An Abandoned Church In North Carolina's Mountains Is A Hauntingly Beautiful Historic Location

How does a once-thriving building filled with living people become utterly abandoned? How does a church become a ghostly shell? Does a demon possess it? Is it cursed? Or does a town's business shut down, sending workers to find livelihoods elsewhere? It's a fascinating facet of humanity that keeps us hunting for harrowing places to satiate our dark tourist needs — and musing about our own futility.

There's perhaps nothing that unsettles the soul more than a decrepit church. The old Jones Gap Baptist Church, for perhaps inexplicable reasons, has been abandoned since 1998 and is now a crumbling ruin, tucked away in the Blue Ridge Mountain foothills. Although the town it inhabits – Hendersonville, a cute and friendly city with quirky museums – is still a fun destination, this once vibrant center of worship didn't make the cut and is now one of the top abandoned spots in North Carolina for urban exploring.

Perched on a hill on Limberlost Drive, around 32 miles away from Pisgah National Forest, which has incredible Appalachian views without the crowds, sits Jones Gap Baptist Church, a Gothic Revival brick building. Built in 1913, the structure now features an empty bell tower, a wooden spire with a broken cross, and sorrowful stained glass windows. The roof is caving in, and inside, the floors are crumbling beneath broken pews and barren walls. Disintegrating velvet curtains hang from a former stage area.

"How fragile our modern world is," said a Reddit poster in the r/abandoned thread, a sentiment fitting of this abandoned church. "Without constant upkeep, everything we know just rots away. Abandoned buildings are so interesting and fun because it's seeing a forgotten world moving slowly toward the end of its life."

There isn't a clear reason as to why the congregation allowed its historic sanctuary to fall into disrepair before abandoning it. The community rallied to build a new church building across the street in the late '90s, leaving the original 1913 building empty. There have been some volunteer efforts to repair and maintain the old church in the hopes of one day restoring it, but the building remains abandoned, with an ever-threatening hole weakening its roof. Perhaps the building had just become too difficult to maintain and too expensive to update.

At the turn of the 20th century, Jones Gap Baptist Church had become an offshoot of the Mount Crystal Baptist Church, which had been established in 1892 nearby on Jump Off Mountain. The latter purchased the land for $1 in 1891 and was later sold again in 1912 for $75 to the Jones Gap founders. The structure's Neo-Gothic building was completed in 1913. It became a pillar in the community, with generations of families attending. In 1950, many of the church's records were destroyed in a house fire where church members were holding them. Twenty-one years later, in 1971, the church itself caught fire, but was extinguished before too much damage was done. An arsonist had been active in the area at the time, but the incident was never definitively pinned to him.

The building remained in active use for several decades. Today, however, the old Jones Gap Baptist Church remains a deteriorating roadside stop for architecture and photography enthusiasts, a thought-provoking detour en route to the mountains or during a scenic cruise along "America's Favorite Drive," the Blue Ridge Parkway.