Category: Coast

Chowan University is a small Baptist school in Murfreesboro, a small town in the Albemarle Region that sits on the Meherrin river. The school was founded in 1848 as Chowan Baptist Female Institute, then a four-year women’s school. In the more than century and a half the school has been around, it’s seen many changes. The school began admitting men in 1931 and has changed its name several times, settling on Chowan University in 2006. Through the school’s many changes, it’s students still treasure their days at the school, and many loyally return every year for alumni days. But there’s one student who’s loyalty goes even further.

The Brown Lady of Chowan is said to visit her old dormitory every year on Halloween night, when the sounds of her brown taffeta skirts can be heard rustling through the corridors. And this is despite the fact that she died over a hundred years ago.

The story of the Brown Lady dates back to the late 19th century. According to the legend, Eolene Davidson was the beloved daughter of a wealthy family from Northampton County. Eolene was reportedly beautiful, friendly, kind, and loving, and with her family’s fortune she could easily have led a life of leisure. But she was determined to pursue an education and make something of her life. And so, in 1885, she enrolled at the Chowan Baptist Female Institute.

But the summer before she started classes, Eolene travelled to New York City to visit a friend of hers. In the months she stayed in the city, she became acquainted with a young lawyer named James Lorrene. The two soon found themselves spending more and more time in each others company. They shared similar interests, a passion for learning, and both were quickd-witted and enjoyed talking late into the evening. As September and Eolene’s scheduled return to North Carolina drew closer, the young couple realized that over the summer they had grown to love one another. One evening, James asked Eolene if she would marry him.

Eolene was torn. She truly loved James, but her desire to learn burned deep within her. And so she and James came to an agreement — the two of them would be married, when she completed her education.

And so Eolene returned from the excitement of New York to the quiet fields of Eastern North Carolina and began her studies at Chowan Institute.

Eolene was an eager student, and she threw herself into her studies. But she also soon became among her fellow students for her joy, her wit, and her kindness. She also became known for a distinct personal style, she seemed to own an unlimited supply of brown silk dresses. The voluminous brown tafetta she preferred made a distinct rustling sound as she moved through the halls. She was given the friendly nickname “The Lady in Brown.”

After completing her freshman year, the Lady in Brown returned home to her family. Her fiancee travelled down from New York to spend the summer, and he was immediately welcomed in by her family. Her parents could see that the two were a well-matched pair. Even though it was still three years in the future, her mother began planning the wedding.

When September came again, James returned to New York and Eolene returned to Chowan. She once again threw herself into her studies, but soon something was wrong. Early in October, she began to feel ill. She developed a fever, and it was soon clear that her condition was serious. She took to her bed in the middle of the month, and while her friends around her hoped for her recovery, Eolene herself feared the worst. In the last week of October, as she lay in bed, she asked for James to be sent for from New York.

When James received the telegram, he immediately boarded the next train headed South. There were no direct lines from New York to this rural part of the state, and so he spend the next few days anxiously moving from line to line, station to station, only occasionally sleeping fitfully in his seat as the train rumbled on. When his last train pulled in to the small station at Seabord, he hired a horse and rode all night to Murfreesboro, arriving at dawn on the morning of November First.

But it was too late. Eolene had died the night before, on Halloween.

The school fell into mourning for the beloved Lady in Brown. James was heartbroken, and after the funeral he returned to New York and to his legal career. He never married.

But the next Halloween night, the students heard a strange sound in the halls of Chowan. It was the sound of rustling silk, moving through the hallways, just like the sound that the brown silk dresses Eolene always wore had made.

The next year, the sound returned. And the year after that. The legend soon grew that every year on Halloween, Eolene’s spirit would walk the halls. Some say that it was her spirit still waiting for her fiancee to arrive. Some say that once her spirit left her body, she quietly got up and resumed her studies.

In the century that’s passed since Eolene’s death, the Brown Lady has become a beloved part of Chowan tradition. Every year, the Brown Lady’s return is greeted with a vigil from the Chowan students and members of the town, when on Halloween night people gather in the dormitory to listen for the sound of the brown silk rustling through the hallways.

In 1802, there was a young man named named Jesse Elliot who lived in the little coastal town of Bath. Elliot was a gambler, a brawler, a drunkard, but most of all he was a racer. Jesse Elliot was the extremely proud owner of fiery black stallion. Elliot would race anyone, anywhere, any time on this strong and swift horse. Many riders challenged Jesse Elliot to a race. And Jesse Elliot always won.

One day, a tall man appeared in the town and approached Elliot, saying he’d heard of his racing fame and of his magnificent black horse. The man said he had a horse he thought was just as strong and just as fast as Elliot’s, and that he’d like to try his horse and his skill against Elliot and his stallion.

Elliot quickly agreed, and the two men arranged to meet for the race in one hour. It was a Sunday.

Elliot went home to get his horse. He pulled on his riding boots, had a few drinks to prepare himself, and set off for the race. His wife, a devout woman, was alarmed that he was intent on racing on the Christian Sabbath.

Elliot scoffed at her. His wife, fed up with her husband’s wicked ways, shouted at him as he rode off, “I hope you’re taken to Hell this very day!”

