Welcome to the third installment of our series of blog posts about our region’s weirdest history! If you missed the first two, check out Part I (about some persistent local myths) and Part II (strange animal stories).
This series is inspired in part by storyteller and author Liz Z. Pardue, who will be at Pack Memorial Library from 5:30-6:30pm on March 31 to present Keep NC Weird! The Strange & Macabre History of Our State, a one-hour journey through the strangest history, most eccentric characters, and darkest folklore of the Old North State. If you’ve got an appetite for weird history, we hope you’ll join Liz on Tuesday!
In this third and final installment, we’re sharing bizarre true tales about odd intersections of social changes, spirituality, and experimentation that have had long histories in these mountains.
Asheville’s Anti-Alcohol Era
For a region known for its beer, it might seem pretty weird that WNC’s relationship with booze has been so complex. Long before retired nuclear engineer Oscar Wong kicked off the belle époque of beer in Asheville with the opening of Highland Brewing in 1994, and even longer before the “Beer City, USA” title was bestowed upon these mountains, spirits were a matter of dispute.
A 1906 mass shooting brought local tragedy, racial turmoil—and an excuse for temperance supporters to push for a city-wide referendum banning alcohol.[1] In October 1907, likely instigated in part by the notorious Will Harris’s whiskey-fueled rampage, Asheville became the first city in North Carolina to pass such a measure, paving the way for the entire state to pass statewide prohibition the following spring in May 1908.
These two photos from 1911 show a rally on the then-new West Asheville Bridge in support of alcohol prohibition, featuring the dumping of several barrels and smashing of hundreds of bottles of contraband liquor that had previously been confiscated by local police.
North Carolina, too, was an early adopter, and other states soon followed its example. A decade later, the US Congress passed the 18th Amendment to the Constitution which went into effect in 1920, making it illegal to manufacture, sell or transport intoxicating liquors within the United States. Prohibition ended with the passage of 21st Amendment in 1933, though North Carolina was one of only two states that refused to ratify the repeal.
Meanwhile, people in rural areas still made liquor as boot-leggers, which gave birth to the stock car racing movement and eventually NASCAR. For more on that—including stories of some of Asheville’s more unusual distinctions in NASCAR history—check out our 2024 blog post “High Speeds and High Stakes at the Asheville-Weaverville Speedway.”
For more on beverages then and now both here and throughout the state, check out the North Carolina Craft Beverage Museum,Well Crafted NC, and the Moonshine & Motorsports Trail, in addition to resources here at BCSC.
Spirits of Charity
This move to ban alcohol had, in fact, come largely from women who also had some interest in spirits of another type—the ghostly ones. And we here at the library owe those ladies for our very existence.
In the late 1800s, a trio of high-society women used their social influence to organize the city’s first library. Anna C. Aston, Fanny L. Patton, and Anna B. Chunn started a reading circle in 1876 or 1877 that became a grassroots effort to launch a real library. Traveling through Buncombe County on a one-horse wagon, they collected donations of money and over 700 books which formed the basis for the Asheville Library Association, the predecessor to Pack Memorial Library.
Their efforts didn’t end there. Aston and Patton in particular were also editing the Women’s Edition of the Asheville Daily Citizen and contributing to numerous local charities like the Flower Mission Aid (a precursor to Mission Hospital), the Children’s Home, the local chapter of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, and the local branch for North Carolina’s Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. By stepping into the public eye and advocating for social change, they were taking bold steps in a new direction for women, following a pattern that was taking place throughout the country.
Part of this trend towards empowerment was a growing interest in pairing occultism with scientific experimentation. Spiritualists, for instance, contended that not only did life go on after death, but they could prove it through spirit communication. Not too far a stretch for folks who were witnessing massive leaps in technology and scientific understanding. If telegraphs could transmit messages worldwide, who was to say the next technological breakthrough might not be learning to converse with those beyond the veil?
As Esther Wright writes in her 2021 guest blog post “Friendship, Empowerment, Progress…and Séances,” Anna C. Aston’s personal beliefs included at least an interest in “the greater occult movement, which include mesmerism, spiritualism, magic, psychical research, telepathy, psychometry, and Theosophy,” possibly stemming from her relationship with WCTU founder Frances E. Willard.
Aston shared her thoughts in an article on “Occultism and Psychic Phenomena” in the Asheville Citizen: “The old time prejudice that once consigned all these phenomena along with mesmerism, spiritism, witchery, magic, etc., classed them with the ‘unclean things,’ and styled them ‘black art’—that spirit is fast dying out and giving way to a calm, critical and truth-loving spirit, which gives promise of inspiring revelations.”[2]
It was an optimistic moment, the latter bit of which would be nostalgically remembered in the years to come as the Gay Nineties: new perspectives, new paths for women, and the hope that new knowledge of things previously hidden would lead to a more caring world.
