by stormbreath
crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
Hello Parawatch. The case that I'm here to cover today is one that I've known about for years, and while I acknowledged that there could certainly be a supernatural element to it, was never one that I thought had enough evidence for a write-up. However, I was contacted by someone with a close connection to the case, and she shared some details with me that make me convinced that there is something supernatural at play. She has asked me to do the write-up that I would have done before she contacted me, so everyone would have appropriate context for her to make a public announcement on the case.
The town of [] lies in the [location]
The most notable thing about [] — at least for this particular case — is a strange behavior of some of the women who lived there. As the story goes, the women of Blueridge were known for (seemingly) dropping their entire lives and running off into the woods. These women were almost always well-known in the town, and well-established. Almost all of them were married, many with children, and yet they consistently dropped everything and ran off into the woods.
The story plays out the same way most of the time. Everything seems perfectly fine, with those close to the woman in question not finding anything unusual about her behavior, until one day when she abruptly flees. Sometimes, she flees in the middle of doing something — leaving pots boiling on the stove or making a mad dash out of her place of work. Other times, the decision to leave is more calculated, with the woman simply slipping out of the house in the middle of the night. In the most extreme cases, she stops mid-conversation and runs for her life.
In some cases, she will make preparations for a hiking trip, either packing or purchasing outdoor gear. She will then head to the nearby Blue Ridge Mountains and begin an ascent of a mountain with no less than five thousand feet of elevation. She will attempt to avoid interaction with anyone, keeping all conversations to a minimum.
Usually, she will sometimes ask those around her if they can hear a "roaring" or "howling". Invariably, of course, those asked universally cannot. Several [victims] have also remarked on a strange compulsion to "flee to hills".
It isn't known what happens to them after they reach the summit of the mountain, or even if they really do. The trail stops abruptly there. None have ever been seen again.
crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
The Blueridge case has always struck me as unusual, but I felt that a mundane explanation of some kind was more plausible. I felt that it was more likely that the women of Blueridge were suffering from an unusual form of mass psychogenic illness, potentially excacerbated by the inhabitants (especially the men) of the town. A supernatural explanation — especially given some of the particular details, which I will get into later — was possible, but not strong enough for me to want to cover a proper write-up.
I think that town culture is one of the best ways to get into the case. Everyone in the Falsename County area knew about the women of Blueridge. The widely acknowledged way of discussing what had happened was to simply say "she just ran off one day". Since (except for some incidents in 19XX and 2005) it was only ever understood to affect wives, women in the area often had anxieties about marriage, with some refusing to wed out of superstition.
The local response to these cases, whenever they did happen, was less than stellar. After the first few cases of the affected "running off" and the failure to recover their bodies, it began widely regarded in the town that those had run off would never be found again. This attitude significantly hampered any efforts by local police to find the missing, with most search attempts lasting only a few days, and canvassing a small area. In some instances, there wasn't any attempt at looking for her at all — everyone just accepted the notion that she had run off of her own accord, and there wasn’t any point in looking.
Some even believed that the women who had ran off were actually still alive. This was generally held to be doubtful — the idea of a mother abandoning her husband and children was so unthinkable that few could imagine the affected being alive. This belief was most commonly circulated by close relatives of the missing.
This was one of the major reasons why I did not feel confident enough in the notion the case was supernatural in nature. I felt that the most mysterious elements of the case — such as the apparent lack of warning or that the bodies where never found — could be adequately explained by the community reaction, particularly that of the police. It always struck me as a case that was not investigated properly, with some kind of potential cover-up. The fact that the entire community seemed to be in agreement about what was happening made me think that superstition had gotten the best of everyone — nobody was looking just because they didn't think it would work, and ultimately they just didn't care.
Further, a body not being recovered is never unusual in itself. I have talked about this several times before on this forum, but to go missing in the woods might as well be considered a form of burial. It is so difficult to find a body in the woods. This case only began to look suspicious in the aggregate, but a lack of enthusiastic searching meant that finding a body would only be less likely than usual.
crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
block going over the historical murders
The above represents the first, more historical period of the disappearances. A gap of several decades would seperate all cases, and when they returned the disappearances seemed to operate on an entirely different set of rules. Some in the true crime community go so far as to treat them as entirely seperate cases. However, in light of what I have been disclosed, I can confidently state they are linked.
