carrie, died in the house. Shortly after, Sarah watched as Union army raiders of George Kirk's command approached and searched the home while William was forced to hide in the woods nearby. The widely feared Union forces looted the outbuildings and ran a sword through a painting of William's grandfather inside the home.

The McDowells eventually sold the house to the Garrett family in 1881. Mary Frances Garrett, the mother, was in failing health as she suffered from tuberculosis. It is likely that the solarium addition was built onto the house to enable her to take in more of the mountain air, thought to have restorative properties. The Garretts also built a massive nearby hotel that was soon used as a TB sanitarium for countless patients. Despite the efforts of doctors, Mary Frances died here in 1884, most likely in the house. After several subsequent owners and renters, the Catholic Diocese purchased this home in 1951 to use as a boys dormitory. St. Francis Catholic High School utilized the house for just one year, but several children studied and roomed in the mansion during its tenure. The house house became a museum for the Western North Carolina Historical Association in the 1980s and reopened as the Asheville Museum of History in 2023.

Museum staff and volunteers have reported strange occurrences, and ghost investigators have conducted experiments here in recent years. One museum guide described an incident on the upper floor where a young boy tried enticing any ghosts to play with a ball he rolled across the floor. Apparently the ball exhibited different behavior each time, including making hard stops and even returning to the visitor. Other visitors have also strongly described feeling various presences on tours of the house. In 2002, Asheville paranormal investigator Josh Warren  conducted an investigation  with various instruments and concluded the house has four ghosts, including one known simply as "the dark one."

Aside from the house itself, the grounds also contain a macabre history. James Smith, his wife Mary, and possibly unknown others were buried near the Smith-McDowell house at the time of their deaths on a knoll to the south. In the 1870s, when James Kerr Connally purchased part of the former estate and began construction of the Fernihurst Mansion (below), he chose to lay its foundation in the most scenic location—directly on the Smith graveyard. The Smith's daughter Sarah was forced to reinter the bodies at the nearby Newton Academy cemetery, but allegedly missed or disregarded some remains. Human bones were reportedly discovered during a renovation of Fernihurst in the 1930s, their identity unknown. Today, the Fernihurst building is part of the neighboring A-B Tech campus.

Right Image: Smith-McDowell House c. 1875 (WNCHA Archives)

Location: 201 Beaucatcher Rd, Asheville

Parking: At the intersection of College and Vance Gap Road, a small dirt/gravel pull-off gives you the chance to park and walk under the bridge. A small and very rough pull-off on Windswept Drive also allows you to view the top of the bridge.

Note: The curving streets on this mountain are narrow and present sharp turns. Drive slowly and please obey private property boundaries.

"As they walked under the shadow of the bridge Eugene lifted his head and shouted. His voice bounded against the arch like a stone." — Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward Angel

On a mountain overlooking downtown, one of Asheville's most eerie and reportedly haunted locations has spawned numerous stories of a grieving ghost. Nobody knows exactly who "Helen" was, but generations of Asheville residents have reported meeting her aura underneath a historic bridge. Residents have tested their nerves for decades by commanding "Helen, come forth" three times underneath the vine-covered arch where a young mother supposedly took her life after the death of her daughter. Sometimes, they say, she appears.

The story begins with the wealthy John Evans Brown, who constructed the Zealandia mansion (below) on top of Beaucatcher Mountain in 1889. He sold the strange-looking, Cuban-inspired home to Phillip Henry in 1903. In 1907, Henry, with the help of prolific Asheville architect  Richard Sharp Smith , updated the building and constructed the arched stone bridge (right) that still stands today, allegedly the site of a suicide and a haunting. Local lore maintains that Helen, a poor woman who lived on the mountain, had a daughter who died in a fire at the mansion at some point during this early period. Distraught, the mother ended her life on the bridge and still manifests periodically.

No fires were reported at Zealandia during the Brown or Henry occupations. However, Henry's wife had, in fact, perished in a fire at the Windsor Hotel in New York City before he removed to Zealandia. That particular fire also claimed the life of a young woman name Helen LeLand. Could this be the source of the legend, or did it have to do with Thomas Wolfe's thinly-veiled depiction of the bridge? Either way, many are convinced that they experienced the supernatural here. Some have reported seeing an aura or mist while others have felt physical touches. A smaller number have also reported having car trouble afterward when Helen comes forth (visitors beware).

Right Image: Helen's Bridge looking back toward Asheville (Author)

Location: 290 Macon Avenue, Asheville

Parking: Park where public parking is available.

Note: Reservations are recommended for those touring the grounds. A  self-guided tour  is currently available.

