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 paranormal element to it, was never one that I thought had enough evidence for a write-up. However, I was contacted by someone — WitnessELA — with a close connection to the case, and she shared some details with me that make me convinced that there is something paranormal 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.
Marrow County lies nestled in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, in the south of North Carolina, just over the border from South Carolina. Calverton, the largest city in the county, is the seat for the North Carolina third judicial district, with many influential lawyers and politicians making their homes in the immediate area. The area is well known for its affluence and power, being one of the highest income areas in the state.
The most notable thing about Marrow County — 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 Marrow County 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.
Frequently, 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" for safety — that she is personally in danger by remaining where she is and not trying to get to higher ground. Strangely, this danger never extends to anyone other than herself — those around her are not in danger and do not need to be brought along.
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, going out of her way to avoid speaking to anyone. If forced to talk, she is capable of holding a conversation, but tries to end it quickly and continue onward — usually expressing some need to keep moving, and an inability to stay any longer than she already has.
She will hit the trails, and little will be able to keep her from hiking to the summit. Bad weather is not typically sufficient, and some of the victims have charged off into weather that killed them. It isn't known what happens to them after they reach the summit of the mountain, or even if they actually do. The trail always goes cold somewhere on the mountain.
None have ever been seen again.
crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
The above is, of course, a simplification of the story. WitnessELA wanted me to stress that.
The Marrow County phenomena 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 Marrow County were suffering from an unusual form of mass psychogenic illness, potentially exacerbated by the inhabitants (especially the men) of the town. A paranormal 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 the best lens to approach this case under. Everyone in the Marrow County area knew about the disappearances. 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 1936 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.
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.
This was one of the major reasons why I did not feel confident enough in the notion the case was paranormal 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 a 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.
Taken together, the facts led me to conclude this was likely a town which was using the paranormal explanation as a cover for bizarre hazing, forced suicide, or murder pattern. A paranormal angle was seemingly being forced onto the tragedy, in order to distract from what was actually happening. Although tragic, this does not defie the laws of nature, and I typically try to refrain from cases where I believe it to be a mundane crime with a paranormal inspired fase alibi.
Make no mistake. I thought that something vile was taking place. It made my stomach turn. In fact, that is part of the reason why I did not cover the case. I try to bring light to the intersection of the paranormal with the criminal. I want to avoid gory but ultimately mundane cases — I find that rather obscene. WitnessELA has convinced me of two things: first, that there is indeeda paranormal explanation, and second, there is enough evidence to name the perpetrators. Unfortunately, they are all deceased, and as such WitnessELA is not interested in bringing the case to trial.
crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
The history of the Marrow County phenomena is divided into two phases, separated by a gap of nearly fifty years. Although the phenomena worked the same way in both phases, the two phases are marked by significantly different patterns of victims. Both of these factors have led to the Marrow County phenomena sometimes being regarded as actually being a pair of related but ultimately distinct phenomena. Given the information that WitnessELA has sent me, it is my opinion that the two phenomena are in fact linked and the same.
The first phase of the case began in 1922 and lasted until 1935 during which time fifteen women "ran off". Another related incident happened in 1936, but I am excluding it from the first phase of the case. It is know known that all but one of the women who disappeared during this period were the wives of members of a secret society based in Marrow County, the Fraternal Order of the Ceryneian Lodge (normally just called the Ceryniean Lodge).
The Ceryneian Lodge was not a secret that it existed, but the exact membership rolls were kept private. We have the exact list from a diclosure made by the last "keeper" of the Lodge, Antonio Nico Greco, who published the membership of the Calverton chapter of the Lodge in 1955 after the closure of the greater national network that the Lodge had belonged to. In hindsight, it is obvious that all of the women who ran away had been married to members of the Lodge, but this was not apparent until decades after the disappearances ceased.
The connection between this case and a secret society has led many to guess that they were performing some sort of ritual or cult practice. I found this compelling, although it did nothing to explain the fact the cases eventually reemerged without apparent ties to the Lodge. Further, all of the women who ran away apparently acted of their own accord. I find it difficult to believe all of these women could not only be convinced to disappear, but also to maintain a consistent cover story, one in which them were seemingly unaware of what was happening to them. If they were in on, I would at least expect some indication of that — even if they did end up running off in the end.
During this time frame, fifteen women were affected by the phenomena, running off into the woods. I shall spare all the exact details of these cases, as it feels a bit ghoulish to recount the finer points of these deaths when the culprits are fairly obvious (and deceased). This may be a surprise to some of my regular readers, as I am known for my "Truth Will Out" attitude. Here, the truth belongs to WitnessELA and you won't need the finer points of century old murders to understand what happened.