When Elliot arrived at the course, he saw the waiting for him a midnight black stallion, larger and more fierce than any animal Elliot had ever seen. And atop that angry horse was the stranger, dressed all in black, with an evil fire burning fearfully in his eyes.

Frightened, Elliot paused for a moment, but his greed for racing consumed him and he urged his stallion on, shouting “Take me a winner or take me to Hell!”

Elliot’s horse charged ahead, and the stranger lagged behind. The stranger seemed to be taking his time, keeping a length behind Elliot and his stallion.

As they neared the finish line, the stranger’s horse put on a great burst of speed and drew right along side Elliot. And as soon as it did, Elliot’s own horse dug its feet into the grown. Jesse Elliot was thrown off of his horse’s back and into a tree. Elliott was killed instantly.

As for the stranger, it’s said that he just laughed, and rode back to his home in Hell with Jesse Elliot’s soul riding behind him on that fiery black stallion.

The hoofprints that Elliot’s steed had made when it stopped suddenly remained imprinted in the ground. They remained even through the heaviest rains and muddiest winters. The minister at the local church began preaching about the hoofprints, saying they remained immovable in the ground as an example of where a wicked life would lead.

Those hoofprints where Jesse Elliot’s horse dug its feet into the sand can still be seen to this day. It’s said that nothing will grow in those hoofprints, that no bird will eat seed scattered in them, and that nothing left in the tracks will stay there overnight.

Averasboro lies just north of Fayetteville, on the eastern bank of the Cape Fear River, on the edge of the North Carolina coastal plain. While there’s not much there now, at the beginning of the 19th Century when the Cape Fear was one of the major transportation routes through North Carolina. Averasboro was once a thriving hub, and home to a substantial lumber industry, profiting from the timber cut from the swamplands around the river.

And as the lumber crews that worked in the area discovered, the mosquitos in the woods around Averasboro are particularly large and particularly vicious. But there’s one kind of mosquito that puts all the rest to shame. The Gallinipper.

The Gallinipper is a mosquito as big as a hawk. The sting it carries on its head could slice all the way through a man’s arm. A bite from the Gallinipper could mean death. The mosquito could drain all the blood from a man in a single gulp.

More than the alligators, more than the bears, more than the panthers that hid in the trees, the lumbermen who worked the swamps feared the Gallinipper.

The lumber crews that worked the swamp were drawn from all over North Carolina. In the middle of the nineteenth century, two work crews, one from Chatham County and the other from Averasboro, found themselves side by side cutting trees and hauling the logs out of the swamp. something of a rivalry grew between these two labor gangs, a rivalry that was helped along in no small part by the leader of the Chatham County gang, a man named Red Saunders.

Saunders was a braggart. He was continually showing off and boasting about he was the strongest, toughest man not only in that swamp but most likely in all of North Carolina, maybe even the whole world.

The men from Averasboro were getting a little tired of hearing Saunders brag, and frankly his own men were beginning to think they may have heard enough, too. So one day some men from Averasboro decided it was time to give Red Saunders his due.

They approached Red and admitted that, sure, he was tough. But they bet that there was one thing in that swamp even tougher than him — the mosquitos. They bet that Saunders wasn’t brave enough to strip off his shirt, lie on the ground, and let the mosquitos go to work on him for a full hour.

Red Saunders said he could take anything. The men found a corner of the island where thick clouds of mosquitos were hovering above the still water. The workmen built a small, smoldering fire to give off smoke that would give them some shelter. And Red stripped off his shirt and lay face down in the mud, letting the mosquitoes go to work on his back.

And work they did. Red’s back was soon covered with the insects, digging in, drawing blood, and leaving itchy welts behind. But Red didn’t flinch. He just lay there, letting the mosquitos feed on him, and only occasionally looking up to say “I sure hope those mosquitos over there ain’t getting to be too much for y’all” to the men sheltering in the smoke.

This went on and on. But when about three-quarters of that hour had passed, something happened. Red felt something bite into his back sharper and more powerful than he had ever imagined. A searing, sharp pain, bit into his flesh, and he heard one of the men by the fire yell out “Gallinipper!”

That was enough for Red. He howled, got up, and dove right into the water and stayed under until he was good and sure that Gallinipper was gone.

When Red finally crawled out, wet, muddy, and itchy, the men all told him how lucky he was to have survived, and that a Gallinipper the size of an eagle had landed on his back.

What Red didn’t know was that what had really landed on his back was a red-hot coal from the fire that the men had thrown there. And that everyone else was laughing at him behind his mosquito-bite covered back.

Well, Red was quiet for a week after that. He didn’t brag too much and he scratched a lot.

But pretty soon he began to tell everyone about how he was the only man tough enough to survive an attack from a Gallinipper.

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The legend of the Gallinipper was kept alive in a tavern in Averasboro, which for years had hanging from its ceiling a bird skeleton with a long, pointed piece of carved bone in place of a beak, and a sign reading “Averasboro Gallinipper.”