Alas…
New Age Nazis
By the 1920s, a preponderance of fakers and grifters in the spirit communication scene, often taking advantage of mourners grieving lives lost from the Spanish flu and WWI, largely closed the window of scientific respectability on these matters. In Asheville, interest in the occult took a bizarre, malevolent turn in the gap left behind.
The rise of Nazism in the 1920s and 1930s didn’t just take place in Germany. Concerted propaganda efforts also led to a rise in pro-fascist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant, racist, eugenicist, and white supremacist views—the dark side of the Roaring Twenties.[3] And the seeds of that evil sprouted in Asheville—with a supernatural slant.
Asheville’s “New Age Nazi” was a former Hollywood screenwriter named William Dudley Pelley, who claimed a near-death experience in 1928 gave him a cosmic mandate to transform society.
In 1930, he moved to Asheville, where he started a short-lived college on Charlotte Street and a publishing house to spread his metaphysical “Liberation Doctrine” blending reincarnation, “Christian Economics,” predictions of the Second Coming, and scapegoating of Communists, Jews, African Americans, and immigrants.
Publications like Liberation: A Monthly Magazine of Prophecy and Inspiration from Sources above or behind Mortality were shipped out nationwide from an Asheville address (not to be confused with the Liberation magazine that would publish Dr. Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” decades later).
Hitler’s rise to power inspired Pelley to found a militant, uniformed group known as the Silver Legion of America, better known as the Silver Shirts, emulating the Sturmabteilung (“Brown Shirts”). As many as 20,000 Americans across the U.S. joined as members.[4] Pelley even ran an unsuccessful presidential campaign in 1936 as the ”Christian Party” candidate, arguing that his leadership would protect the interests of the ”forgotten man.”[5]
The beginning of World War II spelled the end of the Silver Shirts and made it hard for Hitler supporters like Pelley to continue garnering public favor. In 1940, finding that North Carolina authorities “sought to silence him,” he moved to Indiana, but found it no safer for his propagandizing.[6]
In 1942, he was prosecuted for wartime mass sedition with a 15-year sentence. Upon his release only eight years later, he had a new pitch on ”spiritualism and flying saucers,“ reported the press. ”He has fathered a cult he calls ’Soulcraft,’—a name worthy of the advertising agencies where he might have flourished but for his obsession with bigotry.”[7]
This dark chapter is a sinister stain on Asheville’s past, and a chilling reminder of how easily spiritual fringe movements can be co-opted and weaponized into dangerous extremism.
Court records of Pelley’s sedition trial, his biography, and other resources can be found in the Special Collections reading room as part of a “Literature of Prejudice” collection and in our archives.
The Proto-Hippies
Roll back a few years. Picture yourself in Buncombe County, 1933.
Would you believe that little old Black Mountain, North Carolina was “the very spot where free-love was born and nurtured”? At least, that was the opinion of one Swannanoa family in regard to the experimental liberal arts school Black Mountain College. “All residents of the area were scandalized by this school,” reported Mrs. George O. Barritt to historian Martin Duberman when he was researching the college for his book in the 1970s.[8]
Black Mountain College folks may not have agreed with that characterization, but the school was undoubtedly unusual. It was home in part to foreign refugee students and professors who fled the rise of fascism in Europe, including many who had taught at the famous Bauhaus in Germany, despised by the Nazis. Students, faculty, and staff made decisions together—building and maintaining a working farm[9] and integrating the faculty and student body despite Jim Crow.[10] Over time, it attracted oddball experimenters in all creative fields, both as professors (like avant-garde composer John Cage and futurist architect Buckminster Fuller) and as students (like Neo-Dada collagist Ray Johnson and abstract sculptor Ruth Asawa).
And, like the hippie movement it prefigured, it was full of complexity and contradictions.
BMC has had a long-reaching influence on American culture, yet it lasted barely more than twenty years. It was (as Duberman’s book title reflects) an “experiment in community,” yet dramatic personal conflicts flared up with some regularity. Patriarchal male leaders sometimes held oversized influence, yet women defied gender roles by taking on major roles in building, farming, and more.[11]
Luminaries of twentieth century queer history (and probably many more hidden friends of Dorothy) spent formative years there, yet a faculty member found alone in his car with a man and arrested for “crimes against nature” departed with a shocking lack of community support.[12]
By the height of McCarthyism in 1950s, the FBI was secretly investigating the school, too.[13]
Now fast forward to the ‘60s, after the FBI investigations, after the school’s closure, after its students were scattered to the winds (many to places like San Francisco and New York, where they became involved in counterculture movements).