I do, however, want to tell you their names. The women who disappeared in the first phase of the case were as follows.
- Naomi Redmars, disappeared November 1922
- Lucendia White, disappeared March 1923
- Nelly Reese, disappeared March 1923
- Delphine Burret, disappeared August 1924
- affair victim?, disappeared November 1925
- Elva Williams, disappeared October 1927
- Eugenia Byrd, died January 1928
- Octavia Byrd, disappeared February 1928
- Adelaide Sutton, disappeared June 1929
- Clara Hines, disappeared July 1930
- Ruth Fairweather, ran away July 1930 (Ruth survived. More on her to follow.)
- Jane Broughton, disappeared April 1933
- Illa Holt, disappeared June 1934
- Queen Alston, disappeared September 1934
- Maggie Hobbs, disappeared May 1935
The first disappearance in the case — that of Naomi Redmars in November 1922 — follows all of the usual facts of the case. It is notable to bring hers up, however, for reference in terms of how it varied in the community's reaction. The disappearance of Minled to massive search parties that lasted for weeks after she ran off, and was the talk of the town for months afterwards. The disappearance of Naomie captivated the attention of Marrow County in a way that none of the others did. The big question on the mind of everyone in the town was "Why?" There had been no discernible reason for Naomie to leave her life behind, and the idea that she had intentionally committed suicide was unthinkable to the community.
These questions abated with the deaths of Lucendia White and Nelly Reese, both of who disappeared in the spring of 1923, running off within two weeks of each other. These two cases happening — relatively soon after Naomie and very quickly after each other — led to a general belief in the town that this was just something that happened in the community. Although there was still speculation on the causes and a questioning of why the victims had vanished, these questions were not dwelled on anymore. There was something of a resignation to the fates of the women involved, and when the fourth victim — Delphine Burret — went missing in 1924, nobody even searched for her. I attribute this to the lack of success in finding Naomie, Ludendia or Nelly, but must note that this is really more of an indication of the community's lack of care than anything else — despite everything, it would have been stranger if any of those three had been found!
There are X specific cases I want to call out next. These are outliers in ways that WitnessELA and I think are important. These are the disappearances of Adelaide Sutton, and the two double cases: first Clara Hines and Ruth Fairweather, and second Eugenia Williams and Octavia Williams.
Unusually, in the case of Adelaide Sutton, the victim was the daughter (instead of wife) of a member of the Ceryneian Lodge. In this instance, however, the Adelaide's father — Methuselah Sutton Junior — was of considerable social prominence, and Adelaide had recently married a destitute artist (who did not belong to the Lodge). Some had suspected she would be disinherited, as Methuselah had refused to financially support her new husband. At the time, Adelaide's disapparance was commonly attributed to percieved treatment from her husband, as he was unable to support her lifestyle. Her close friends (and husband) had disputed this story, but it seems that the community's reaction put far more stock into Methuselah's version.
The 1928 death of Eugenia Byrd is frequently linked to the disappearances, although in a major outlier it is one of the few cases in which the victim's body was recovered (and fairly quickly too). Eugenia went on vacation with her husband Walton in January 1928. According to Walton, she abruptly dropped everything she was doing and charged off into the snow, running away from the cabin where they had been staying with her mother.
Walton organized a search party for his wife as soon as she went missing, getting neighbors from neighboring cabins to come with him. (Something of a rarity for a case of "running off", I attribute this to the immediacy with which the search began from the disappearance.) The search party was able to, by tracking Eugenia's footprints, find her corpse. As she had charged out of the house without making any preparations, she had quickly died of exposure, collapsing into de snow. Many of the women who had been affected by this case were seen much later after running off, having short conversations and sometimes resting. They would only vanish after reaching the mountains — this simply seemed to be the first case where the strange behavior of rushing off resulted in an incidental death early on.
The next case in the disappearances was similarly irregular. Less than one week after the death of Eugenia Byrd, Octavia Byrd went missing — the wife of Walton's cousin, Harlan. Unlike Eugenia, Octavia was prepared for the cold weather, running off while walking the family dog. The disappearance itself was not unusual, but her husband, Harlan Byrd got into a fight with the leadership of the Ceryneian Lodge and left it soon after — the only husband of a woman who went missing to leave the club.
a few examples where a mistress of a member of the Lodge is run off, rather than a wife. mistress is married to someone outside the club
The final outlier that I want to highlight is the 1930 dual running off of Clara Hines and Ruth Fairweather — the only case in which multiple women ran off together, and the only case in which any woman who ran off survived. The interviews that I have found about this event are inconsistent. In most of the contemporary interviews to the event, Ruth attributed what happened to pressure from Clara. Her claim was that Clara had been claiming to hear a strange "howling" and that the two needed to "flee to the hills" for safety. The two abandoned everything — not telling anyone of their plans — and ran to the Blue Ridge Mountains. On the hike up, Ruth fell and broke her leg. She remembers telling Clara to go on without her and continued crawling up the mountain, but in the midst of this crawl, coming to her senses and beginning to question what she was doing.
