‘Tar Heel Ghosts’

donbosco

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North Carolina is haunted. It is mysterious. It was LOST from the very start of its Invasion History. Sandwiched between “The Mother of Presidents” and a bunch of “Fire-Eating Sandlappers” we (without the slightest irony) proudly claim both humility (To Be Rather Than To Seem) and a homegrown brand of working class stubbornness (Tar Heel is about sticking when others flee, see Bruce Baker’s definitive history of the term here: Project MUSE - Why North Carolinians Are Tar Heels: A New Explanation - Note that the author, a historian, found the term to predate the Civil War), but if newspaperman and author John Harden (1903-1985) is to be believed we might very well deserve the more modern handle, Ghostbusters.

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John Harden is the author of two books that, as best I remember, graced the living room book shelves of every member of my mother’s large family and many others in Chatham: 1) ‘The Devil's Tramping Ground and Other North Carolina Mysteries,’ and 2) ‘Tar Heel Ghosts.’ I poured over those smallish reads as a boy and was particularly delighted that the first bore in its very title the name of a mysterious enough place just three miles from my house in #Bonlee, and situated in the Deepest of #DeepChatham — The Devil’s Tramping Ground. I’m not going to try and explain that place here. You can Google and library-search for hours on that but I will say two things about the spot. The first is that I often heard it said by the customers in #BonleeHardware that the place was much less ‘active’ than it once was because the Bad Man was so busy at present that he had little time, or need, for a place to pace and plot. And second, I’ve always suspected that moonshining had just a little something to do with the legend. That comes from my Deddy, who, as I have previously noted, knew about such things.

Those two little books were filled with tales of hoof prints in stone, disappearing hitchhikers, golden arms, and distant, sometimes moving, and unexplainable, lights. The Tramping Ground being so close by — I have visited many times. I’ve been a guide for a significant number of those forays and the telling of a scary story or two along the ride is mandatory. Once upon arriving with a car full of northern cousins as we piled out of my ‘75 Chevelle (The Gray Ghost I called her!) a skinny little dog appeared from the darkness and proceeded to silently lead us up the trail. That little guy then melted into that same darkness just as the wind came up and a loud rumble of summer thunder sent us all recklessly stumbling back down that same path, now laced by what seemed to be cross-trail roots that rose up to meet our feet. It was a glorious fright.

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I often mention North Carolina’s Haunted History in class. I’m sad to report that those books don’t seem to be as popular as they once were. My students don’t know about ‘The Ghost of Maco Station” or “A Colonial Apparition” or “The Little Red Man.” I’m not saying that spooky things and creatures are currently in short supply, after all the creators of one of the scariest horror stories of late, ‘Stranger Things,’ Matt and Ross Duffer are born and raised up Durhamites. Sadly for us, North Carolina’s recent unfriendliness toward the Arts and Entertainment meant that instant classic was filmed in Georgia (and set in Indiana) instead of This Haunted Land.

We began our so-called modern history with a mystery still unsolved - we are thus, still LOST in a way. Perhaps that is the essence of Esse Quam Videri - the great search for being - or, in turn, nothingness?
#OTD in 1590 John White returned to Roanoke Island and found CROATOAN carved in a post. The second sign, one of danger, a Maltese Cross, was not evident (I’ve always thought that they had that backwards. Two signs for safety, a single and most simple one for flight). He left out for England in 1587 for supplies but war with Spain and pirates prevented a quick return. The carving was a sign that the colony had moved. They were-sadly-LOST.



 
I bought “Tar Heel Ghosts” at the NC Museum of History during a week-long class trip across North Carolina in 4th grade. I read it over and over until every page was dog-eared; it’s still on my shelves. Pawpaw had told me stories before of seeing “The Little Red Man” in the cellars of the Brothers’ House, but this book eliminated any doubt I had in my 4th grade mind about his claims. Had a cool story to tell when I got high with the older kids for the first time a few years later, looking out over the Brown Mountain Lights too.

Thanks for bringing back some good memories.
 
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My favorite Tar Heel ghost was my suitemate in Granville Towers. We'd put him to bed at 10pm after he'd had too much to drink, and like clockwork after midnight his ghost would reappear, ready to party.
 
Off topic but speaking of ghosts, I’m currently sitting on the front porch of the Stanley Hotel, a.k.a., The Overlook Hotel from The Shining. It’s not nearly as spooky without the music and Jack Nicholson roaming the halls with an axe…
 
Had both books. Went to the Devil's TG when I was 16 with a couple buddies. Spent the night. Not much happened other than teenage drunkeness.

A few weeks ago traveling from Linville down to Lake James at night we stopped at the Brown Mountain overlook. No spooky lights unfortunately.
 