By the time the term “hippies” came into the mainstream, locals generally considered “the heart of hippieland” to be “far from Asheville.” One high school senior reflected in 1967, “Hippies could succeed in high schools in general but they could not gain ground in Asheville. There’s lots of conformity here.”[14]
Yet by the next decade, reporter Andy Hutchinson considered, “What is a ’hippy’ anyway? If a beard and long hair make one a hippy, then non-hippies are a minority in WNC.”[15]
Learn more by visiting the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center and the Western Regional Archives, State Archives of North Carolina. BCSC and the Black Mountain Library have lots of great books about BMC, too!
Mountain Magic
This cultural convergence of artists, refugees, and students was a key part of what made Black Mountain College special, but it was certainly far from the first time that blending cultures germinated a new way of life in this region.
Western NC places like the Nikwasi Mound, Kituwah Mound and Cowee Mound have long held sacred significance to the Cherokee people.[16] As European settlers and enslaved people began to displace indigenous inhabitants, traditional practices from Native American, African, Scottish, Irish, English, and German roots gave birth to “a uniquely American faith tradition practiced mostly by familial matriarchs,” particularly older women who provided care in areas where formal medicine was hard to come by or distrusted.[17]
For instance, Nancy Ann Ashworth, an early settler of what is now Fairview, would have lived at the intersection of these cultural traditions, and has indeed been remembered in oral tradition as an archetypal ”granny witch.”[18]
Some modern-day practitioners of such traditions identify with the terminology of “Appalachian folk magic” and “granny witchcraft,” including local Wiccan priestess H. Byron Ballard.[19] Her rituals and practices are the result of family tradition (six generations of self-described ”witchery”) as well as Wicca, a modern interpretation of pre-Christian traditions that intersected with cultural movements like feminism and environmentalism in the 1970s.[20]
Modern folk magic practitioners have also exercised civic influence in the heart of Asheville.
In 2006, developer Stewart Coleman purchased a slice of Asheville’s parkland from County Commissioners to build Parkside, a proposed 10-story luxury condo tower. The deal, approved by County Commissioners in just two minutes without public comment, sparked immediate outrage.[21] Critics argued the tower would dwarf the iconic City Hall, and that it violated a 1901 deed from lumberman George Willis Pack, which stipulated the land be “held in trust for the public square.”[22]
However, the most visceral grievance for residents was the fate of a massive, historic “twin” magnolia tree standing directly in front of City Hall.[23] Though Coleman offered to transplant the landmark “twin” tree, arborists warned it would not survive the move. Among the most persistent defenders were Steve Rasmussen and Dixie Deerman, priest and priestess of Coven Oldenwilde, an Asheville-based Wiccan practice. Viewing the tree’s protection as a spiritual mandate, Rasmussen led a petition with over 1,000 signatures demanding the Board of Commissioners rescind the sale.[24]
As legal battles intensified—including a lawsuit from George Pack’s descendants—negotiations stalled.[25] Fearing Coleman might fell the tree under the cover of night to break the spirit of the dissent, Coven Oldenwilde took direct action. In July 2008, they began a 24/7 vigil, camping beneath the magnolia for nearly two months. Tensions peaked on August 6, when Coleman personally delivered a letter to the campsite stating the tree would be cut down in September.[26]
The threat was neutralized weeks later when a Superior Court Judge blocked the development, citing the 1901 deed’s restrictions.[27] The spirit of the protest lived on through art exhibits and a large-scale mural on the Lexington Avenue bridge.[28] Coleman eventually pivoted, transforming his existing building into the popular Pack’s Tavern. Though he later won an appeal, the overwhelming public backlash and his new focus on the restaurant led him to scrap the condo plans permanently.[29]
Stewart Coleman passed away in 2012, and the land remains a quiet part of the downtown landscape. Today, the “twin magnolia” still stands as a centerpiece of Pack Square Park—a testament to a massive community effort and, perhaps, a little bit of magic.
World Gravity Commission
The mountains of Western North Carolina have been cherished and sought out by experimenters and seekers of the spiritual and scientific bent alike. If you lived in the Dix Creek community in the late 1990s, you may have passed a curious sign marking the headquarters of the “World Gravity Commission.” It sounds pretty scientific, and this bucolic suburb of Asheville seems like a mighty odd place for such a research center.