The Gallinipper lives on, and not just in legend. A species of exceptionally large and aggressive mosquito that’s native to the southeastern United States, Psorophora Ciliata has the common name of the American Gallinipper.

In the 19th century there was a small settlement on the eastern end of Shackleford Banks called Diamond City. The community got its name from the diamond pattern on the nearby Cape Lookout lighthouse. Despite its ambitious naming of itself as a city, at its height Diamond City was home to no more than 300 – 500 people, living in small homes scattered around the island. It was first settled in the early 18th Century, and for the next two hundred years the lifeblood of the community was pulled from the sea, from fishing, and from whaling.

Whales quite literally fueled the economy of 19th Century America. The blubber that these massive animals wear to maintain buoyancy and insulate themselves from the cold deep waters contains massive amounts of oil. Whale oil could be extracted from the blubber and burned for light and fuel, or transformed into practically any product that needed oily fats as an ingredient, such as soap or margarine.

But the price of this fuel was a high one. Many species of whales were hunted nearly to extinction, and even more than a century later their numbers have not fully recovered.

Diamond City was a whaling community. Its harbors sheltered the whaling ships which would come down from New England in the early spring when the whales clustered around the Outer Banks. The people of Diamond city would join them, setting out in their small boats to harpoon the whales and drag them back to shore to be stripped and the oil rendered from their bodies. The harvesting became even more intense with the invention of the exploding cannon-fired harpoon in the 1870s, when whale hunting became much more efficiently lethal and the small crews that set out from Shackelford Banks were brining in more whales than ever before. Diamond City was booming.

But it wasn’t to last.

One day, in the late 19th Century, something very large was seen floating in the waters one August morning. A small boat set out to inevstigate and the crew was surprised to see a giant barrel floating in the sea, almost the size of a small house.

Some of the men guessed it might be something used by distillers to cure whiskey. Tempted by this thought, the men hauled the barrel back to shore and drug it high onto the beach, out of the reach of the tides. They were about to take a crowbar to the wood to see what was inside when one of the men called for the others to listen.

Something was moving inside the barrel.

The men stuck their ears to the wood and, sure enough, they could hear what sounded like footsteps coming from inside. One of the men knocked three times on the side, and then something inside the barrel knocked three times in response.

The men quickly pried off the barrelhead, and were shocked by what they saw inside.

It was a woman. A beautiful, young woman, dressed in a pure white dress with long, flowing black hair and eyes that were the color of the sea.

The men helped the woman out from inside and began asking her who was she? Where was she from? Had she been in a shipwreck?

The woman took her time responding. She seemed as if she was dazzled by the brightness of the sun. But, then, she spoke, in a very clear and commanding voice.

“The killing must stop.”

Well, even in this unusual situation this seemed like an unusual thing to say. There wasn’t much killing that went on in Diamond City, apart from the occasional drunken brawl, but that was perfectly normal when there were this many sailors in one place and so went unnoticed. They asked here again where she was from, and the woman simply said again, “The killing must stop.”

Word quickly spread along the shore of this strange visitor. The women came out from the town and gave her food and drink, for which she seemed grateful, but she seemed little inclined to speak. That is, until some of the men, deciding that if the woman was all the barrel contained, they might as well haul it away for firewood. But when they began to lash ropes around it, the woman spoke again.

“Mine,” she said. And the men just quietly dropped their ropes and stood back.

And so this stranger set up her home in the barrel on the shore. The Diamond City folks didn’t know what to make of her. These were the only two phrases she seemed o know, “The killing must stop” and “Mine.” And whenever she pointed to something and said “Mine”, whoever was holding what she was pointing to would suddenly feel happy about handing it over to her. Yes, they would think, of course she should have this. How I not have possibly noticed this before? Soon, her barrel home was comfortably furnished with rugs and a bed and a small chair.

After she had been there for several weeks, people began to notice that every morning she could be seen swimming out in the waters. But she was never swimming alone. As soon as she waded into the water, a pod of dolphins would appear seemingly from nowhere and surround her.

And because of this, people were soon calling her Porpoise Sal.

For a while, the town was buzzing with guesses about who she was and where she was from, and how she had come to be trapped inside of that barrel. But eventually, people just came to accept her as Porpoise Sal, the woman who had been washed in by the sea. And so Porpoise Sal was given a place in the community, as something of a harmless curiosity.

As the spring whaling season approached again, Porpoise Sal seemed to grow more agitated. She would rush from person to person in the town, stopping each one and saying “The killing must stop.” And when February rolled around and the ships set out and the first whale was hauled onto the shore to be stripped of its blubber, Sal was there, weeping at the sight.

Soon, people began to wonder — was she taking about the whales?

But the admonitions of the strange woman were no match for the money that whaling brought in.

People began to avoid Porpoise Sal when they saw her on the streets. Almost a whole year passed since her arrival in Diamond City, and Sal seemed to grow sadder and sadder with each passing day.

Then, one the night before the anniversary of her arrival, the skies on the Outer Banks grew dark. The winds grew harsh and strong, and the sea grew angry. The people of the banks knew what was coming. A hurricane was blowing in.

