Post EVP Session Experience

Thursday night, October 8. I find myself hunkered down under a metal pavilion with Jeremy, the dull red lights of three separate voice recorders our only light. Well, that and the retina-shattering flashlight that Jeremy insists on sparking up every few minutes. That's right, folks, we're on a ghost hunt!

In the ongoing investigation into the 1928 murder of Deputy Claude Green and the ghost stories that surround his death, I decided to explore the more paranormal side of the story. Jeremy and I walked down to the old Balsam Community Center from his house and sat up our voice recorders and cameras. Unfortunately, environmental noise ranging from crickets and dogs to a higher than expected amount of traffic made our recording almost unusable. We walked back to Jeremy's house and relaxed for a few minutes, giving the audio recordings a cursory listen, glancing at the handful of images that we took, and discussing our next steps.

I left Jeremy's house an hour or so after we had finished our session, and something odd and startling happened to me. Jeremy's driveway is gravel and lined on both sides with heavy brush. At the end of the driveway, you must negotiate a very sharp turn to get back on the paved road. In my large truck, it usually requires some wiggling to avoid driving onto the railroad tracks on the other side of the road. As I came to the end of the driveway, with my windows up and my iPod playing through the trucks stereo, I was shocked to hear a loud screeching sound coming from somewhere in the woods up the hill and to my left. I can only describe it as the compressed screech of a train braking violently; metallic and harsh and sharp. It only lasted a second or so, but as soon as it was over, my stereo went silent. I was, if I'm being honest, terrified. I don't think I even realized that my music had cut out as I whipped the car onto the pavement. My only thought was that I was going to have to back up to make the curve, and the thought of looking back, looking into that dark forest behind me, was almost paralyzing. I dropped the truck into reverse and backed up blindly, and then threw it back into drive and onto the pavement. The entire drive home was full of dread, absolutely unwilling to look behind me.

I have no explanation for what I heard or felt that night. It's been a long time since anything paranormal has happened to me and I feel that I'm still processing the event. In some ways, it sounds like a UFO experience more than a ghost story. And no, no missing time for me. I'm interested if anyone has had a similar experience. Share in the comments or shoot me an email.

TAPS/Harrah's Casino investigation

Not much to report, other than the bits that I've heard via social media, but I thought I would share what I know.

On Monday, October 25th, Harrah's Casino in Cherokee hosted a meet and greet with a couple of the guys from Ghost Hunters. After the event, the Ghost Hunters and a few guests journeyed over the mountain and did an investigation of the Balsam Mountain Inn. I don't have any details on the investigation, and I'm not sure if they filmed it to make an episode, but Harrah's twitter feed did post a fairly intriguing photo of a figure in a window. The photo purports to show the infamous "Blue Lady". 

 Again, not a lot of details, but it's exciting that some of the big names in the paranormal world have taken an interest in our little area.

More tales from the Balsam Mountain Inn

     In doing some research, I stumbled across another book that mentions the strange occurrences reported at the Balsam Mountain Inn. Ghostly Encounters: True Stories of America's Haunted Inns and Hotels was written by Frances Kermeen. Kermeen is the owner of Myrtle's Plantation in Louisiana, which is touted as one of America's most haunted locations. The full book is available on Amazon.
     The brief chapter on the Inn includes a bit of the history of the structure and the surrounding town, and speaks briefly of the restoration of the Inn in the 1990's. Reports from guests of footsteps and jiggling doorknobs are cited. The most interesting aspect of the article is something I've never heard before. Back in the years when the Inn was a seasonal operation, the employees spoke of how they would spend hours buttoning up the building for the winter, tidying up, turning off lights and closing the windows and doors. They would leave the dark structure, say their goodbyes for the winter and then trek down the hill. Once at the bottom of the drive, they would be shocked to look back at the grand old hotel only to find all of the lights burning brightly. They would return, extinguish the lights, and leave again. By the time they had gotten to the bottom of the hill, the lights would be on again.
     This is an interesting report, but little additional detail is given, so it's hard to investigate further. It's a fascinating tale, however, that points to a long history of the paranormal at the Inn.