In the wake of Ruth beign found, the case was attributed to folie à deux. The notion was that Clara had developed the usual symptoms of "needing to run off" and had managed to talk her friend Ruth into it. When Clara abandoned Ruth, Ruth was able to break free of the compulsion and let it go. With this as a reasonably plausible answer, the town moved on, and Ruth rarely spoke publicly about her experiences a month after it happened.
I must, however, bring to light a newspaper article that published in 1983, shortly after the disappearance of Heather Ashmore. In this article, Ruth differs from her testimony fifty years prior. She claims to have hear the "howling" before Clara did, that it was her idea to run off to the hills, and that her lack of discussion of the events was because of her husband Sterling Fairweather forbidding her to publicly speak of it. Sterling had died in 1974, meaning that Ruth was willing to discuss matters again, but passed away of cancer herself later that year.
However, the Ceryneian Lodge era of the case conclusively ends in 1936, with a strange inversion of the case. A retreat was called of all members of the Ceryneian Lodge, at the request of the new keeper, Nico Antonio Greco, a local judge. At his behest, the entire Lodge gathered for traditional “secret ceremonies”. During this retreat, Greco is reported to have called a specific list of eleven men to a private ceremony on the final day.
This list is notable for mostly (but not exclusively) consisting of the husbands of the women who had gone missing. Methuselah Sutton Junior was present, but not his former son-in-law. Walton Byrd was already deceased by the time of 1936, having been killed in an apparent drive-by-shooting in 1931. (Many think Harlan Byrd was responsible. Harlan himself, having already left the Lodge, was not invited to the secret ceremony.) Sterling Fairweather was not invited — likely linked to his wife having survived running off. The most curious is that one Edgar Broughton (the widower of Jane Broughton) was not invited, despite still belonging to the Lodge. I cannot explain his absence, and neither can WitnessELA.
Later that night, instead of going to bed, all the men that Antonio Nico Greco had spoken to departed the camp. After a while, those remaining at the camp eleven heard multiple gunshots further up the mountain. Those at the campsite were awoken by the gunshots, and after discovering eleven of their number missing, decided to go look for them. They found the missing group further up the trail, all but one deceased.
The victims had — as best as could be determined — drew lots and then allowed themselves to be murdered by the man who had evidently drawn the shortest straw, Methuselah Sutton Junior. Of particular interest was the fact that there seemed to be no signs of a struggle. None of the men had physical injuries other than the bullet wounds that killed them, and most were positioned as though they had been kneeling on the ground before being shot at a close range. Curiously, they had all been killed with Methuselah's revolver — a gun which held only six cartridges, meaning it had to be reloaded at least twice during the massacre. Methuselah Sutton Junior himself, of course, was never seen from again.
Greco admitted that the "private ceremony" he had conducted earlier in the day was a confrontation, where he accused the men present of likely being culpable or at least more informed than claimed. (WitnessELA believes a ceremony did actually take place, although I'll let her get into that.) He said his accusations were merely based on the existing rumors that had circulated in the community, rather than any tangible proof. That this had led to an apparent mass suicide was alarming, and to him completely unexpected. As a local judge with favorable connections to the police, and given the fact that the victims had acted of their own accord, no investigation into Greco's involvement was conducted.
The Ceryneian Lodge, however, soon closed its doors. The loss of nearly a third of the membership resulted (and the suspicion that Greco was involved) led to the survivors choosing leave the society. Folklore in the area began to properly link the disappearances to the Ceryneian Lodge, atlhough it was not typically regarded as evidence of foul play but merely a curse or bad luck. In 1950, Greco later published a list of former members of the Lodge when rededicating the physical lodge to a local youth organization, quietly putting the list on a dedication placard in the lobby. In any case, with the Lodge disbanded, there were no more disappearances after 1936 for nearly five decades.
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 WitnessELA has disclosed to me, I can confidently state they are linked.
crewtime 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
Beginning in 1983, this case begins to revolve around a prominent Calverton family: the Ashmores. Having originally settled in Calverton in 1962, the Ashmore famiy arrived after the Ceryneian Lodge disbanded. The fact that they had seemingy inherited the curse was commony viewed as a punishment for the actions of Charles Alexander Ashmore II, who had obtained the house and estate of a local widow for an incredibly low price, only for her to die shortly after losing the house. The fact that the women in the family began to "run off" was viewed by some in the Marrow County community as a form of retribution from the widow's ghost. I bring this up for context — WitnessELA and I agree that this is not the cause of the Ashmore family's involvement.
