The Past is Never Dead
Pelley’s Asheville in Fiction
Asheville serves as the setting for a great many novels. A few of them have Pelley references. Some capture paranormal elements. At least one Nazi spy thriller claims to be based on a true story.
As an exercise in bibliography building, here are a few examples.
David Schulman was one of the first Asheville locals I ever discussed Pelley with. I believe a call to the local preservation society provided me with his name and number in the early ‘90s. He told me the location of the Galahad College building and described Pelley as a “charismatic kook.”
His book “The Past is Never Dead” features Pelley and can be had for less than $10 delivered from the usual used book vendors. I gave my copy away years ago, but seem to recall that it was a quick and fairly amusing read.
It must have been 2005 when I heard about Ian Feldman’s book “The Sky Club.” In the press release he states that the embryo of his story was the notebooks kept by his mother while she was an undercover agent for the FBI in Asheville leading up to World War 2. I attended a book signing and asked him if the story was inspired by the case of Vera de Vries Furth, a German émigré who allegedly operated a radio receiver/transmitter on Town Mountain. He seemed surprised to hear her name. Either the story about his mom’s notebooks was a bluff or he realized that someone else was privy to inside information. My informant was a man who had worked on her house, quietly confirmed with no further details by a retired FBI agent working locally at that time.
The book trails off into a lesbian love story and I quit reading about three-quarters of the way through.
It is interesting that the FBI files on Pelley’s Asheville operations, which I only read years later, also seem preoccupied with radio receivers. The local Pelleyites were reportedly interested in maximizing their shortwave signals in order to get the news from Germany. This would make a better story than Feldman’s.
The real Sky Club, name and likeness used for Feldman’s novel, is at the center of one of the most sensational paranormal investigations I have ever been a part of. See https://archvillain.substack.com/p/welcome-coast-to-coast-fans
Joshua P. Warren is the author of “The Evil in Asheville.”
Assuming that Feldman's claims about his mom's activities are true, why they hell would you write a fictional treatment? Massive swastika on the cover of his novel notwithstanding, I would think an actual history of what occurred would have more drawing power -- especially among locals.