The historical cases begin with the 19XX disappearance 0f Mi1fred
crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
Beginning in 19XX, this case begins to revolve around a promiment [] family: the Ashmores. Having originally settled in [] in year, the second matriarch of the family (name her) Ashmore was one of the earliest women to run off. However, the family would have no notable involvement with the case further, with her husband, Charles Alexander Ashmore, not being involved in the group disappearance of the Stag Lodge.
Make this less Kyron Horman — save that for later
However, in 1983, Greta Ashmore, the wife of Charles Alexander Ashmore III became the first example of the [] phenomena in blank decades. On the morning of her disappearance, she drove her three children — twelve-year-old Charles Alexander Ashmore IV and nine-year-old middle brother to school. She then drove around [] doing errands with her youngest child, two-year-old youngest brother. However, around noon she called Charles III at his office and insisted that he watch youngest for the rest of the day. Charles III, whose children were frequently seen at the office, accepted.
Greta arrived to the lobby of Charles's office and thanked him profusely for agreeing to to take their youngest on short notice. Charles asked Greta where she was going, and when she would be back — neither of which she was able to answer. She told him she thought she might be gone overnight, but couldn't say for sure — she just needed to get out of the city, but it was nothing to worry about. She'd talk about it later.
block going over the ashmore murders
That is, to the best of my ability, a summary of the case as it is currently publicly understood. And now, I turn you over to Erica.L.Ashmore.
Erica.L.Ashmore 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
My name is Erica Lynne Ashmore. When I was six years old, my father, Charles Alex Ashmore IV murdered my mother, Jenny Ashmore. When I was eighteen years old, he murdered my stepmother Xóchitl Ashmore-Cruz, who had raised me like her own. Chandler. He shot himself in the head late last year.
In the aftermath of his death, I have been going through his belongings. I was his eldest child and the only one above the age of 18, so I've taken on full responsibility for the estate. I've found some very worrying things in this process, and I need to tell someone.
What I am about to tell you is rather absurd, which is why I am here. Parawatch is one of the only places that I think will actually believe me. There's no point in going to the authorities — everyone who was guilty here is dead — and I doubt mainstream media will take this seriously. I think that this site, however, will hear me out.
I want to make something very clear up front here, before I get into anything else: I know how my dad and my uncles and everyone else was doing this. I know exactly what they were doing, and while I haven't tried, I'm fairly confident I could do it myself. But I don't think this is something that anyone should know about, even myself. I've discussed this with crewtime and he has told me that he'd be afraid the Parawatch community would try to replicate it for themselves, so I should keep any details as minimal as possible.
I WILL NOT RESPOND TO ANY CLARIFYING QUESTIONS ABOUT HOW TO DO THIS. I WILL BLOCK YOU IF YOU DM ME ABOUT THIS. I WILL NOT CLARIFY AS TO THE NATURE OF THE HOWLING.
Erica.L.Ashmore 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
They wouldn't even look for us, because the entire town had gotten it in their head that this was just something that the women did around here. That they were just too flighty, or they couldn't hack it. That they were all possessed by a will to run and never return.
….
The one thing I will share: this all revolves around a painting.
Above are Wanderer above the Sea of Fog by Caspar David Friedrich and And She Never Returned by Alfonso Simonetti, two paintings which I feel resemble the painting in question. I also think that it is similar to Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth. I had a picture of that here too, but crewtime told me there's some kind of image policy that means I can't use it. I will not be giving any more detail on the contents of the painting than these two references.
A victim must look at the painting for the howling to begin. There is much more to it than this, but this is the only sign a victim will recieve, so it is the only point I am disclosing. Something has to be done to you — outside of your awareness — that then causes you to hear the howling the next time you look at the painting. Most people will never hear anything, no matter how long they look at it.
As far as I am aware, the painting is unique. I am entirely unsure if it matters that it is this painting specifically, or if any painting could work. I have some reason to believe that it does not, so I will not be disclosing anything more about how this is done.
Erica.L.Ashmore 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
Everything that follows from here has been directly copied from what my aunt sent me. I have excised a few points where I was worried about giving too much away. — ELA
I'm Helena. In 2015 I survived the howling by throwing my husband to it instead. This is my story.
Yeah. He didn't hear the howling at first, and I don't think he heard it. Not until the end.
I began to hear the howling a few days later. It was subtle at first, but that night as I was trying to go to sleep it was all I could hear. I couldn't sleep at all, and I remember sitting there in bed staring at Brock trying to figure out why I could hear this and he couldn't. And I can't explain it, but as I sat there I began to realize that something was hunting me. That something was coming and that I needed to run.