On July 4th, 1983, Heather Ashmore was preparing for the annual Ashmore family Independence Day holiday. At the time, her husband Charles Alexander Ashmore III was working under the district attorney, and was widely viewed as one of the key hopefuls for the role (a position he was later able to obtain). In turn, the parties existed as networking events for the elite of the area, and the act of throwing them had always proven to be major endeavors for the community.
According to all reports, nothing was unusual about Heather's actions on the day in question. She had coordinated all the catering and event hosting throughout the day as normal (many praised her event planning skills after her disappearance), and nobody seemed to think that anything was amiss. However, around five o'clock, she quietly excused herself from the party, and left the Ashmore estate. She only briefly spoke to her sister before leaving, telling her that she had forgotten something at the store but would be right back. A late arrival to the party reported seeing her running to her car after exiting the front door of the house, and then speeding off away.
The fact that Heather did not return to the party was not immediately obvious. Heather's sister assumed that her sister had made good on her word and returned quickly, but had gotten lost in the crowd. With hundreds of people at the Ashmore etsate, it was theoretically easy for this to have happened. However, after the fireworks and the end of the party, it became clear that Heather was not present. Those who had remained to clean up or because they were staying over began to realize they had not seen Heather in hours — not since she had left the party.
Charles began to organize a search party for his wife. Due to his influence with the district attorney's office, he was able to get the police to treat the case as a missing person despite it having been less than five hours. Even though it having been nearly fifty years since the last case of anyone "running off", many quickly assumed the case was a match. The police called park rangers to see if Heather's car could be found, and it was quickly determined to be at a trailhead. But that is the end of the trail — as always, it is like Heather vanished into thin air.
Many in the community were shocked at the reoccurence of a case of "running off". Most were hopeful that Heather would be found or that she would simply emerge from the woods, but this did not happen. It is not lost on me (and WitnessELA agrees) that in the immediate aftermath of the case, many in the community were treating Charles Alexander Ashmore III as the true victim. Heather was seen as suicidal, and having done this to herself, leaving her husband to take care of three children in addition to his legal career. This reputation — that he was a noble patriarch keeping things together in the wake of a grand tragedy — even formed part of his campaign for election to district attorney. Heather herself was only mentioned in passing during the campaign.
Surprisingly, few were willing to address the fact that "running offs" had returned. Marrow County seemed afraid to discuss the matter, almost as if talking about what had happened could make it happen again. In deed, there was not a resurgence of instances and
add in a test killing before Aliza is run off here, where CAA4 performs the ritual on someone to make sure that it works. totally just a random victim.
Aliza's death
In 2005, nineteen year old Misty Napier became the third victim in the second phase of the case. Unlike Heathr and Aliza, Misty was not married to a member of either the Ceryneian Lodge or the Ashmore family. In fact, she was not even in a relationship — past or present — with anyone. Misty was a coworker of Corey Ashmore at a local gas station [, the youngest brother of Charles Alexander Ashmore IV and Brock Ashmore]. In the wake of her disappearance, a third coworker reported that Misty had been made uncomfortable by Corey at work frequently, and that he had asked her out and been rejected multiple times. Corey, on the other hand, denied these allegations and said that their relationship had been nothing less than professional.
In any case, Misty ended her shift at the gas station, said goodbye to her coworkers, and proceeded to sit in her car for an hour (still in the gas station parking lot) before driving off to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is unclear when she arrived, but the park was not open when she arrived, leading her to ditch her car on the side of the road. She has not been seen since security cameras caught her driving away from the gas station she worked at. Corey Ashmore, for his sake, was scheduled to be working that night and arrived to the gas station for his shift while Misty was still sitting in the parking lot. On the security footage, he stops in the parking lot, looks at her car, and then continues into the building — behavior that is difficult to read. It is as easily significant as it is inconsequential.
Corey himself ran off shortly just a few months later. Corey's case actually received some media coverage (much more than Misty / random victim), and there is more of a record of the investigation. He had been invited on an impromptu fishing trip by his two older brothers, and joined them in [national park]. At the time, Corey was unemployed (having left his position at the gas station shortly after Misty left). On Sunday night, CAA4 and Brock reported that they had left Corey to continue to the trip, while they needed to return to work on Monday.
That night after his brothers had left, Corey had gotten into a drunken altercation with a neighboring campsite after refusing to turn down the volume on a stereo. The other group of campers reported that he was erratic and violent, throwing a beer bottle at them and screaming that he was "heavenbound". The other campers left the campsite, leaving Corey alone.
