As a visitor to Asheville, the Basilica of St. Lawrence will be on your list of sites to visit because the guidebooks will tell you it is an architectural wonder. It contains no supporting beams. The entire structure including the center dome is built using only masonry materials—bricks, stones, and tiles. Its dome is reputed to be the largest freestanding elliptical dome in North America.
What the guidebooks may not tell you is that you may encounter the ghost of its architect, Rafael Guastavino, wandering its halls or encounter the spirits of his wife and child as they search for husband and father. You see, the architect and master builder of this masonry monument is buried within the walls of the Basilica.
When you enter the Chapel of Our Lady within the Basilica, the focal point is a white marble sculpture of the Virgin Mary being assumed into Heaven. If you turn your back to this statue, you will see a blue-tiled door with a cross in the center. That door is the entrance to the tomb of our ghost, and it is never locked! Inside the decorative door is a massive cement-lined door, the entrance to the crypt of Rafael Guastavino.
Why is the spirit of Guastavino so restless that he roams through the church seemingly searching for something? The story is that on this deathbed in 1908, he voiced three wishes to his son. The first was that his son finishes the church still under construction. The second was that he be buried in the church which he considered to be the pinnacle of his work as an architect. And the third, which has gone unfulfilled, was that his wife and child be interred in his tomb upon their deaths.
Why was that third dying wish denied to the church’s master builder? The blame seems to point to city officials, who sometime after his death banned the burial of bodies on any land, public or private, other than designated cemeteries. However, that may have just been all that was needed for the Catholic Church officials who had apparently turned a blind eye to Canon Law 12422 in the case of Guastavino. That Law provided that “bodies are not to be buried in churches unless it is a question of burying in their own church the Roman Pontiff, cardinals, or diocesan bishops, including retired ones.” Local Church leaders had bent the rules when it came to the builder of their grand new Basilica, but after the City’s action, they were not willing to do so for the rest of the family. Guastavino’s wife, Francesca, and his daughter, Genevieve, rather than resting at his side, are buried in the nearby Riverside Cemetery. There are reports that their sprits wander beyond the gates of Riverside to stalk the corridors of the Basilica searching for the husband and father whose tomb they were to have shared.
Among unexplained sightings of images that appear and disappear as quickly, church members and staff report unusual cold patches, flickering lights, and doors that open and shut for no particular reason