Update on the Claud Green Murder Research

     I've been doing a little follow up research on the murder of Deputy Sheriff Claud Green in 1928. Some attribute the unexplained phenomenon at the Balsam Mountain Inn to this tragic occurrence. We know that Deputy Green was shot on the grounds of the old Balsam School (now the Balsam Community Center) during a community dinner. We know that a man named Ed Smathers was arrested and convicted of the murder, but only spent a short amount of time incarcerated before being released. Several questions remained unanswered for me, most notably: What connection would this murder have to the experiences at the Inn? Was Green taken to the Inn before he expired?

     I began my investigation by searching for newspaper reports from the time period. My first attempts were stymied by bad luck. The archive of newspapers in Haywood County for the years of 1927 to 1931, including the crucial year of 1928, were lost in a fire that destroyed the old Haywood County library. Other archives of local papers were either missing or damaged beyond use.

     I made my way to the Jackson County library and hit the jackpot. The September 6, 1928 edition of the Jackson County Herald opens with the headline "SLAYERS OF GREEN STILL AT LARGE." The article goes in to significantly more detail about the events of August 31, and creates even more mystery. I'll attempt to condense and clarify this information as much as I can. I think the easiest way to do this is probably a simple timeline. I'll put my notes and comments in italics.

Friday, 31 August 1928: During a box dinner and play at the old Balsam School, Sheriff's Deputy Claud Green is shot seven times with two different guns. Only one eyewitness is noted in the reports, a 14 year old student from the school. His name is never mentioned again. The Jackson County Herald reports two shooters.

Thursday, 6 September 1928: Alney Mehaffey is arrested for the murder of Green. Mehaffey is a 24 year old escaped convict. 

Tuesday, 11 September 1928: Ed Smathers is arrested for the murder of Green. Smathers is a 35 year old escaped convict¹. He is asleep in a friends home when deputies Strike him in the head, knocking him to the ground². He is taken to a local doctor for medical care before being imprisoned.

     ¹Smathers was convicted in 1926 for manslaughter after claiming self-defense. He is sentenced to 5-7 years, but escapes after just six months.

     ²It is almost definite from reading the reports that a relative of Smathers turned him in for the reward. He is lured to a friends home with the pretext of meeting this relative and procuring some liquor. It is here that he is arrested after nodding off at the kitchen table.  

16 October 1928: The trial of Edward Smathers begins. He stands accused of first degree murder. Smathers' defense team argues that his trial should be delayed until his accused accomplice, Alney Mehaffey is indicted. The prosecutors acknowledge that the case against Mehaffey is so weak that he will probably never be indicted unless new facts are brought up in the trial of Smathers³. The defense then argues that a fair trial in Jackson County is nearly impossible. To alleviate this concern, the judge orders that the jurors should be pulled from the eastern part of Haywood County⁴.

     ³I have yet to find any further mention of Mehaffey, either in the papers or online, other than a census record from 1940 and a few pages about his burial. If this is the same Mehaffey, he passed away in 1985.

     ⁴This is a distance of only 30 miles or so; the idea that the people in this area wouldn't have heard of the murder of a policeman seems ludicrous. 

18 October 1928: A witness in the trial testifies that she heard Smathers confess to his wife his role in the death of Claud Smathers, and further implicates Alney Mehaffey in the death. She quotes Smathers as saying, "I shot Claud Green, but I had to do it." The character of the witness is called into question, and it is noted in court that she has repeatedly denied that Smathers ever made the admission that she is testifying to⁵.
     Smathers has a comprehensive alibi; several people testify on his behalf as to his whereabouts on the night of the murder. School children that were present on the night of the shooting claim that they believe that Smathers was at the scene, but none of them will testify that it was definitely him.

