Werewolves of Lynchburg | 30 December 2021

With thanks to a shadowy master of weaponized public records checks.

You see Paul Waggener howling round your kitchen door, you better not let him in. In light of the OPWW terrorist in Denver, I think it is high time I dropped the location of Ulfheim, the sooper sekrit Wolves of Vinland clubhouse in the woods outside Lynchburg, Virginia (girls allowed only on sufferance). Fun’s over, Paul. I’ve been up in your business on and off since 2015 and I never delete a screenshot.

Housing the Wolf

Back in the mists of time when Paul Waggener’s old Myspace account, vikingnight, was still online, he posted a bunch of photos of the construction of a Viking-ish longhouse, unimaginatively named Ulfheim (“wolf house”), on Wolves of Vinland property. Official OPWW blogs and social media accounts were open about the Wolves’ presence in Lynchburg, and on Instagram members who attended the Wolves’ annual “Lupine Equinox Conclave” seemed to feel free to geotag photos taken at Ulfheim, so it’s not like the general area was a secret.

The fun thing about this building, from the perspective of a geospatial nosy parker, is the bright green roof, which was very easy to see on Google Earth.

Ulfheim is located at 200 Kavanaugh Road, Lynchburg, VA (37.4000556 -79.1068554). The outbuilding seen in the Lupine Equinox Conclave photos is clearly visible on recent Google Earth imagery to the southwest of the longhouse. Lynchburg County property records show that, in the grandest neo-Nazi tradition giving ostensibly deniable LLCs extremely unsubtle names, the parcel at 200 Kavanaugh Road was originally purchased in 2008 for $18,800 by Volk LLC, registered to one Ben Jonas. It was transferred to Paul Waggener for $16,000 in March 2020.

Volk LLC

A reverse search in the county GIS database turns up nineteen properties owned by Volk LLC in its history: the Ulfheim parcel, an adjacent parcel with a derelict factory, and seventeen residential properties. The adjacent parcels containing Ulfheim and the factory were both purchased from Kavanaugh Industries INC in 2008. The Ulfheim/Factory property (parcels 28301002 and 28301004) sold for considerably less than the county’s assessed value in 2008 of $107,200 for the two parcels: 28301002 (Ulfheim), was assessed at $17,200. 28301004 (the Factory) was assessed at $90,000. County records indicate Volk LLC paid $18,800 for each parcel, for a total of $37,600. I have been able to determine neither the purpose of the residential properties, the nature of the relationship between Ben Jonas and the Wolves, nor how any of the purchases have been funded. The company name would appear to suggest an ideological commitment to Wolves’ larger volkisch pagan separatist project; however, it is certainly possible that Ben Jonas and the Wolves have chosen to collaborate for some non-ideological purpose.

The Factory

The derelict factory ((37.403988, -79.1068205) across the street from Ulfheim is still owned by Volk as of the date of publication. It features regularly on Wolves of Vinland social media, serving as the backdrop for photoshoots for Operation Werewolf and Project Shewolf, and often appears in the personal photos of the Waggeners and Jack Donovan.

Paul Waggener’s bike in the factory.

The Waggener brothers at the factory.

Jack Donovan posing in the factory.

At one time Paul had a motorcycle workshop in the northeast corner of the factory.

The tree and the fallen gantry.	The gantry on satellite imagery in 2011 before its fall.

Prior to purchase by Volk LLC in 2008, the factory was owned by Kavanaugh Industries. Kavanaugh Industries lacks an online footprint. One reference to the company appears in an obituary for a Frank Ward, who died in 2011: Mr Ward worked for Kavanaugh after the Manhattan Project and a career at the Atomic Energy Comission, so it is possible that the factory produced something related to nuclear power generation, which is an important industry in Lynchburg. An undated community development document put out by the City of Lynchburg suggests that the parcel may be turned into a recycling plant.

The Wolves’ long-term intentions for the property are unclear, but the site has been continuously altered since Volk purchased the property in 2008. 2007 imagery, captured before Volk LLC purchased the property, shows two buildings, a gantry crane (orange), and a few tanks for liquid storage (purple).

January 2011 imagery shows the tanks have disappeared, the smaller building has been reduced to a concrete pad, and holes have appeared in the roof of the larger building.

By 2012, the gantry crane has also disappeared.

By May 2015, the roof over the middle section of the main building had been completely removed and the annex at the southwest end of the building demolished. Over the concrete pad to the east, framing for a roof has appeared (green).

Higher resolution imagery captured after May 2015 and before May 2017 (available on Google Maps in autumn 2018) shows significant activity on the property, including pallets of fresh lumber (green), a dumpster (yellow), and pickup trucks. I determined the timeframe in which this image was taken from the outbuildings: the roof frame visible in the 2015 imagery has been covered, but the outbuilding that appears on Google Earth imagery from May 2017 (see below) is not yet present.

As of May 2017, more roof had been removed from the south end of the main building and from part of the northern annex. Roofing has been applied to the frame on the concrete pad (green), and a new outbuilding (blue) has appeared south of the factory.

AWOOOOOOO

There’s a lot more where this came from. There are more LLCs. There are a couple of other dorky wolf cult compounds out in other woodses. There’s a trip to Russia they tried to scrub from the internet. We could have some real geospatial fun here.