Welcome ‘Coast to Coast’ fans

*Bonus content for Joshua P. Warren listeners*

First of all, for regular subscribers, this post follows in the spirit of a great conversation I had with my old friend Joshua P. Warren this week for his show on the Coast to Coast Paranormal Podcast Network, “Strange Things.” Josh has often lent a patient ear to my ramblings on the subject of William Dudley Pelley, but our conversation focused on the quiet process of my research and the oft times uncanny results.

One more incredible episode came to mind after we had wrapped things up and I thought I would share it here. I can only stake my reputation on the claim that it is absolutely true.

By June of 2011, Joshua and I had already tackled several formidable projects in and around Asheville, North Carolina. It was Josh who wrote the local collection of ghost stories “Haunted Asheville” some years before we met, but ghosts had kept crawling out of the woodwork offering up their tales.

We had revisited Zealandia, the estate associated with what is perhaps Asheville best known haunt, Helen’s Bridge. Our further research had uncovered the suicide of the young valet to the estate’s owner, Sir Philip Henry. I visited the site of that death, though a modern house now stands there. I was developing a hunch that the entire mountainside, known as Beaucatcher, was surging with dark energy. I kept digging.

An old resident of the mountain, which looms over downtown Asheville, contacted me rather spontaneously and shared some curious insights. Before 1980, when the enormous “open cut” was blasted out of the mountain for a new section of expressway, the flow of energy atop Beaucatcher was even stronger. She said that weather patterns had changed since the demolition and phenomena such as ball lightning once common along the ridge had stopped. Perhaps the disruption of the physical environment had angered some resident spirits.

There was one remaining estate on Beaucatcher which Joshua and I had not explored and I was becoming more anxious that we should. Ardmion. Even the very name was shrouded in mystery. For the better part of the 20th century it was best known as the Sky Club, and what a grand venue it was!

The Sky Club. Mere mention to Ashevillains of a certain age invites sighs and the upward glance of fond reminiscence. It was the swankiest nightclub in town, with steak dinners, dance bands and liquor by the drink in spite of laws against it. The proprietors were Gus and Emma Adler, one of the most beloved couples of Asheville society. If you spent one evening there you would never forget it.

The Robert Mitchum classic “Thunder Road” features a nightclub scene with sultry-voiced Keely Smith filmed at The Sky Club.

So, as the summer of 2011 rolled along I found myself deep into research on the Sky Club. As well known as the venue was, very little had been written about it or preserved in local historical collections. As I sought to learn more about Gus and Emma a fantastic portrait emerged.

Gus was a wealthy older gent, having made his fortune in the gaming machine business in Chicago. While advertised as “for amusement only” these predecessors of pinball were stock and trade of underworld gambling rings and we can assume Gus was rich on mob money. Emma was a young single mother waitressing in Asheville when she caught Mr. Adler’s eye. They made quite a pair for upwards of two decades.

Their ritzy establishment on Beaucatcher was first known as Old Heidelberg, operating as such throughout the 1930s, until local anti-German sentiment turned ugly and their billboards were bedaubed with swastikas. Someone had missed the part about Gus being jewish. The Sky Club shingle was raised in about 1940. Did William Dudley Pelley ever dine there? Very likely, though I have not seen the proof.

I do know that the touring Casa Loma Orchestra often graced the Sky Club stage. Perhaps some mood music is in order. How about Casa Loma’s ‘This House is Haunted’?

In the spring of 1952 Gus was in the habit of drinking himself to sleep. Late nights in the restaurant where he wore every hat from host to kitchen boss were wearing him out. Gus and Emma’s residence known as Beaucastle was a beautifully remodeled stable house on the property.

One night about the middle of April, Gus staggered from the Sky Club to his bedroom at Beaucastle where he lay awake trying to still his swimming head. He lit one last cigarette.

Someone at the Sky Club saw smoke coming from Beaucastle. The firetrucks arrived and extinguished a smouldering mattress. Gus was found dead on the floor nearby. It appeared as though he had awakened to find his bedclothes on fire and attempted to crawl out but was overwhelmed by the smoke. He was 73 years old. Emma continued the business for many years to come.

Within days of my learning of Gus Adler’s tragic death, I was reading a web forum connected with our local entertainment weekly. Someone had posted with the headline “Asheville Ghosts?” and went on to describe a recent hair-raising experience.

The anonymous author described walking home late one night to the apartment he had recently rented on Beaumont Street and every night-bug suddenly going quiet and a cold chill coming over him. He said the feeling was so eerie that he quickened his pace and hurried down the stairs to his apartment where he stood finishing his cigarette. As he took one last drag he heard a man screaming across the street and further up the mountain.