It was on this day that Porpoise Sal spoke her last words to Diamond City. She stopped a fisherman on the street, a man she had stopped many times before, and who was shocked when this time, she said something she had never said before.

“You were warned”, Porpoise Sal said, and looked at him with her sea-colored eyes welling up with tears, until she quietly broke away and headed back to her home on the shore.

The hurricane that struck that night was the worst that the Outer Banks had ever seen. The vicious wind blew all night long, the waves flooded over the shore, crashing higher and higher, until the entire island was underwater.

By morning, Diamond City was no more.

As the waters receded, the survivors climbed down from what safety they had found. Every building in the town had been destroyed, all the boats had been washed away, the islanders knew there was no chance of rebuilding.

And then one of them spotted something floating in the sea far out on the horizon. It was Sal’s barrel, the same barrel that had floated to shore a year ago to the day. And there was a figure standing on top of the barrel who could barely be made out in the distance. It was Porpoise Sal. Someone shouted they should head out to rescue her, but just then she purposely dove off the barrel and disappeared beneath the waves. And people watched as the barrel sank beneath the waters.

The people of Diamond City Scattered along the coast. The site where the town had once stood was reclaimed by the sands and the forest, and soon there was no trace that people had ever lived there. But the memory of the strange woman who had lived with them for that year before the storm spread with the people of Diamond City. And the memory of the woman from the sea and the warning that had been ignored became one of the legends of the Outer Banks.

Diamond City was destroyed in the hurricane of 1899. By 1902, the last resident had left the town, and Diamond City is remembered as the only community in North America that was never rebuilt after a hurricane. Today, the land is protected as part of the Cape Lookout National Seashore and is accessible only by boat or ferry, and is one of the few remaining undeveloped spots on the Outer Banks.

There’s a cemetery in Beaufort that’s simply called The Old Burying Grounds. It is undeniably an old cemetery, the earliest marked grave is dated to 1711. Its beautiful, peaceful old tombstones are covered with a shady canopy of moss-covered live oak trees. But there’s one grave in the cemetery that has has story to tell that sadder and stranger than most, and it tells it on the simple wooden plaque that marks the grave and reads “Little Girl Buried in a Keg of Rum.”

The story begins in the mid-18th Century, when a family named Sloo (pronounced Slow) traveled from England to the North Carolina colony bringing with them their infant daughter. Sloo was a merchant captain who made his living trading in the English settlements scattered across the Atlantic. The family was prosperous, and they soon built a gorgeous house which still stands on the Beaufort waterfront.

But despite thriving in the colonies, the mother was homesick and often spoke of England. As the Sloo’s daughter grew, hearing her mother’s stories, she too began to long to see the distant land where she was born. Whenever her father was about to set sail, she would beg him to take her with him so she could see England for herself.

The father knew that life at sea was difficult. The voyage to England took months, and a sailing ship was no place for a child. But he also wasn’t blind to his daughter’s happiness. After years of pleading, he finally agreed that she could travel with him. The mother consented to the voyage on one condition, that no matter what happened, he would bring their daughter back to her in Beaufort. And so, one bright morning, leaving his wife behind, Sloo and his daughter set sail for England.

And so the young Sloo girl finally got to see the land where she was born. She delighted in the excitement of London and marveled at being in a land where not everything was new.

But on the return voyage, the father’s forebodings proved to be all too true. Just a week or so out of port, the young girl fell ill and died.

It was the custom in those days for anyone who passed away on a ship to be buried at sea. But Captain Sloo couldn’t bear to allow his daughter’s body to be lost in the depths of the ocean. And he recalled his promise to his wife, no matter what happened, he would bring her daughter home to her in Beaufort.

So the Captain did what he could. There was only one thing on board the ship which could preserve a body, something which every sailing ship carried in copious supply, rum. Captain Sloo gently placed his daughter’s body in one of the many barrels of rum in the hold and sealed the barrel shut.

When he returned home with the heartbreaking news to his wife, she wept for her lost daughter. Not wanting to disturb her further by exposing her to the condition of their daughter’s body after being soaked in rum for months on end, Sloo arranged for his daughter to be buried in the cemetery with a barrel full of rum as her casket.

Today, the grave of the Rum Girl, as she is known, is one of the most-loved tombs in all of North Carolina. Visitors to the tomb will leave toys, flowers, stuffed animals, beads, and other small tokens of affection when they visit the grave of the Rum Girl in Beaufort’s Old Burying Grounds.

But there are some who say that her story doesn’t end there. There are those who say that the figure of a young girl can be seen running and playing between the graves in the Old Burying Grounds at night. They say that the tributes left on the young girl’s grave are often moved about the graveyard at night, often found sitting balanced on top of other gravestones or in places they couldn’t have moved to by just the wind.

For over a century, mysterious lights were seen bobbing up and down along the railroad tracks near Maco Station, a few miles west of Wilmington. When anyone approached the lights, they would disappear. The lights were observed many times over many years, and even photographed on occasion. It’s even said that President Grover Cleveland saw the lights while on a whistle stop tour in 1889. The source of these lights has never been determined, but according to legend the light is the ghost of a railroad worker who died on the tracks one night in 1867.