Corey was reported missing by his brothers the next day. They said that he had failed to check in with them and call them, and they had grown concerned at his safety. This was somewhat suspicious, as they reported him missing barely twelve hours after having last seen him, but not overtly so. Rangers found Corey's campsite, with no sign of him in the surrounding area. Given that Corey was already in the Blue Ridge Mountains, it is somewhat unclear if he ran off or simply died of misadventure that night. In either case, his body has not been found.
Make this less Kyron Horman — save that for later during Xochitl. The below will be adapted for either Aliza or Xochitl, depending on how the ages of the children line up for it.
In 1983, [Greta] Ashmore, the wife of Charles Alexander Ashmore III became the first example of the Marrow County phenomena after a blank decade gap. 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 Calverton 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 WitnessELA: Erica Lynne Ashmore.
WitnessELA 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 mom, Jenny Ashmore. When I was eighteen years old, he murdered my stepmom Xóchitl Ashmore-Cruz, who had raised me like her own. (I called her mama.) He helped my uncle try to kill my aunt Helena [maiden name], but that attempt failed. He also killed my other uncle, but I'm less worried about that, because that uncle was a killer himself. My father 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. Talking to crewtime has already taken some of the weight off my shoulders, and I think having this out there and known would really help.
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 father 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 DMS — ONLY IN THREAD. I WILL BLOCK YOU IF YOU DM. LIMITED QUESTIONS IN MY THREAD — MAY BE RARE. ABSOLUTELY NO QUESTIONS ON THE HOWLING, RITUAL, PAINTING OR RELATED SUBJECTS.
WitnessELA 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
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.
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. I have not been able to identify an artist. Although the painting lacks a signature, I am more held back by my refusal to show the painting to anyone, amd therefore can't get an expert's opinion.
I inherited the painting in 2017 after my father's suicide. My father had been managing a hedge fund for himself and several other prominent lawyers he was friends with. He had made some disastrous trades and wiped out the fund, and then left his partner to deal with the fallout. I was left an orphan with [# of siblings], and got to work. My first order of business was selling off everything from my father's estate we didn't need, and downsizing. I started going through everything immediately, in the week before the funeral, and that's when I found the painting.
That's not really true. I didn't *find* the painting. It had been sitting in my father's office, above his desk, for my entire life. It was one of the first things I went for when I started working through what was in the house — my father had never discussed it with me but he seemed to value it quite a bit. What I really found was a safe in the wall behind the painting. I think of everything as that "painting", even though there is quite a bit more involved and at play than just the painting.
On the back of the painting there is a message. I'm going to transcribe it here:
My name is Antonio Nico Greco. I have tried to burn this painting but the fire wouldn't take. I have tried to bury it but it felt out of the sky in front of me. I have tried to throw it into the sea, but it washed up out of the lake behind my house. If you find this message: do not attempt to destroy it. Keep it somewhere safe and secure. And never sing songs around it.
I didn't think anything of it at the time. I was only frustrated that the painting had been defaced by the message, and that this was going to hurt the resale value. I set it aside and got to work on the safe. The safe needed a key — one that I fortunately already had. It had been with my father when he died, and the coroner had handed it over to me with everything else. It was convenient I was able to get it open so easily, but I would have just cut it open if I didn't have it.
The contents of the safe have ruined my life. My father had kept everything related to the painting, and the ritual, and all the women who have run off in there. He had even gone through the historical record to research the case, with newspaper clippings of all the disappearances. (One thing that haunts me is how the disappearance of Naomie Redmars made headline news, but Maggie Hobbs was just a single-line obituary.) But the most important thing in there was a letter, sent from Antonio Nico Greco to my grandfather, Charles Alexander Ashmore III.
I won't transcribe the full letter. It begins with Greco saying that he is horrifed by some allegation that my grandfather has made about my grandma, Heather. I don't know what it is, since my father didn't have whatever original communication CAA3 had sent to Greco to prompt this. Whatever it was, Greco mentions that he is worried for the safety of CAA3 and Heather's children — Chuck (CAA4), Brock and Corey. At the time, "Chuck" would have been twelve, Brock would have been nine, and Corey would have been two. In the letter, Greco says that he had sworn an oath (no idea to whom) that he would never give the painting or the ritual to anyone — but that he trusted CAA3 would use it responsibly, and that he saw the need for it to be used upon Heather.