So what on Earth is the World Gravity Commission? In reality, the “commission” was the project of one man, Wayne Smith.
It all began when Smith observed a river appearing to run backwards and reached out to the “Institute of Gravity” headquartered in Bosnia. It turns out this institute was a one-man show and a warehouse full of interesting equipment. This institute was pretty short lived, and when it dissolved, passed the torch on to Wayne.
After spending more than a year observing the behaviors of earthworms, Smith concluded that the worms had something to tell us about gravity. He maintained that the worms were unusually attuned to the Earth’s gravitational forces, and that their insistence on wriggling eastward suggested that the mountains of Western North Carolina were the epicenter of a gravitational anomaly. This, combined with his hypothesis about how space junk on the moon was causing it to move into another gravitational zone, led Smith to conclude that gravity on Earth is a finite resource and that we should all be mindful of our consumption.
Smith had some pretty interesting ideas about gravity, and the conservation thereof. For instance, he says it is important to store heavy objects on lower shelves, and that bowling is a quick way to waste gravity.
The World Gravity Commission seems to be pretty inactive these days, though Smith is still around.
A 1998 article in the Mountain Xpress provides a full overview of Wayne Smith and the Commission.[30]
These are just a few of the stories that we believe speak to Western NC’s eccentricity over its long history, but there are so many more. Are there strange convergences or unusual moments in time that you feel get at the heart of what’s “weird” about our region? Tell us in the comments!
We hope to see you at Keep NC Weird! The Strange & Macabre History of Our State at Pack Memorial Library on Tuesday, March 31, 2026 at 5:30 PM to hear from award-winning storyteller Liz Z. Pardue about the weird North Carolina history she’s collected! Pardue will share more tales from across the Old North State to fill you in on the strangest and spookiest history our state has to offer!
Tuesday, March 31, 5:30 – 6:30pm
Lord Auditorium, Pack Memorial Library, 67 Haywood Street, Asheville
This post is part three in a three-part extension of the presentation “Fictitious ‘Facts’ of Asheville’s Past,” presented by Katherine Cutshall at Nerd Nite Asheville, January 2024, with additions by BCSC staff members Carissa Pfeiffer, Kathy Hill, and Jenny Bowen.
Read the full series:
- Asheville’s Weirdest Facts and Fictions, Part I: Dubious Legends
- Asheville’s Weirdest Facts and Fictions, Part II: True Tales of Eccentric Animals
- Asheville’s Weirdest Facts and Fictions, Part III: Counterculture Curiosities
[1] See Marla Hardee Milling, Wicked Asheville (Charleston: The History Press, 2018) 22-23; Anne Fitten Glenn, Asheville Beer: An Intoxicating History of Mountain Brewing (Charleston: The History Press, 2012), 37-38.
[2] Anna C. Aston, ”Occultism and Psychic Phenomena,” Asheville Citizen, November 28, 1895, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-occultism-and-ps/193057831/
[3] Austin Carter Hall, ”Swastikas and Silver Shirts: The Dawn of American Nazism.” Master‘s thesis, Miami University, 2019, https://etd.ohiolink.edu/acprod/odb_etd/etd/r/1501/10?clear=10&p10_accession_num=miami1564692534498581
[4] Jon Ellison, ”Asheville’s Fascist: William Dudley Pelley’s obscure but infamous Silver Shirt movement lives on in his paper trail,” WNC Magazine, January/February 2018, https://wncmagazine.com/feature/asheville%E2%80%99s_fascist
[5] Scott Beekman, William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005), 113.
[6] Beekman, 135.
[7] Jak Steele, ”Hate, Inc.” Albuqurque Tribune, May 3, 1955, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-albuquerque-tribune-hate-inc-willia/193066727/
[8] Martin Duberman, Black Mountain: An Exploration in Community (New York: E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc: 1972), page 78 and footnote 8 on page 430.