On that tragic night in 1867, a train was rolling along the tracks and the signalman, Joe Baldwin, was sleeping in the caboose. Joe’s slumber was broken by a violent jerk. A veteran railroad worker, Joe Baldwin recognized the motion and immediately knew that the caboose had become detached from the rest of the train.

Joe Baldwin’s heart started racing. He knew that his one car was now stuck on the tracks, and that the main part of the train was rapidly moving away from him and he had no way of contacting it. Joe also knew that his wasn’t the only train scheduled for those tracks that night. A passenger train was due along soon, and if the oncoming train struck the stalled caboose there would be a horrible accident.

Joe Baldwin had a choice to make. He knew that he had to signal the oncoming train to stop. He knew that the only way to do this and be sure the engineer in the approaching train would see the signal was to stand on the platform at the back of the caboose.

Joe Baldwin knew that if the oncoming train hit the stalled caboose at full speed, everyone on board the passenger train could die. He also knew that it takes a long time to stop a speeding train. Even if the engineer saw the light and stopped, there wouldn’t be time enough to slow down and prevent a complete disaster. The chances were good that the caboose was still about to be hit. And if he was on that caboose when that happened, Baldwin knew he didn’t stand much of a chance of walking away from that crash. He could either save his own life, or try desperately to save the lives of those passengers.

Baldwin made the heroic choice. Grabbing his lantern, Joe Baldwin stood on the back of the caboose as the sound of an oncoming passenger train rumbled closer. Joe frantically waved his warning light, trying to catch the attention of the engineer.

Joe’s plan worked. The engineer of the oncoming train saw the light and pulled hard on his brakes. But the momentum of the tons of speeding steel kept the train moving, and the locomotive slammed into Joe’s caboose. Joe’s bravery saved many lives. But not his own. Joe Baldwin was decapitated in the crash.

Joe’s head was thrown by the force of the accident into the murky swamps that surrounded the tracks. It was never found. His headless body was buried with hero’s honors a week later.

For years after that accident, lights were seen moving up and down the track around Maco. Sometimes only one light, sometimes two. People said that it was the ghost of Joe Baldwin, still searching for his missing head.

The Maco light was seen for over 100 years, but has not been seen since 1977. This was the year that the railroad tracks at Maco station were pulled up. Many explanations have been offered for the mysterious slights, including one intriguing geological possibility. Maco stands on top of a geological fault line. Some have speculated that the source of the lights was static electricity produced by the pressures of this fault building up along the tracks, and discharging as light when the tracks reached their capacity. This cold explain why the lights haven’t been seen since the tracks were pulled up.

On August 27, 1587 Governor John White sailed from the newly-founded English colony on Roanoke Island to return across the sea for supplies. He left behind the first settlement in the new English colony of Virginia, consisting of eighty-nine men, seventeen women, and eleven children. One of those children was his own granddaughter, the first English child to be born in the New World — Virginia Dare. None of these colonists were ever seen by English eyes again.

White had intended to return to the Roanoke colony the next year, but the threat of Spanish invasion from the great Armada of 1588 and the constantly-shifting politics of the Elizabethan court delayed White’s return until 1590. When he arrived, he found the colony abandoned, the only clue to the fate of the colonists being the word CROATOAN carved into a tree. This was the name of a nearby island, the home of the english-speaking Croatan Indian Manteo. Manteo and another Croatan, Wanchese, had met the 1584 reconnaissance expedition for the colony. These two men had left their home in the Outer Banks and journeyed with that expedition on its return to England. The men had learned English on their journey. When they returned with a later expedition, they were positioned at the colonists arrival to be key negotiators between the inhabitants of the island and the newcomers.

White was desperate to follow up on the clue carved into the tree. But he was prevented from making a thorough search of the islands. His ship was threatened by a large oncoming storm, and the captain was eager both to escape that danger and to turn south and hunt for Spanish treasure ships. White was forced to sail on, not knowing what had become of his family and the other settlers. By the time of the next attempt at Colonization in 1608 at Jamestown, the fate of the Lost Colonists had already become the stuff of legend.

One of these legends that has been told time and again on the North Carolina Outer Banks follows the sad, strange fate of that first English child born on New World soil.

According to the legend, Wanchese was fearful of the threat posed by the Englishmen and plotted with a nearby tribe to lead a sneak attack against the colonists. Fleeing for their lives, the colonists were gathered together by Manteo to escape and join his tribe. It was Elanor Dare, the mother of Virginia, who had the foresight to carve their destination in a tree, which she did with her husband lying dead of an arrow at her feet and her precious child clutched into her arms.

But a good number of the colonists did escape, and they lived peacefully with the Croatan Indians. Young Virginia Dare grew to be a beautiful maiden, whose natural grace and virtue made her an example to all who knew her, colonists and Indians alike. As she became a young woman, she naturally attracted the attentions of suitors. Among these young men were the noble Okisko, and a jealous sorcerer named Chico.

Chico was the first to offer his hand to the young Virginia Dare, but the maiden refused his advances. Enraged, he used his dark arts to curse the girl, and transformed her body into that of a snow-white deer.