I had a bunch of those books about NC ghosts/legends when I was a kid. And my dad used to love to tell us those stories. The Maco light, the devil’s tramping ground, the hoofprints of Bath, the beast of Bladenboro, Blackbeard’s ghost, the white doe, etc.
 
Off topic but speaking of ghosts, I’m currently sitting on the front porch of the Stanley Hotel, a.k.a., The Overlook Hotel from The Shining. It’s not nearly as spooky without the music and Jack Nicholson roaming the halls with an axe…
One of the scariest movies ever.
 
I believe that the Harden books either originated on the radio or were also at some point read on air. I really ought to get to the bottom of that.
 
Back in the 1960s and '70s heading back home to Chatham County from Long Beach late on a Sunday meant night driving for Deddy. It also meant that as we drove old highway 87 homeward that we passed over the railroad tracks at Maco. So we had to slow way down and look look look down the track as we crossed the railroad there at Maco on the way back from the beach to spy the light of Old ‘Joe’ Baldwin’s lantern as he searched for his missing head. I’m sure I saw it at least once. In college once I even trekked down the trail there in pursuit and on another occasion some very peculiar things transpired along that desolate stretch of highway.

On January 4, 1856 Conductor Charles Baldwin was mortally injured in a train accident near Wilmington. From this tragedy was born the Ghost Tale of The Maco Light and headless ‘Joe’ Baldwin a-searching along the tracks, light in hand. The clipping below is from ‘The Wilmington Daily Journal’ January 11, 1856.

 
BTW - the tracks are no longer there but you can still tell, at least 10+ years ago when I last passed there, where the crossing was.
 
OK, probably the wrong thread, but the posts about the railroad caught my eye. Where I grew up, the railroad ran straight through the middle of town. And beside the train depot was an old banged up safe, just laying the dirt. We kids would always ask our father about it and he would patiently explain, over and over, it was just an old safe that fell off the train years ago and was too heavy to more. And we would ask, "Is it full of money?" To which my father would further explain, "If there was anything of value in it, the railroad would not have left it laying there all these years." It was laying on its back, door side up, and everything on the door had long since been blasted away by dynamite. In the early 1970's, a college boy who was home for the summer contacted the railroad and asked permission to pick the safe up, take it to his home, and try to open it. The railroad agreed on the condition that once the safe was removed from their property, he couldn't bring it back. Well, this college boy got it home and flipped it over to access the back of the safe. He then used a cutting torch to take the heads off all the bolts holding the back plate in place. Once the backplate was off, he used a pneumatic hammer to get through the concrete like stuff beneath the back plate. And once he got through everything, he found a couple of hundred dollars (face value, not actual value) of pre-WW1 gold coins. Needless to say, this resulted in a dramatic change in tune from the railroad company. They immediately offered to pay all the college boy's expenses and give him a pretty nice "finder's fee," but asserted ownership of the gold coins. I remember thinking (name omitted, but I do remember it) was a pretty honest guy. I guess it was all about the trill of hunt for him and anything the railroad company gave him was just "found money" as far as he was concerned. But for a while, the most asked question in town was, "And, he just gave the gold coins back to the railroad?"

ETA: One reason I remember this story is because my mother and the mother of the "college boy" were very good friends. There were seven kids in both families. But in our family the first kids were all girls and in the other family the first kids were all boys. So growing up, I was always wearing the "college boy's" and his brothers' hand-me down clothes and the girls in the other family were alway wearing my older sisters' hand-me down clothes.
 
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The book is somehow even scarier. I usually don’t get bothered by horror books/movies, but the hair on my arms stands up when someone even mentions the Shining lol.
Stephen King is no Ernest Hemingway, but he does write a good scary story.
 
Back in the 1960s and '70s heading back home to Chatham County from Long Beach late on a Sunday meant night driving for Deddy. It also meant that as we drove old highway 87 homeward that we passed over the railroad tracks at Maco. So we had to slow way down and look look look down the track as we crossed the railroad there at Maco on the way back from the beach to spy the light of Old ‘Joe’ Baldwin’s lantern as he searched for his missing head. I’m sure I saw it at least once. In college once I even trekked down the trail there in pursuit and on another occasion some very peculiar things transpired along that desolate stretch of highway.

On January 4, 1856 Conductor Charles Baldwin was mortally injured in a train accident near Wilmington. From this tragedy was born the Ghost Tale of The Maco Light and headless ‘Joe’ Baldwin a-searching along the tracks, light in hand. The clipping below is from ‘The Wilmington Daily Journal’ January 11, 1856.

It’s funny but we were vacationing at LongBeach when we’re drove up to to Maco to seethe light…
 
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