His description was good enough that I knew exactly where he was, even without a precise address. The street running up Beaucatcher to Helen’s Bridge past the Sky Club is fairly remote and with few houses along that stretch. The screams he described were coming from the direction of Beaucastle. Again, with the death of Gus fresh on my mind and the particular detail from this stranger that he was smoking a cigarette at the time, what else was I to think? He had heard the ghost of Gus Adler crying out from the smoke-filled bedroom in which he died.

I called Joshua and told him my hunch was heating up.

“Get us into the Sky Club!” was his emphatic response.

“Consider it done,” my reply, though I had not the foggiest how I would manage such a thing.

The Sky Club by 2011 was a very upscale private 4-unit condo with a gated driveway. I had been buzzed in while delivering pizza maybe twice in several years time. I suspected I was due for another pizza delivery and that might give us a foot in the door.

The next week I was working at the local pizza parlor when a delivery came up for Beaumont Street. I grinned at the address on the ticket. It was the apartment building described by the fellow in his recent online post. What are the chances I was taking a pizza to the unidentified author? I knew, instinctively, that this was the case.

I cut, boxed and bagged the pizza and hopped in my car. This would be fun.

Asheville in mid-summer is prone to overnight thunderstorms. It was on such a thunderous night in 1936 that young socialite Helen Clevenger was murdered in a downtown hotel, making national headlines. On this particular night in 2011 the clouds had likewise rolled through pregnant with lightning. By the time I turned onto the narrow road climbing the side of Beaucatcher it had been dark for an hour or so and the rain had just let up.

I rolled up in front of the apartment and headlights swiped the house number confirming the address was just as I had suspected. There were, however, two units upstairs and two down. I wasn’t sure how they were numbered, but had that sort of resigned confidence that this series of events was scripted by a higher hand.

I got out of the car and examined numbers tacked on the upstairs doors, 1 and 2. The ticket for the pizza was apartment 4, downstairs. As I reached the bottom step I spotted the ashtray. I looked over and saw the 4 on the door. I felt like I was living in a movie, like this scene was already in the can. I knocked on the door.

A young man of about 30 answered the door with a flashlight. The passing storm had knocked the power out. I handed him his pizza and as he brought out his wallet I asked, “Seen any ghosts lately?” The look on his face told me that he thought he was seeing one that very moment! He was flustered.

“I read your post about the cold chill and the screams. That was you, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, but… how?” He handed me some money.

“There just aren’t many houses up here. I know the area pretty well… and I collect local ghost stories, so yours caught my attention.”

“Wow, okay,” he stammered, still taken off-guard.

I gave him a brief telling of the Gus Adler story and my belief that those screams in the night might have been brought on by his cigarette smoke carried on the wind. This didn’t seem to relax him.

Our encounter over, “Have a good night,” and I trotted up the stairs.

As I reached the street I was grinning, maybe even chuckling to myself, when I saw what I thought was a ghost. A nicely groomed lady, perhaps in her early 60s yet with a youthful glow in her brightly-colored floral dress, stood in the middle of the street with the mist rising around her smiling back at me as our eyes instantly met. I wasn’t afraid, but I felt the “cosmic crackle” as our sweet friend Shelley Wright calls it. I instantly knew something.

“Do you live at the Sky Club?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied, and as soon as she spoke she was mortal again. “The power is out and my garage door opener won’t work and the pull cord is tangled up.” She was still returning my grin, but obviously frustrated. “I called a taxi, but I don’t think they know where they’re going. I walked down here so I could flag him down.”

“Where are you going?”

“To a banquet at the hotel in Biltmore.”

“Hop in. I’ll take you,” and we were on our way. Just that quick.

She called the cab company from my car, “Cancel that call. I found someone else to take me.”

During the course of the next few minutes, I introduced myself as a friend of Joshua P. Warren’s and told her we had just been doing some research on the Sky Club and were hoping to pay a visit. Her name was Linda and she had been a fan of Joshua for years. She had attended his “Pink Lady” lecture at the Grove Park Inn. Matter of fact, she had wanted to get in touch with him because strange things were going on at her condo.

“Consider yourself in touch,” I said, as I pulled up to the curb outside the hotel.

She jotted down her phone number, “Thank you so much! Check with Joshua and give me a call.”

A week later Josh, Shelley and I were having hors d’oeuvres with Linda on her patio at The Sky Club, watching the sun set over the timeless mountain skyline of Asheville.

I dare say that Gus became quite attached to us that night, as he would play an important role in our psychical affairs some 5 years later… but that’s another story. https://www.mixcloud.com/vance-pollock/spirits-and-spectres-and-ghosts-oh-my-riffin-on-asheville-fm-1033-october-20-2016-hour-2/