The murders there were real and the rapes. The abandoned Asheville Ice House is real.

I was invited inside yesterday by the Regeneration Station to examine its shredded corps just hours before the wrecking ball brings it down on Monday.

The horror filmmakers clearly have never been in a true charnel house. Unspeakable things. Ghastly, unspeakable things. And the smell.

But also remarkable artifacts of America's deceased industrial era. American-made steel and cast iron and hard wood and concrete block... and the tour took us deeper into the cold dark ruin and its brutal realities glimpsed in the incommensurate light of our headlamps. And finally to the little room behind a flimsy wood door that held the records: the written history with the dates, the names, and the only thing that built it and drove it and finally killed the Ice House, the financials.

Posted for posterity and your viewing are several examples of what I recovered from the last days of the Asheville Ice House:

[Thank you to Tyler at the Regeneration Station for allowing me to participate in the historical salvage effort conducted at the site. Please support Tyler's company in its herculiean efforts to save rare items, artificats, and our very history from the landfill.]