I don't know what this could have been. My father never really talked about his mother growing up. (He didn't talk about my mom either.) I always associated it with the fact that she had died in such strange circumstances, and that his wife had died in such a similar fashion nearly twenty years later. What could have possibly been so bad that Heather needed to die, for the sake of her children? Was she abusing them? And moreover, was she actually? I have no way of knowing. Heather's obituary was written by CAA3 and doesn't even begin to imply she was anything less than a caring and loving mother. I have no evidence that the letter was a total fabrication, or that there wasn't a legitimate threat to the safety of my father and uncles, but I am not inclined to believe the indirect word of a man who turned around and killed his wife over any other alternative.
The letter continues with instructions. It explains in great detail a ritual. As I have mentioned, I want to be sparse on the details of this ritual. I would never be able to live with myself if someone figured out how to do it from my description. This is a testament — not an invitation. The ritual is something that you can do to another person in secret and in advance, and is finally "triggered" by the victim looking at the painting. After this, they will begin to hear a strange "howling". Greco's letter does not go into much detail about the "howling", and he ends shortly after concluding the ritual instructions. He says "with the howling set, there is nothing else to be done. She will not be stopped in her flight."
I sat there for a while. I always knew that my grandma, my mom and my mama had died of the same thing. Both of my uncles had done it too, with my aunt having been caught along in one of the attempts. I had always figured it was some kind of family curse — a problem with the Ashmore family. It had given me nightmares as long as I'd been alive that it'd happen to me too, that there wouldn't be anything I could do to avoid it. But here, in my hand, was the missing puzzle piece. It wasn't an inevitability, or an accident.
It was murder.
The rest of the contents of the vault contained supporting evidence for the letter, and evidence my father had collected other the years. He had evidently inherited nothing more than the letter and the painting from his father, and had worked to recover as much as possible. He had a binder of newspaper clippings, journals of his own, items purchased from the estate of Judge Greco, and as much testimony as he could gather. I've been able to piece much of the details, using those notes. It is the one thing I have to thank my fahter for.
Here is the case as I understand it. It will be essential to reference crewtime's outline of the case for this. Many thanks to him for giving all the necessary context, so I didn't have to.
In June 1921, the Cerynian Lodge somehow discovered a ritual. The details of when exactly this happened — and more importantly how are not clear to me. This is something that Judge Greco withheld from my grandfather, and that my father was not able to figure out on his own. For over a year, they debated what to do about the ritual, and whether or not to use it, before a member of the Lodge whose wife !— Get a new reason for Naomi Redmars, realign for divorce. —] was doing something. He conducted the ritual in 1922, and sent her away.
//The Lodge would only proceed to occassionally use the ritual in the years that followed.
not sure about this whole block — there are some unanswered questions that would need to be answered here, but maybe the ambiguity and mystery is better
[ELA breaks down her view of the case here — full summary of what she thinks actually happened]
[historical analysis]
In 1935, Antonio Nico Greco took control of the Ceryneian Lodge. I think that he was disgusted by the actions of the rest of the Lodge, and decided to take action. There is a minor aside in his letter where he alludes to other versions of the ritual, beyond the one that my father had. He calls the ritual he described "the main version, and the most commonly used" — I think he used a variant upon everyone else, one that trapped them all, in order to avenge all the women that they had murdered. The ritual allows you to kill people and get away with it — and Greco, being a judge, was already in a good position to do that.
He held onto the ritual for nearly fifty years, until, in his old age, he gave it to a man he had mentored — my grandfather, CAA3 make sure that is established. My grandfather used it to murder his wife. As I've stated, this is one of the things I'm the most unsure of. Greco didn't describe his motivations for taking revenge on the rest of the Lodge in 1936. Whatever it was, it wasn't enough to stop him from giving the ritual to someone who begged for it and wanted to use it to kill his wife. Greco doesn't make any mention of stewardship or necessity in needing to pass the ritual and painting along — he simply admits the "need" to kill Heather Ashmore.
My grandfather used the ritual and killed his wife. He taught his three sons the ritual when they turned of age, saying that it was something that he wanted them to have for their own protection. In his letter, he stresses that it needs to be treated with care, and not used wantonly. A shame that none of his sons listened to him about this point.
WitnessELA 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. — WitnessELA
I'm Helena. In 2015 I survived the howling by throwing my husband to it instead. This is my story.
My niece wants to me to talk about the howling itself, but I want to talk about my own story before I get into that. I haven't been able to tell anyone about what happened to me before. As far as we can tell, I'm the only person who has gone through what I've gone through.
[describes her life and marriage to Brock]
It started shortly after we visited my brother-in-law at his house. He told Brock and I that he was having the house fumigated, and that he wanted us to take care of his father's painting for a few days — it was a precious family heirloom and he didn't want it damaged, so we agreed to take it home. I didn't think anything of it.