[9] David Silver, The Farm at Black Mountain College (Atelier Éditions and Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 2025)
[10] Micah Wilford Wilkins,” Social Justice at BMC Before the Civil Rights Age: Desegregation, Racial Inclusion, and Racial Equality at BMC,” Journal of Black Mountain College Studies 6 (June 2014), https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/6-17-micah-wilkins/
[11] See David Silver, The Farm at Black Mountain College for an account of “When the College Was Female“ during the war years, Molly Gregory, and other examples. Student Martha King also remembered BMC as “a gust of profound expressively female freedom […] Black Mountain women improvised their clothing, cooked exotic peasant food, tied nursing babies to their waists with Mexican scarves.” Martha King, ”Three Months in 1955: A Memoir of Black Mountain College,” Jacket Magazine 40, 2010, http://jacketmagazine.com/40/king-martha-black-mountain.shtml
[12] Duberman, pages 225-227; See also Emilio Williams, ”Fragments of a Vessel: Notes Towards Further Queer Histories of Black Mountain College,” Journal of Black Mountain College Studies 14 (September 2023), https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/journal/volume-14/williams/
[13] Carmelo Pampillonio & Chava Krivchenia, ”FBI Investigations at BMC,” Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/fbi-investigations-bmc/; ”FBI Investigations,” Politics at Black Mountain College: Digital Exhibition (Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, 2019), https://www.blackmountaincollege.org/politicsdigitalportal/
[14] Linda Nicodemus, ”Hippies Not for Them, Local Teenagers Agree,” Asheville Times, October 16, 1967, page 1, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-asheville-times-hippies-not-for-them/190992710/
[15] Andy Hutchnson, ”’Sportsmen’ Speak Out,” The Asheville Citizen-Times, November 6, 1977, page 12B, https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-asheville-times-hippie-vs-hunter-dra/190993301/
[16] Mandy Choie, ”Mississippian Period Archaeology— Local Mounds & WCU Archaeology,“ Hunter Library Research Guides, https://researchguides.wcu.edu/missarch
[17] Emma Cieslik, ”Appalachian Folk Magic: Generations of ’Granny Witchcraft‘ and Spiritual Work,” Folklife Magazine, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, August 15, 2023, https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/appalachian-folk-magic
[18] Trevor Freeman, ”Recap and Notes for Ashworth Cemetery and Sherrill‘s Inn,“ Asheville Museum of History, September 7, 2023, https://www.ashevillehistory.org/ashworth-cemetery-and-sherrills-inn/
[19] Casey Kelley, ” The deep roots of witchcraft in Appalachia,” Overlooked in Appalachia, May 26, 2021, https://www.overlookedinappalachia.org/post/the-deep-roots-of-witchcraft-in-appalachia
[20] Michael Howard, ”Modern Wicca: A History from Gerald Gardner to the Present” (Woodbury Minn.: Llewellyn Publications, 2010), 3. Accessed via Archive.org, https://archive.org/details/modernwiccahisto0000howa/page/2/
[21] Mark Barrett, ”Parkland Sale Questioned,“ Asheville Citizen-Times, July 7, 2007, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-20070707actp/193080490/
[22] Max Hunt, ”A mystery in-deed: Who owns Pack Square?“ Mountain Xpress, September 15, 2017, https://mountainx.com/news/a-mystery-in-deed-who-owns-pack-square/
[23] Mark Barrett, ”Sale: Part of Park Sold,“ Asheville Citizen-Times, July 7, 2007, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-20070707actp/193586872/
[24] David Forbes, ”Let’s make a deal: Commissioners urge city to make Parkside land swap,“ Mountain Xpress, Vol. 14, No. 49,July 2-8, 2008, page 16; Mark Barrett, ”Panel Supports Condo Plan,“ Asheville Citizen-Times, February 9, 2008, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-20080209actp/193587747/
[25] Josh Boatwright, ”Tree Activists Insist on City Intervention,“ Asheville Citizen-Times, August 8, 2008, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-20080808actp/193080671/
[26] Brian Postelle, ”Magnolia on Notice; Activists Gear Up for Civil Disobedience,” Mountain Xpress, Vol. 15, No. 3, August 13-19, 2008, page 22.
[27] Mark Barrett and Clarke Morrison, “Judge Puts Brakes of Park Deal,“ Asheville Citizen-Times, August 29, 2008, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-20080829actp/193611586/
[28] Carol Motsinger, ”Under the Magnolia: Exhibit Celebrates Tree, Documents Movement to Save It,“ Asheville Citizen-Times, April 19, 2009, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-20090419actp/193612647/
[29] Jordan Schrader, ”Land Ruling Favors Builder,“ Asheville Citizen-Times, November 4, 2009, https://www.newspapers.com/article/asheville-citizen-times-20091104actp/193613495/
[30] Jill Ingram, ”Weight of the World: WNC Draws World Gravity Commission,” Mountain Xpress, Vol. 4, No. 34, April 1-7, 1998, page 7. …Catch that date? The editors assure us readers, ”We didn’t make this up—although a few stories in this April Fool’s Day issue may force you to question what you read.” We think it’s always a good idea to cast a critical eye on any ”news of the weird”—and to consider that even real organizations might traffic in a bit of satire sometimes!
