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The strange and spooky tale of a town known as Ashley, Kansas (and the fate of its more than 670 residents) after an anomalous incident in 1952 has circulated the Internet for several years. In terms of unexplained events, it's an interesting narrative: a middle-of-the-night earthquake followed weeks of strange happenings; and the town of Ashley — along with everyone who lived there — abruptly disappeared. But if you search for any historical mention of Ashley, Kansas, you'll come up short. No such town is shown on any period maps, nor is it included in any census records. In March 2012, what was likely the first version of the Ashley, Kansas, story was published to a popular creepypasta wiki (i.e., a site for short horror stories that are especially frightening or unnerving) in a version that began as follows: This story is classic creepypasta: a chillingly fun, but decidedly fictional, tale. In addition to the version cited above, a story titled The Disappearance of Ashley, Kansas was subsequently posted to Reddit's r/nosleep forum, a site devoted to sharing works of horror fiction. Prior to those Internet mentions in 2012, Ashley existed neither in reality nor imagination. Moreover, only one earthquake was recorded in Kansas in 1952, and that event occurred in April rather than August. An earthquake of magnitude 7.5 to 7.9 hitting Kansas would have become local, if not national, lore (much less a pair of such earthquakes occurring within two weeks of each other at the same site), yet no record of such a geological occurrence exists. And even if, in typical conspiracy theory fashion, the powers that be conspired to conceal whatever purportedly happened in Ashley, proof of the town's existence would remain in other texts, maps, and records antedating 1952.
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