The mysterious white doe was often seen on Roanoke, sadly walking through the now-overgrown and decaying houses built by her people. The story of this beautiful, elusive creature soon spread to all the tribes on the islands.

Okisko, Virginia Dare’s other suitor, figured that this white doe had shown up about the same time Virginia Dare had gone missing. Reckoning that his rival in love was skilled at the dark arts, it didn’t take him long to figure out that this white doe was his own beloved. Seeking the help of a friendly sorcerer, he learned how to make a magic arrowhead from the mother-of-pearl lining of an oyster shell that would undo the curse.

But Wanchese had also heard of the white doe and, not knowing that it was the cursed English girl, he vowed to kill the rare creature in a bid to prove his worth as a warrior. To this end, he pledged to use a silver arrowhead given to him by Queen Elizabeth when he had been in England.

Okisko and Wanchese, unknown to one another, both tracked the white doe for weeks — one pledged to return her to her true form, the other sworn to bring her death. And as it happened, they came upon the deer at the same hour of the same day, as the delicate creature was drinking from a deep pool in the forest. Okisko saw his beloved, Wanchese saw his prey, and at the same time they both released their arrows. Both their arrows hit the heart of the white deer in a single moment, Okisko’s undoing the enchantment and Wanchese’s bringing death.

Seeing what he had done, Wanchese fled the island in fear, but Okisko sadly carried the body of his beloved to the old fort built by the colonists and buried her at its center.

But soon by that pool where Virginia Dare died, a new vine sprung up, whose grapes were sweeter than any that anyone had tasted before, but whose juice was a red as blood. This was the scuppernong, the grape from which the first North Carolina wines were made.

And those grapes are why there’s much more to this story than the story. Learn the scary truth behind the story of Virginia Dare.

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While the exact fate of the Lost Colony is unknown, most historians agree that the chances of Virginia Dare having been transformed into a deer are vanishingly small. But the legend of Virginia Dare does represent a unique combination of a literary tradition that was imported to the New World from England, along with some unquestionably American advertising showmanship.

The story of Virginia Dare’s transformation into a deer seems to have been first told in the late 19th Century. The earliest versions of the story, such as the one recorded in an 1880 travel article in the New York Times, leave out the grapes and even the Indians entirely. In these versions, Virginia Dare is a deer with a remarkably long lifespan, and is eventually brought down by a silver bullet shot form a Virginia hunter’s rifle in the 19th Century.

But these first versions of the story are already drawing from an established literary tradition. The White deer is a common motif in English literary legends and is often used as a symbol of Christian virtue. A similar story of a young girl transformed into a white deer can be found in Yorkshire, where it formed the basis for Wordsworth’s poem The White Deer of Rylstone.

The author of the most famous version of the Virginia Dare story was certainly aware of this tradition. This is the version of the story whose summary you’ve just read, and which comes from Sallie Southall Cotten’s 1901 book-length poem The White Doe, or the Fate of Virginia Dare.

Sallie Southall Cotten was a remarkable woman, a strong promoter of women’s rights and a leader in the women’s club movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An organizer of the North Carolina exhibition at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, it was she who commissioned the beautifully carved Virginia Dare desk that illustrates scenes from the legend and is now on display at the Lost Colony Museum in Roanoke Festival Park.

Cotten was also an early advocate of North Carolina’s wine industry, and the addition of the scuppernong grapes colored by Virginia Dare’s blood was her contribution to the legend. This was probably because The White Doe was written to sell scuppernong wine.

Before prohibition, North Carolina was one of the leading wine manufacturing states in the country, an industry that is now only slowly creeping back to being an important one for the state. The leading light in this industry wad Garrett & Company, whose line of scuppernong wines were among the most popular blends of wine in America. That line was called Virginia Dare wines.

Distributing Cotten’s book was part of an innovative and aggressive marketing campaign by Garret & Company to promote those scuppernong blends named for the lost colonist. Garret & Co. wanted to build the brand recognition for their sweet wines, as well as expand the appeal of their wines to women. They thought that a romantic, patriotic story was just the thing to encourage women to drink more cheap wine, and so they commissioned the poem from Ms. Cotten and gave the book away with bottles of their wine. Tying the legend of Virginia Dare in with a romantic origin myth for the scuppernong grape was entirely Sallie Southall Cotten’s invention. As for the poem itself, while Cotten’s style might been seen as stilted to modern eyes, the poem could probably easily hold its own against any other book-length poems advertising wine.

Ms. Cotten’s legend has outlasted the memory of its origins as an advertising campaign, and even outlasted the wine itself. Although Virginia Dare wines were the first wines advertised on radio, and the tagline in their advertisements, “Say it again — Virginia Dare,” was heard often enough during the 1920s to become one of the first famous radio catchphrases, prohibition was a blow form which Garet & Company never recovered.