I began to hear the howling a few days later. It was subtle at first. It sounds like there is a dog — maybe a wolf or a coyote — in the distance at first. It was a little louder near the painting. Over the next few days, the howling got louder and louder, until I couldn't think of anything else. The persistence of it was the first thing that tipped me off — dogs don't howl all day and all night. But as it got louder, I couldn’t tell that it wasn't a dog. I'm not sure what to compare it to. Perhaps a vacuum, or a strong wind, or a woman in pain. And strangely, I got this sense that it was coming for me. That I needed to run away, and get somewhere high up to escape it. I did my best to resist that urge and Brock noticed. He asked me what I was still doing home at one point, even though I had no obligations outside the house. He was evasive when I grilled him on it. I let it drop because I was beginning to figure things out.
By the time of that final 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.
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 eighty years.
The common thread wasn't this town or the women.
At three in the morning, I decided I had had enough. I went and got my gun, then woke Brock up by throwing his favorite mug at the wall. He woke up in a panic, thinking someone was breaking into the house. I told him to shut up and to calm down. Not because he was okay, of course, but because I just didn't want to deal with him panicking. I told him that I didn't know what he had done to me, but I knew it had been him.
I told him that I had always thought he was a coward. That never really bothered me in the past. I'd dated men who saw themselves as heroes and it typically led to them embarrassing me. But in this case, I thought that he was too scared to kill me himself and to deal with the fallout. That he wanted to get rid of me, but couldn't bear to see me dead or anything else. So he did the simplest thing, the thing that his father and brother had done: just do away with me, as if I was the one that decided to run away.
To his credit, he admitted I was right.
I told him to get out of bed, and that he was going to show me how to do whatever he did to me, so he could do it back. He didn't know what was going to happen to me, but I thought we might as well both find out. After all, he had better chances taking his odds with wherever I was going than refusing and getting a bullet in the brain for it. What did I care? So what if the cops knew I did it? I was going to have been run off long before they'd even find his body.
He told me that it was easier to do the ritual against to somebody who already done it, and ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻
⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ With that concluded, I told him if he could hear the howling yet, and he said it was quiet, but he could. Only in the quiet moments. It was already loud enough I could hear it all moments, so I said it didn’t sound like we had much time. We got in the car, and drove off. I never took the gun off him.
The first thing I asked him was why he did it. He told me that I had been asking to many questions trying to investigate of my sister-in-law, Xóchitl. She had ran off into the woods, and I had spent the last few months trying to figure
...
We got to the summit and stood there for a moment. All of a sudden the feeling I had been possessed by — that idea that I had to run and the only safe place to be was on top of a mountain — faded away and inverted. The feeling in my gut aligned with what I had always suspected: that this had been a trap.
Brock told me that we needed to get out of there as soon as we could. I told him he was the stupidest motherfucker I had ever met.
The howling was so loud, I could barely hear anything else. I can't even begin to describe what the sky looked like. I've never seen anything even slightly resembling it. Of all things, I think the closest might be the optical illusion of the duck and the rabbit — two entirely different shapes present at the same time. But that's only part of it.
The horizon looked like it opened up, spanning infinitely in every direction — even up and down. But it didn't change entirely. I felt it went on endlessly to my right and left, yet I could still see what the parts of the horizon that had been there before the sky opened up. It was close, too, like it was right up in my face and yet impossibly far away.
Brock screamed and started running. I knew I wasn't likely to get another chance, so I tried to kill him on my way out. I aimed for a headshot, and missed. What happened next was so quick that I was never quite sure what happened, but as best as I can tell, having replayed it time and time again in my head, I think I got him in the shoulder, and he fell over to the ground. His feet came off the ground, and for what would have normally been just an instant, he had no connection to this world. And in that exact moment, the sky snatched him up. He flew backwards, screaming past me and right into the hungry horizon. I could hear him begging for help for what felt like too long, before he vanished from eyesight and the horizon sealed itself up around him.
And I was just left there on that mountain top. The howling was over — I think that it stopped as soon as I had fired the gun. I've never heard it again. I sat there for an hour, trying to make sense of what had just happened and what I would 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 at his insistence, with him saying something incoherent about the sky and his family. I told them I had never made it to the summit, that I had gotten scared and ran off before we could reach our destination. They told me they would do everything in their power to find him. They didn't, of course.
I was still sitting in the visitor center, drinking a coffee and cowering under a poncho when my brother-in-law arrived. Charles was looking for me, and pulled me aside when he got there. We had an uneasy conversation. Both of us fully understood the other's involvement, but neither of us had any way to prove it on the other. Furthermore, any attempt to expose the other would only implicate ourselves. I thought I could get away with it if needed, but agreed I would rather avoid trial. He told me to meet me at his home that evening.