     ⁵The story gets murky here. To paraphrase, the witness testifies that she overhears Smathers admitting to the murder to his wife. Smathers goes on to explain what happened, and that Deputy Green had attempted to search a man on the Balsam School grounds. She never names this man. A scuffle ensues, and another man fires at Deputy Green. At this point, the man involved in the scuffle opens fire as well. She ends her testimony by saying that she also overheard Smathers telling his wife that he didn't kill Green and that she should believe him no matter what she hears. This testimony is all over the place, and makes little sense. This could be chalked up to poor reporting by the newspaper, or it could simply be an untrustworthy witness. It's important to note, however, that this is one of the only witnesses that is mentioned by the paper.

25 October 1928: Smathers is convicted of second degree murder and sentenced to 20-25 years in prison. The jury is concerned that there are no eyewitnesses and that the case is entirely cicumstantial.

Beyond this date, I don't have a lot of solid information. There are two interesting tidbits, however. It is known that Smathers only served a short portion of his sentence before being released and moving west. This seems strange, considering that he had been convicted of murdering a police officer, and that he was an escaped convict when he was apprehended. This doesn't seem like the type of prisoner who gets an early release. 
Secondly, there is a story within the Smathers family that seems to hint at a cover-up. According to the tale, Smathers sent a letter from the prison to his cousin George that said, "If you don't get me out of here, I'm coming with the truth." Was Smathers taking the fall for someone? According to this story, most locals understood that it was in fact George Smathers, and not Ed, who had murdered Deputy Green.

So what does this have to do with ghosts? If some theories are to be believed, a spirit may become stuck if there is some great unsettled tragedy or a wrong to be righted. Does Deputy Green still hang around because he feels that Smathers got off too easy, or is he still looking for the real killer?

 

Balsam Mountain Inn guest experiences

     I'm going to try to collect here some of the experiences that have been reported by guests at the Balsam Mountain Inn. Most of these are culled from various websites so I can't really vouch for the veracity of any of them. I think it's still a helpful exercise to simply compare stories and try to get an idea of any "hot spots" within the Inn and to look for patterns within the experiences.

A guest in room 109 was awakened by the senstation of someone grabbing her foot.

Two guests in room 332 were on the porch looking up at the building when a shadow crossed by the window to their (supposedly unoccupied) room. Both guests reported seeing shadows in the room later that night, as well as hearing whispering voices. They were roused from their sleep at around 5 am by the sound of knocking, followed by more anomalous whispering.

A female guest woke to see a man in overalls looking though a suitcase at the foot of the bed. She assumed it to be her husband, but quickly realized that he was still in bed with her. She closed her eyes, and when she reopened them, the strange figure was gone.

     Above reports collected from Ghosts of America.

Haunted Places notes that two rooms in the Inn seem to be haunted: 205 and 207. Unexplained footsteps, jiggling doorknobs and other unexplained noises are reported. No personal experiences are noted.

     Haunted Places

In a 2009 interview with The State, the former innkeepers specified room 205 as the focal point of the haunting, and even give a name to the spirit that lingers there: Henry. It's also noted in the brief interview that a crew from The Travel Channel had been at the In, filming a segment of the paranormal happenings¹. One guests' experiences are related: A woman sleeping in the room awoke to find her husband rubbing her back. She turned to thank him, and then realized that he was sound asleep in the bed beside her.

     The State: Rooms with a Boo

Sheila Turnage notes room 205 again in her book Haunted Inns of the Southeast. A jiggled doorknob is again mentioned, as is a window being opened as guests slept in the room.
   
     Haunted Inns of the Southeast on Amazon

So this brief look at some publicly available experiences give us some interesting things to think about. Room 205 is an obvious starting point, and the name Henry is also an interesting tidbit. Without sounding mean, some of the stories on-line seem to be written by ninth graders. It's tempting to just dismiss some of this offhand, but I want to examine them as fully as I can. Some things (footsteps, whispering) are pretty easy to explain in a 100 year old Inn with paper thin walls. Some things are more mysterious. Hopefully this overview of reports can get us moving in the right direction, and provide a starting point for more serious research.

