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| The Ashley Coal Breaker |
Ashley, Pa
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Date- March 8, 2003
Those Present- KennyB.
Weather- Cool, about 50's. Clear skies.
Report- I headed over to the Ashley Coal Breaker this weekend while at the in-laws for the weekend. I've been there twice before...the first time with Joe Fischer of the LVGHS and the second time was alone. I came here simply to explore the three huge buildings those first two times, never thinking to look for any activity (I have a passion for old, abandoned buildings!). However, when I learned we'd be coming up for the weekend, ghosts were back on my mind! I've never heard any stories about the place, nor has anyone I've spoken with around here. Nothing came up when I did a Yahoo search, so it was time to take matters into my own hands.
I have absolutely no historical information about this place right now. The only thing I can speculate is that the place closed down sometime in 1974. I make this guess based on the hand written time cards found in the only office among the three buildings. There was still an old wooden desk in here and tons of papers all over the floor. There were a bunch of these time cards showing the name of the employee, how many hours they worked and the details of what they did that day. They were all dated early 1974. I conducted a recording session in this office, hoping that many a dispute may have taken place here.
After checking out the rest of the office papers, I headed up to the top floor which is about 12 stories up. Here I found the motors for what used to be elevators and several enormous gears. I conducted two recordings up here. The view was great, but I had no feelings of anything. The place just felt, well...dead.
I made my way down to the ground floor and walked over to the third building. Up on the second floor is a large open area. This is where I decided to hold the final recording session of the day. I was walking around while recording and came to stand by a large control board. The board had a lot of old G.E. dials and gauges. This is the only place I got the chills. I'm not sure if I caught a breeze (Through the thousands of broken windows), or if it was something else. The trusty EMF detector came out and told me zilch. I didn't get any readings at all, not even on the .01 to 1 mg scale. The place really was dead!
After all this, it was time to pack up and go home. I was getting hungry from all the stairs I did and there was a seat at the Chinese buffet with my name one it (Really, I wrote it on there the last time). Even though this adventure turned out to be a bust for a ghost hunt, it was still really cool exploring an old place like that.
KennyB
Founder of PIRA
With input from Patty, Steve, Diana and Mike