Ashmore Estates

The story

Ashmore Estates is a large building in the countryside outside the village of Ashmore, in Coles County, east-central Illinois. It began life as part of the Coles County Poor Farm, the place where the county housed people who had no other means of support. The poor farm sat in Ashmore Township from 1870, and its early records are grim reading: superintendent Joshua Ricketts logged 32 deaths among roughly 250 residents between 1870 and 1879. Two pauper cemeteries are associated with the farm, one north of the grounds and another south of Route 16 that is thought to contain somewhere between 60 and 100 graves.

The building that stands today was the farm's second almshouse. Built in the Colonial Revival style, it was completed on September 1, 1916, at a cost of $20,389, and it served the county for more than four decades. The poor farm closed in 1959, and that year a company called Ashmore Estates, Inc. bought the property and gave it the name it still carries. The company turned it into a privately run home caring for residents with mental illness and other disabilities. It shut briefly in 1964, reopened in 1965 to take patients placed by the state, and finally closed for good in the mid-1980s; Wikipedia gives 1986 in one place and 1987 in another. Financial trouble in a shifting health care system is the reason usually given.

After that the building stood empty for about twenty years. An outbuilding burned on October 31, 1995, and in 1998 the property changed hands for $12,500. Vandals and weather took their toll: when Scott Kelley and his wife bought it in August 2006, Kelley described a wreck with most of its windows smashed, and said clearing it out took seven weeks of full-time work.

The legend

Ashmore Estates is an unusual case, because its ghost reputation grew up largely alongside its use as an attraction. To pay for the cleanup, the Kelleys began offering flashlight tours, and local people and amateur paranormal investigators quickly queued for a look inside. The couple put up signs and moved onto the property to keep trespassers out, and on October 13, 2006, they opened a commercial haunted house. Outside the Halloween season they ran overnight stays billed as a "Night of Insanity," with talks, film screenings and invited guests, among them the psychic medium Cari Stone.

The one ghost story with any pedigree concerns a young girl who had died in the original almshouse and was supposedly glimpsed by residents during the Great Depression. Its source matters: it appears in Tales of Coles County, Illinois, a 2004 collection of short historical fiction by Michael Kleen. In other words, it is a story built on local history, not a recorded witness account. Other names that circulate on television and online, such as a girl called "Elva," could not be traced to any reliable source. The building's real history of poverty, illness and pauper burials gives the legend its emotional weight, but no documented report of a specific apparition or phenomenon has been found, and the most recent official website names no spirits at all. It simply calls the place a good spot for anyone interested in the paranormal, under the tagline "Some Call it Home."

What Ashmore Estates does have is an impressive list of investigations. The Booth brothers, Christopher Saint Booth and Philip Adrian Booth, filmed there in summer 2008, and the site connects the visit to their documentary Children of the Grave II. Ghost Adventures opened its fifth season there in September 2011, and the building returned in season 3 of Ghost Adventures: Aftershocks, when former and current owners described new experiences. Syfy's Ghost Hunters included it in season 9, episode 4, "Permanent Residents," aired February 6, 2013, as the secondary location alongside the 1890 House in Cortland, New York. Destination Fear, the Travel Channel series led by Dakota Laden, came in its fourth season in December 2022. The site also lists Night of Terror with Jack Osbourne, Jamie Kennedy and Jason Mewes, the documentaries Trail to Terror (2023) and Whispers of Ashmore Estates (2024), and visits from YouTube creators including Nick Groff and Matt Rife's Overnight Channel. The book Paranormal Illinois (2010) devotes a chapter to its history and folklore.

No skeptical investigation has been published. Readers should keep in mind that almost every account comes from television, entertainment or the owners, who all have an interest in the place being haunted.

What remains today

The 1916 almshouse is still standing, though it has had a rough decade. A storm in January 2013 tore off the roof, and the property went to auction that April. New owners took it over in May 2014 and, with volunteers, carried out basic repairs to keep the structure sound, aiming to present it both as a historic building and as a venue for paranormal investigation. The property was sold again in January 2025. The pauper cemeteries linked to the poor farm lie nearby, a reminder that some of the people who lived here were buried close by.

Visiting

Ashmore Estates is private property, but it is regularly open through events run by its owners: short tours, daytime and overnight investigations, and visits to the grounds. Dates are posted on the official calendar, and alcohol and drugs are not allowed. Do not go outside scheduled events; the building has a long history of trespassing problems.

If you go, it helps to remember who the building was for. For decades it housed the county's poorest residents and later people with disabilities; many died here, and some lie in the paupers' graves nearby. Treating the place as a historic site rather than a fairground ride is the best way to honor them.

Sources

1. Wikimedia Commons category : Ashmore Estates — Wikimedia Commons
2. USGS 1:250000-scale Quadrangle for Decatur, IL 1958 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1958 · Public domain (USGS)
3. USGS 1:48000-scale Quadrangle for Oakland, IL 1936 — U.S. Geological Survey, 1936 · Public domain (USGS)
4. Ashmore Estates (official site)
5. List of Ghost Hunters episodes — Wikipedia — Wikipedia
6. Wikipedia article — Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0

Text written by AI from the sources above and checked by a separate AI fact-check (how we work). Images: credits and licenses under each picture.