Notes:
1: The Travel Channel spot mentioned in the interview is episode 8 of a show called Weird Travels, which ended its run in 2006. The episode is called "Haunted Hotels: Where Darkness Dwells." I've yet to find a copy of this, but when I do, I'll review it here.

My Balsam Mountain Inn experience

     I worked as a cook at the Balsam Mountain Inn for a couple of years, and I heard all of the stories from the other employees of strange occurrences, unexplained footsteps, all of the typical hallmarks of a haunted space. I hope to delve into some of those in the future, but for now I want to talk about my own experiences. Most are fairly low key and I assume all of them could be explained away easily enough. There are a few instances that I simply can't rationalize away, but I understand if you, dear reader, disagree with me.
   

     Firstly, I'd like to address a big issue: The Inn has a history, a certain gloss of the supernatural attached to it, and that is bound to color the perceptions of anyone who is aware of it. It also looks the part; like a miniature Overlook Hotel from The Shining, with creaky wooden floors, wavy glass in the windows and an overabundance of shadows. My own personal experience with the Inn also alters my perception of it; my first time in the building was an illegal entry through an unlocked window with friends and a Ouija board when the Inn was boarded up and unused. (I'll talk about that when I'm sure the statute of limitations has expired.) All of these things modulate the way that I react to and interact with the space, and I understand that. I guess what I'm trying to say is that the building itself might make one believe in ghosts.
   
     So, here's the easy to explain stuff: Footsteps. Sometimes near, sometimes far away and loud, but footsteps were very common. Many mornings as I sat the kitchen up alone in preparation for breakfast, I would hear someone crossing the large dining room. I would pop my head out to explain our breakfast hours only to be greeted by an empty room. The entrance to the dining room had an infrared door alarm that sounded a chime in the kitchen. This was tripped on many occasions without an obvious source, and many footsteps were heard in the dining room without the alarm being triggered.
   
     There was also that odd feeling of being watched, which undoubtedly has many potential causes. The odd thing about the Inn was that the feeling would come and go. Some nights, the place felt light and airy, like any other building. But other times there was an oppressiveness to it, a sense of foreboding that made the place see darker than it really was. And this feeling wasn't dependent on the staff; some nights I would work alone and feel just fine. Other nights with a full staff present and the whole building seemed to be watching you.

     More difficult to explain was the situation with the gas stoves. One more than one occasion, a cook would walk to the stove only to find an eye turned on, but not lit. I assume that some rational explanation could be found for this, but it seems unlikely. The control knobs were old and difficult to turn, and this normally happened quickly. My experience was this: I walked from the stove to the sink to dump out some water. When I returned to the stove seconds later, one eye had been turned on fully; the smell of gas was immediately evident. Could I have somehow bumped the knob and turned the gas on? Perhaps. But in two years of cooking, I had never done that before and I never did it again. Similar experiences happened to the other cooks, and frequently in situations where no one was using the stove.

     The last experience that I will mention is probably the most perplexing. To understand the story, I'll need to explain the layout, and that's probably easiest with a diagram. When the incident occurred, I was standing in the kitchen, talking to the head chef. It was early in the evening on a fairly slow night. The chef had his back to the walk-in cooler, I was facing him and could see over his shoulder and had a clear view of the short hall that connects the laundry room to our dry storage room.