"I was never afraid of her. I tried to communicate with her but she would never say anything." — Sharon Ponder, former Grove Park Inn photographer

Asheville's most famous haunting is also purportedly one of its most frequently-witnessed ghosts. Numerous guests and staff of the historic 1913 Grove Park Inn have reported seeing "The Pink Lady" during their stay at the large hotel, with many sightings occurring around rooms 441 or 545. The legend begins with a young woman in a pink dress who supposedly died at the luxurious hotel during the 1920s. It is unclear if her demise was by suicide or accident, but no documented trace of such a death appears in any newspapers of the time. She is said to now reappear frequently, but as a pink aura or hazy blob. Notably, her presence is almost always said to be friendly, if not mischievous at times, and she is rumored to reveal her presence to children more often than adults. This legendary haunt is a frequent target of photographers and supernatural hunters, many of whom have reported strange phenomena or results with their equipment. There are also other rumored ghosts of the Grove Park Inn, including what some former employees have described as dark shadows, and specters in the nearby Country Club.

It is unclear exactly when this legend began, though its prominence has increased in the past two decades. Some have alleged that the Inn, for a long time, forbid employees from discussing the ghost stories. Among the ghostly believers, many contend that the Pink Lady is Zelda Fitzgerald, though she never stayed at the inn for any substantial period of time. Her famous husband, however, did stay in room 441 frequently before his death in 1940. Zelda's story does offer some clues as she died—in a fire no less—at Asheville's Highland Hospital in March, 1948, after staying there periodically since 1936. Nine women perished in this horrible tragedy, many of them having been sedated and immobile.

*The site of the hospital is visible later in the tour*

There are also numerous connections to other "pink ladies" in Asheville. The popular play "The Pink Lady" visited for live performances in 1912, and in 1925, a café opened near Pack Square with the same name. The waitresses wore pink colored uniforms to match the décor. Additionally, in the late 1950s, the "Pink Lady" fundraising auxiliary group formed on behalf of Mission Memorial and St. Joseph's hospitals, soliciting donations in their pink and white uniforms. Lastly, while it is unclear how many, if any, residents of the inn have perished, one African American man—Nat Purdue—was gruesomely killed during its construction. Could the Pink Lady or the other alleged hauntings of the Grove Park Inn be one of these other individuals, or could they be the hybridized tales of a tourist town's promoters, incorporating strains of its romanticized history? You can find out for yourself with a visit.

Right Image: The Grove Park Inn on a rainy evening (Five Star Alliance Website Photo)

Location: 60 Lees Creek Road, Asheville (Erwin High School) and 59 Lees Creek Road, Asheville (Joe P. Eblen Intermediate School)

Parking: No established parking at the County Home Cemetery

Notes: Please abide by school signs regarding loitering, trespassing, and private property restrictions. The site is not currently available to public access.

Since the early 1800s, Asheville and Buncombe County's poor were sometimes buried in a mass cemetery or "pauper's field" near the county poor home. The old and infirm—also people with disabilities—lived in this remote farm and most were buried, alongside other impoverished residents, in unmarked graves on this land owned by the county. Nearly 1,000 individuals were likely buried here in total through 1973. Their resting spot was meant to be "forever in trust for the use and benefit of the poor of the county of Buncombe."

This arrangement did not last. In the 1970s, as Asheville sought increasingly valuable land to build the new Erwin High School, they settled on the site of the unknown burials, against an opposed public opinion. A contractor's crew from eastern North Carolina and a host of cheaply-paid high schoolers set about exhuming the decomposed remains, the majority of which were buried only a few inches deep. Only one grave marker, dedicated to Charlotte Snelson, stood to denote the burial ground.

Prior to this, at some point in the late 1940s, an administrator of the nearby county home had hired local boys to remove brush on the site, and he discovered to his horror they had unearthed and displayed several skulls of unknown origins. Likewise, during the 1970s removal and reburial of the bodies, the process was reportedly done with less than precise care, although the pine boxes they placed remains in may have been better than the burials many originally received.

The workers removing the bodies to a parcel of land (right) above the modern Joe P. Eblen Intermediate School quickly discovered many more bodies were buried there than were budgeted for. Over 600 were re-buried, but an estimated 250-300 were possibly left in situ between what became the football field and the school. Since that time, Erwin High, particularly the gym, has gained a reputation for the spooky happenings that several students, teachers, janitors, and investigators have reported. Many have described objects flying around the rooms or voices talking in the dark, while still others have described seeing actual people. At this point removing the various burials left there remains largely too expensive and too complicated. For the foreseeable future, students will roam the halls of a school surrounded by eerie tales.

Right Image: Photo by Angeli Wright, Asheville Citizen Times