It was obvious, though. They used to say that the girls in this town would "just run off" into the woods and vanish. That they couldn't hack it, something about this town just made them weak, or that there was something in the woods that was calling them in. But that wasn't really lining up for me anymore. Brock's mother went missing. His sister-in-law went missing. Some girl that his brother had been rejected by went missing, then his brother. And those were the only cases of someone "running off" that had happened in the last seventy years.
The common thread wasn't this town, or the women.
I woke Brock up with a gun at three in the morning. I told him that I knew he had done something to me and that he was going to see it through. I couldn't know what he had done to me, or what was going to happen next, but I got the feeling that he didn't quite know either. I think that he did it this way because he was a coward. Not because he thought he could get away with it this way, but because he didn't have the balls to do it with his own hands.
To his credit, he admitted I was right.
I told him to get up, and to show me how he did this to me. In exact detail. So I could do it to him. Or I would shoot him on the spot, and then run for it. I could already hear the howling, after all. I had to do that anyway. He thought about it for a while, and then folded. He admitted my argument, and got up.
⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻
I asked him if he could hear the howling. He told me not yet, and I told him it was time to get going. We got in the car together. I let him drive, and kept the gun on him the whole time.
The first thing I asked him was why he did it. He told me that he had thought he could convince me to have kids, but it hadn't worked. I laughed in his face and asked why he thought that meant that he needed to kill me. He wouldn't have to pay child support in the end. He told me the men in his family didn't get divorced. It wasn't proper or upstanding.
...
I can't even begin to describe it. It was like the horizon just opened up, and became infinite. But it wasn't quite like that — I could still see things to the left and right, but it still felt like an endless horizon with no end in either direction. And it was close, frighteningly close. But still the same distance that the horizon would be. It was loud. Incredibly loud, roaring at the two of us.
I grabbed him and flung him towards the horizon. I didn't get him very hard — just enough to knock him off his feet, really — but as soon as he didn't have two feet on the ground, he flew away, right into the sky, at the part of the horizon that had opened up. He was so small as he went out, and then it closed up around him. I could hear him screaming for miles, it felt like. The howling stopped at once, as soon as he did.
And I was just left there on that mountain top. The howling was over and the sky closed back up. I've never heard it again. I sat there for an hour, trying to figure out what to do next. Part of me hoped that he would come back, because even just a few days prior I had thought he was the love of my life. But the horizon didn't open up, and I knew he wasn't coming back.
I headed back down the mountain and went to the police. I told them that my husband had woken me up in the middle of the night, complaining about a howling, and that I thought I had heard it too. That we went to the [national park] together
I used to go hiking with my step-mother, in the Blue Ridge Mountains. For reasons that I didn't understand at the time, my father would never come with us. On those trips, I used to look across the horizon at the range, and I would wonder if my mother was out there. It didn't matter to me if she was dead or alive. At least there would be closure.
I don't wonder that anymore.
- August 1983:
- ??? Ashmore is "ran off" by CA3, who has obtained the information from the leader of the social circle.
- CA4 is 12, middle brother is 9, youngest brother is two.
- March 1997:
- Erica Ashmore is born as the eldest child of CA4 and Aliza Ashmore.
- CA4 is 26, middle is 23, youngest is 16
- May 2003:
- Aliza Ashmore is "ran off" by CA4.
- Erica is 6, CA4 is 32, middle is 29, youngest is 22.
- February 2005:
- Third brother causes a co-worker who he had asked out and beg rejected by to "run off".
- Erica is 7, CA4 is 34, middle is 31, youngest is 24
- March 2005:
- CA4 does something on his daughter's birthday to cause the third brother to "run off" because he used the ritual poorly.
- (Erica's 8th birthday.)
- December 2005:
- CA4 marries Xochitl, a childhood friend of his that he had reconnected with after his wife's disappearance.
- July 2014:
- Failed attempt by Brock to cause Helena to "run off". The attempt fails, and Brock is "ran off" instead.
- December 2014:
- Xochitl "runs off", after Helena warned her of what the family was like. CAA4 needs to try and manage the situation but has limited options.
- (Erica is 17 here.)
- November 2017:
- CAA4 dies, and the daughter inherits his possessions. She uncovers what happened, the nature of the anomaly and contact's the aunt.
- (Erica is 20 here. - CA4 is 48.)
- January 2018:
- Date of the posts being made on Parawatch by Erica and crewtime.