     As we talked, I saw a person cross in front of the cooler door, as if they were walking from the laundry room into dry storage. There is an exterior entrance into the laundry room, but dry storage has only windows and is several feet off the ground. My initial thought was not of the paranormal. I assumed that someone had simply walked in the laundry room and slipped into storage. I interrupted the chef to explain that someone was in dry storage. Again, there was no thought of anything paranormal, no weird vibes or anything. There was a person, and they weren't supposed to be there. The chef and I walked into storage quickly to find an empty room. No windows were open, nothing was out of place.  Whoever I had seen had simply walked into the room and vanished. I tried to explain what the person looked like to the chef and other cooks, but there was nothing that really distinguished him. It was a man, but beyond that I had nothing. The whole sighting had lasted maybe two seconds, but it was absolutely real to me. Can that be explained? Sure. I had some sort of hallucination, maybe a visual disturbance. Does that seem probable? I suppose it's just as likely as me having seen a ghost, but the clarity and absolute realness of what I saw still makes me wonder.

     
    

Balsam Mountain Inn backstory

     If you live in this area long enough and talk to the right people, you'll eventually hear stories about the supposed haunting at the Balsam Mountain Inn. Guests relate stories of footsteps, covers being pulled from their bed, mysterious shadows with no discernible source. Employees of the historic building also have tales of lights that are turned off by unseen hands, items thrown in empty rooms, even apparitions. I'll be examining some of these stories in detail in later posts, but I want to take a minute to discuss the history of the Inn, and the potential source of the haunting.

Photo by W. Hill

     The Balsam Mountain Inn was opened in 1908 and served the well-to-do tourists who came to the area in search of cool summer days, clean air, and quiet. Built by Joseph Kenney and Walter Christy of Athens, Georgia, the Inn was a grand destination in the heart of the Smokey Mountains. But when the passenger train service to the area ended in the late 1940's, the Inn began a slow decline into disrepair. By the end of the 80's, the Inn was only open seasonally, and served very few guests. A restoration by a passionate innkeeper began in the 90's, and the Inn is again a vibrant destination in western North Carolina.¹

     So with this long history, there are obviously stories to be told. But is there a source for the allegations of a haunting, some trauma or horror hidden beneath the fresh paint and well-varnished floors? Most stories elude to a shooting on the property, with only a vague idea of the time frame in which this murder may have occurred. In general though, the tale goes like this:

     Sometime in years past, the community of Balsam was holding a picnic, celebrating the warm, long days of summer. One of the local deputies was in attendance, enjoying the hospitality and friendship of this small mountain community, when he was shot by some long-forgotten villain. The deputy was carried inside, but died in one of the rooms before medical assistance could arrive. His spirit, tied forever to this place, is now one of several ghosts seen on the property.

     So is there any truth to this? Surprisingly, there is. On Friday, August 31 (or Saturday, September 1, depending on the source) of 1928, Deputy Sheriff Claud Green of the Jackson County Sheriffs Office, was shot and killed during a box supper at the Balsam School, which lies at the foot of the hill below the Inn and is now used as the Balsam Community Center. His attacker, a man named Ed Smathers, used two separate weapons to shoot the deputy, and was later convicted of Second Degree Murder. He served only a short sentence before being released and moving west.^2,3  However, the family of Ed Smathers has their own version of events, one in which Ed was not the true killer, and that a cousin of Ed's had actually pulled the trigger that ended Green's life.⁴

 

Deputy Sheriff Claud Green

     I can't find much else about the death of Deputy Green. Did he, as the legend insists, make his way to the Inn before passing? It's unclear. I've begun some research into this, but it's hard to find historical accounts from the time period. Green is buried in the Parris Cemetery in Dillsboro, NC⁵, but does his spirit still roam the halls of the Balsam Mountain Inn? Did his traumatic death somehow stain the grand old hotel, causing countless unexplained encounters? Guests have spoken of a shadowy man in a hat lurking on the second floor porch. Are they seeing Deputy Sheriff Green searching for peace? Is he still trying to find justice, more than 80 years after his death?

Sources and Notes:

1: A Brief History of the Balsam Mountain Inn
2: Jackson County Fallen Officers
3: Officer Down Memorial Page
4: Smathers Family Legend
5: Claud Green's cemetery record
Note: Deputy Green's first name is spelled either Claude or Claud depending on the source. I've chosen the less common spelling of Claud because that is what is on his tombstone.