When the ban on alcohol sales was lifted in 1929, Virginia Dare wines were the first American-made wines that were once again commercially available. But the company never regained its former glory. Garret & Company folded in the 1950s. But some of the last bottles of Virginia Dare wine made in the late 1940s have a possible connection to another, very different, American legend. These bottles are a much sought-after item by collectors, due to unverified rumors that the model posing for the portrait of Virginia Dare on the label was a young Marilyn Monroe.

It’s said that on the night of the new moon each September, a strange and ghastly sight can be seen off of Ocracoke Island. There in the waters off the Outer Banks, each year on that one night, a phantom ship engulfed in flames floats silently by the island and disappears into the night. How this came to be takes us back to the early days of the North Carolina colony, to days of settlers and pirates, and to the reign of Queen Anne.

In the late Seventeenth and early Eighteenth Centuries, the religious wars that ravaged Europe caused mass migrations of people displaced by the conflicts. In these wars England was allied to the Palatine States, in what is today Germany and Switzerland. The countries shared a Protestant faith and a complex history of marriage bonds. In 1689, when the unpopular James II was forced to abdicate by Parliament, James’ daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange were brought in to replace the exiled monarch. Suddenly having a German king on the throne drastically shifted many of England’s diplomatic alliances, and William was happy to use the very large army he suddenly found at his disposal to continue and expand the wars that he had already been fighting in back in the Palatinate Sates.

These wars produced refugees, and William and Mary opened England’s doors to thousands of them. England soon found itself housing a large population German-Speaking refugees who had fled from the continent. These refugees were not ordinary peasants, but well-to-do skilled craftsmen and trade workers. This influx continued for years, into the reign of Queen Anne. The presence of so much unemployed skilled labor dealt a massive blow to the English economy. Native English craftsmen found they were facing levels of competition they’d never before known, and the price for skilled labor plummeted. So the question of what to do with all these Palatines became pressing on Parliament.

A swiss baron, Cristoph von Graffnreid, offered a solution. With the Crown’s permission, he would escort a large number of these refugees to a settlement in the Carolina colonies, to be called New Berne. The plan was met with delight, and the transportation of the Palatine colonists soon began.

It was on one of these voyages that the captain of the chartered vessel, an unscrupulous and greedy man, noticed that his passengers were carrying an unusual amount of gold, jewels, and other wealth with them. Whatever family treasures the Palatines had managed to get out of their homelands were now being taken to the New World. Eyeing this wealth, the greedy captain hatched a plan.

As the ship drew closer to the American coast and the Outer Banks were in sight, on a moonless night the captain put that plan into action. He enlisted the help of his equally greedy crew. One night, the crew crept below decks and, one by one, slit the throat of every passenger on board as they slept. The crew then loaded the passenger’s treasure on the ship’s long boat.

To cover up the crime, the men doused the decks with oil and set the ship on fire as they dropped the long boat into the ocean and set out for the pirate’s refuge at Bath. As the men set off in the long boat, the ship they left behind became engulfed in flames.

As the captain and his men gleefully rowed the long boat away from the flaming ship, they laughed and bragged to each other about their deed. But then the captain looked back towards the flaming ship, and what he saw shocked him. Though the sails were down and the night was still the ship was moving. It was plowing through the waters at high speed, as though it was at full sail and being steered by human hands. But they knew there was not a living soul on board. They had killed everyone on board. This flaming ship filled with dead men was sailing right towards them.

Panicked, the crew rowed fiercely trying to avoid the oncoming ship, but it was no use. The flaming ship rammed the longboat, sinking it, the treasure, and the murderers beneath the waves. The next day, the burned husk of the ship washed ashore on Ocracoke.

Each year, this strangle spectacle is reenacted off the coast of Ocracoke. If you look into the waters off of the Northeast corner of the island on that night in September, you might see it, too.

Along the Outer Banks, The Oregon Inlet separates Bodie Island from Pea Island and joins the Pamlico Sound to the Atlantic. It’s a major shipping channel and an important route for fishing vessels. The Bonner Bridge stretches across it, carrying tourists up and down the Outer Banks. It’s hard to imagine the North Carolina coast without this seemingly permanent feature. But the Oregon Inlet didn’t exist until 1846, when on a single night a hurricane carved a channel and saved a ship.

According to the Legend, in September of 1846 a trading ship named the Oregon was making the return voyage to Edenton from Bermuda. The journey had been smooth until the last days, when the winds kicked up and the skies turned dark grey. It was soon obvious to the seasoned sailors on board that a hurricane was coming, and that their ship was in danger.

The ship put on steam, struggling to reach the safety of port before the storm struck. But it was too late. The hurricane caught up with the Oregon, and the small ship was tossed by the increasingly violent waves.

The crew of the Oregon fought valiantly into the night to keep their ship afloat, but as the darkness grew deeper around them, the winds grew stronger and the waves grew higher. The crew silently began to give up hope.

Suddenly, a tremendous surge came in from the sea. The boat was lifted high into the air, and the crew felt the deck tilting beneath them. They feared all was lost, but suddenly the rocking stopped. Though still pounded by the wind, the ship was no longer being moved by the waves.

The crew were astounded. The realized that the enormous wave had picked up the Oregon and deposited her on a sand bar. Amazed at their luck, the crew thankfully rode out the night sitting safely above the tumultuous sea.