I met him in his office, using the side entrance. I saw that damn painting of his. I could swear that I could feel it growling. Not as a sound, but as a pure vibration in my chest. It felt like a barely restrained predator, ready to pounce at any moment. I was terrified. Charles was like his brother. He was a coward, and refused to do anything in an environment he didn't control.
Charles offfered me a deal: I was due to get a large amount of money from my husband's estate, including the buy-sell agreement on the {family business?}. We could both agree that it would be best if I took that money, moved far away from Marrow County, and never contacted the Ashmores again. The one point that ate away at me was Eliza. I was afraid of the painting for two reasons: for turning it on me in that moment (making me very agreeable), and I was afraid that Charles would turn it on her if she learned. For both of our safety's, I agreed.
I moved away to my hometown ⸻ ⸻ ⸻ immediately. The Ashmores had no connections there, which was all that mattered. It was my turf, so he would never confront me there. It was hard to keep up with what Eliza was doing, but I could only hope for her safety. There was nothing I could do that to make things better.
Until he blew his brains out.
Sorry to be crass, but you have no idea the hate that I feel for that son of a bitch. I feel so wronged that he was the one to do it. That he went out after another (and if you ask me, much less significant) mistake of his own doing. I got justice for myself — but nobody else did. Not a single person in this case, I think.
I called my niece right away, just after
WitnessELA 04/30/15 (Thu) 02:04:14 #93820713
Do you want to know what bothers me the most about this case?
Based on all of the information that I have access to: there is nothing that makes you perform the ritual, or even anything that would necessitate it. There's a lot of factors pointing in this direction. Greco, after taking control of the ritual in 1936, did not allow it to be used for forty seven years, and when he gave it up to my grandfather, there was no implication that it needed to be used. Every time my grandfather, father or an uncle used it, they had a motive to kill.
So why the hell were the members of the Ceryneian Lodge killing their wives on a close-to-annual basis?
Even if there was a reason that they needed to perform the ritual every so often, I cannot find anything in the ritual that requires it to be done on your wife. In fact, there isn't anything that indicates you need to be even nominally connected to the victim. My uncle Corey was able to make his coworker he only mostly knew run off, after all. Even more tellingly, when my father took control of the ritual, he did a "test" run to make sure it worked — on a complete stranger.
If they needed to kill, why did they only give up their wives?
Some members of the Lodge have blatantly clear motives. Methuselah Sutton Junior was so furious at Adelaide's choice in husband that disownment wasn't enough. Naomi Redmars had been rumored to have been seeking a divorce from her husband, one that would have ruined him financially. [see if any more examples come up as you flesh and write out this cases]
Did they just all hate their wives that much?
All of this forms a really terrible pit in my stomach when I think about what happened in 1936. It's possible that the modified ritual Greco performed made the lodge members submit to death, but I don't think that's what happened. I think they chose to die, out of fear of what was going to happen to them. My father didn't know what happened to the women who got run off. These men did. They knew that somebody had to get eaten, or a random death would follow, so they chose a sacrifice and gave him up to the howling. But the rest of them would rather die.
What were they afraid of?
My aunt is the second person to survive an attempt to get run off, and the first to be able to tell her story. She has seen what happens to someone who gets run off, and felt it happen to her. I'll allow her to explain her thoughts:
I've thought a lot about how to explain this. This is the best I can do. It's like if a bottomless pit was in the sky, instead of in the ground. Like there was a hole in the sky, so that you could fall into a "pocket" of it — an infinitely deep pocket. You aren't going up into space, you're just going deeper into the sky. And somehow, it's alive. It's hungry, and it is howling for you to feed it. There's a level of connection that needs to be made — the ritual — and only then can it call you so you fall into it. I don't know what's actually in the pocket — it might be sky forever or it could be anything else.
.
WHAT HAPPENED TO MY MOMS?
[ what would go here?]
…
I have destroyed everything I found in that safe, including the letter. My aunt and I are the only people who know how to administer the ritual, and my aunt has made me swear to never do it. We can only hope that no one else knows. It seems that, without the painting, the ritual is useless, so I do have some meager hope that this is true.
As for the painting itself, I have added some elements to it. I don't think my father ever tried to destroy the painting, and he didn't have any notes about it. If Greco had tried to paint on top of it, he didn't mention that in his note on the back. At first I painted over some trees, as a test. Then a bird in the sky. The paint stayed, so painted I painted my mom, standing on the promontory in the painting. Then I painted my mama next to her.
My aunt says the ambient howling she used to hear around the painting is dampened the more I paint on it. Like we're bringing the spirits of those we lost out of whatevers howling. It's a large painting. I'm trying to plan out how I will paint the full tribute right now. I'm almost already.
I used to go hiking with my mama, 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 mom 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.