The next morning,the crew discovered that the hurricane had done more than just save their ship. Beside the sandbar where the Oregon now sat was a wide channel. Consulting their charts, they were able to determine their location and realized that this inlet wasn’t on any of their maps. The huge wave that had raised up the Oregon to safety had, at the same time, forced open this new passage in the Outer Banks. The Oregon had been the first ship to travel through it, only seconds after the inlet had come into being.

When the Oregon arrived back at port in Edenton, they let the town know of the new passage. Soon, the channel became one of the most important passages through the Outer Banks, and in honor of the first ship and first crew to pass through, it was named the Oregon Inlet.

Hammock House stands in the historic heart of Beaufort, North Carolina, a few hundred yards from Taylor Creek. The house was built in the early 18th century and is thought to be one of the oldest houses in North Carolina. Even though a porch stretches along the full length of each of the house’s two stories soaking in the warm summer breezes might suggest otherwise, the house wasn’t named for the comfortable rope-net beds. Hammock is a slightly antiquated word for a low hill. Before the town built up around it, the low rise on which Hammock House stands was noticeable enough that it was used as an aid to navigation for ships coming in from the sea.

In its early days, Hammock House was an Inn, serving as a resting place for people passing in and out of Beaufort, and according to some Blackbeard was among those who visited the inn. It’s from the house’s early days as an inn that the legend of a fatal, mistaken duel comes.

In the later part of the 18th century, Beaufort was a busy commercial port, connecting North Carolina to the colonies in the Caribbean, to New England and Canada, and back across the ocean to England. Among the captains who commanded the ships sailing in and out of the waters before the Revolutionary War was a certain Captain Madison Brothers.

Madison Brothers was reportedly an able and competent captain and merchant, who grew wealthy from his trading along the paths of the Atlantic. But Brothers did have one flaw, he was said to have had a fierce temper, and he would fly into a rage at the least provocation. For this, Madison Brothers earned the nickname “Mad” Brothers.

As he grew older, Mad Brothers decided that the time was approaching for him to get married. He sought up and down the coast for a woman willing to be his bride, despite his fierce temper, and eventually found Miss Samantha Ashby. Miss Ashby was the orphaned daughter of a wealthy Baltimore family. After a brief courtship, she agreed to be his wife.

Brothers arranged for her to travel by stagecoach down to Beaufort, and to stay in the Hammock House Inn before the wedding. Mad Brothers would complete his planned trip, and when he arrived back in Beaufort the two of them would be married.

Miss Ashby arrived in Beaufort on time, where she found a pleasant surprise waiting for her. A British Navy ship had docked in Beaufort that morning, and on that ship was her brother, a Lieutenant Carruthers Ashby. Miss Ashby and her brother spent the next few days catching up on old times, dining and laughing together, strolling through the streets of Beaufort.

On the night before Lieutenant Ashby’s ship was scheduled to depart, a send off party and dance was arranged at Hammock House for the ship’s officers. Food was prepared, a band was brought in, and everyone was excited for what was expected to be the social event of the year in this small colonial town. Lieutenant Ashby and his sister were given pride of place at the event in honor of Miss Ashby’s upcoming wedding.

But just as the party started getting underway, Mad Brothers ship pulled into port. As his men secured his vessel, he looked out across the waters and saw the lights at Hammock House blazing. Anxious to see his bride to be, he gathered a small group of men in a launch and rowed up Taylor Creek to the house.

Captain Brothers led his men immediately into the ballroom at Hammock House, where he saw his wife-to-be dancing in the arms of a handsome young sailor.

Mad Brothers immediately flew into a rage, and ripped Miss Ashby from her brother’s arms. Before anyone could explain, Brothers had drawn his sword and was viciously attacking the young sailor. The man had no choice but to defend himself, as Brothers’ men had drawn their weapons and were warning off the crowd from interfering in the fight. Lieutenant Ashby drew his own sword.

Brothers’ rage was so great that he was deaf to the cries of everyone in the room to the terrible mistake he was making. He slashed madly at Lieutenant Ashby, who did his best to keep Brothers’ blows from striking but did not want to harm the man who would soon be marrying his sister.

Brothers drove Ashby across the ballroom, out into the lobby, and started pursuing him up the stairs. Finally, Ashby was cornered, and realized he had no choice but to lunge out. But his balance was off on the narrow stairs, and he trupped and fell on his back. Mad Brothers showed no mercy. He drew the knife from his belt and stabbed Ashby through the heart.

As her brother lay dying, Samantha Ashby rushed to his side. Brothers spat in her direction, gathered his men, and rowed back to his ship. He sailed away before dawn the next morning, and never set foot in Beaufort again.

They say that with his last breath, Lieutenant Ashby whispered his dying request. He wished to be buried in full dress, standing at attention, and facing home to England. To this day, among the unusual graves in Beaufort’s Old Burying Ground Cemetery is the grave of a British naval officer, buried in an upright coffin and facing home to England.

And it’s said that the blood that stained the stairs in Hammock House where Lieutenant Ashby was murdered can still be seen.