Category: Mountains

The Biltomre Estate, located in Asheville, was originally built to be a vacation home for George Washington Vanderbilt, one of the heirs to the Vanderbilt industrial fortune.

George Washington Vanderbilt was fortunate enough to have been born into a life that offered him staggeringly vast amounts of money that he didn’t have to lift a single finger to earn. In 1886 he travelled to Asheville with his mother fell in love with the mountains and the town. He decided, at the tender age of twenty-six, that he would build a vacation home there. Thinking something with a little yard would be nice, he purchased 125,000 acres and called in the shovels. Vanderbilt would eventually spend a significant part of his inheritance constructing the estate, including building out a private railway line to bring his family and guests to the grounds, which were then far outside the bounds of Asheville.

Though the city has crept up on it over the years, the estate remains impressive and the house remains the largest privately owned home in America. Now open to the public, the house, the surrounding estate, the winery, and the related attractions make Biltmore one of the biggest tourist destinations in North Carolina. The gorgeous home and its surrounding gardens have been featured in multiple movies, from the Peter Sellers’ classic Being There, to the less well-remembered Hot Heir, starring Raleigh’s own perennial political candidate and Guppy The Clown Ron Campbell. But some visitors to the Biltmore House have seen even stranger things.

In addition to his architectural passions, George Vanderbilt was an avid collector of books, art, and artifacts. He and his wife Edith turned Biltmore into a private museum of luxury, and would host lavish parties and entertain guests over extended stays.

When he died in 1914, his estate passed through his daughter to his grandsons, and it was they who decided to open the estate to the public. Ever since then, there have been rumors that the founders of the estate may still be around.

During his lifetime, Vanderbilt was particularly proud of his library, and would spend a considerable amount of time there, pouring over some rare edition or other. It was Vanderbilt’s particular habit to retreat into the library when he saw a storm approaching. His ghost may be continuing this habit, as workers and visitors to the estate are said to have seen a shadowy figure in the library, usually when the skies are dark and there is an oncoming storm.

George Vanderbilt may also not be the only member of his family keeping up old habits. Edith Vanderbilt was known to personally journey down to the library to remind her husband when it was time to join his guests. Today, many people passing through the library have reported hearing a woman’s voice whisper the name “George.” She may be summoning George away from his studies and back to what seems to be an eternal party. Workers and visitors have reported hearing the sounds of clinking glasses, laughter, and snatches of music echoing through the halls. There have even been reports of the sounds of splashing coming from the estate’s now-empty swimming pool.

If the Vanderbilts are indeed continuing their lavish existence into the afterlife, it may be evidence that while you may not be able to take it with you, you also don’t necessarily have to leave it all behind.

It happened once that Jack was down on his luck and so he decided to go out looking for work. Now Jack didn’t like to work much, but he figured it was better than starving. So he put his beat up old hat on his head and set off down the road and he came to an old mill. The miller was standing outside and Jack asked him if he had any work to give him.

“Well yes I do,” said the miller, “I need someone to tend the mill and grind the corn. You work for me and I’ll pay you fair and give you board and let you sleep in the mill. But there’s something I should tell you. There’s some haunting going on in that mill, and nobody who’s worked for me has lived past the first night they stayed there.”

Jack took a look at the mill. It was a fine big stone building with plenty of glass windows that looked cozy and dry and like a good place to set up home for some time.

“I reckon I can handle any haunts,” said Jack, “I don’t get scared much and there ain’t no haunt that’s worse than being dead hungry and out of a job.”

And so the miller gave Jack the keys to the mill and let him get started. Pretty soon after that, an old man with a long beard carrying a big bag of corn over his shoulder walked up the road.

“Hello Jack,” said the old man.

“Hello there,” said Jack, “I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you before.”

“No,” said the old man, “I’m a stranger.”

“Then how does it happen you know my name?” asked Jack.

“I knowed ye time I saw ye”, said the old man, “I was wondering if you could grind this corn for me.”

And so Jack took the corn into the mill and ground it real fine for the old man. And the old took his bag of meal and said to Jack “You’ve been so kind and helpful, Jack, I want to give you a present. Take this here knife made out of silver. It’s real sharp and will cut real fine.”

And so the man set off back down the road and Jack busied himself tidying up the mill and making it into a home. As the evening drew on, the miller came to the door with a hunk of meat and a big piece of pone for Jack’s supper.

“I reckon any man deserves a fine last meal”, The miller said and set off back to his house. Jack built himself a fire cooked the meat into a nice stew and set in to settle down for the night.

As Jack sat there eating his stew he saw something out of the corner of his eye. A big, black cat walked into the room. Jack didn’t pay it no mind, but then another cat came in. And then another. And soon there were twelve big black cats, each one bigger than the last, sitting around the room and staring at Jack.

Now Jack was a little nervous about this, but he figured there was nothing to fear from a bunch of cats. But then the biggest, blackest cat of all walked right up to Jack. It looked up and down at Jack and then Jack and then spoke to him.

“Sop, doll, sop” said the cat, and it stuck its paw right in Jack’s stew to sop up the juices and started licking that tasty meat right off its paw.

Now Jack was a little surprised at this, but he looked right back at that cat and said “You do that again and I’ll cut that doll right off.”

The cat didn’t seem to care much. It looked up and down all over Jack again and then cast its bright green eyes right on that bowl.

“Sop, doll, sop,” said the cat, and stuck it’s paw right in the bowl again.

So Jack whipped out that silver knife the old man had given him and the cut that doll right off.

When he did this, that cat let out a yowl and all the other cats started yowling and they all ran right out into the night. Jack went to pick up the cat’s paw lying on the ground, but when he did he was surprised to see that it wasn’t a cat’s paw lying there, but a woman’s hand with a wedding ring on one finger. So Jack wrapped it up in a cloth and set it aside to show the miller in the morning.

When the morning came, the miller came right in without knocking figuring he’d find nothing but another funeral he’d have to pay for. But there was Jack, stretched out before the fire and still snoring away. The miller woke Jack up, and Jack told him what had happened and showed him that hand.

“I know that hand,” said the miller, “And I sure know that ring. You come on up to the house with me an we’ll get this sorted.”

So Jack and the miller walked up into the house where the miller led them right to his wife, who was still lying in bed with the covers pulled up right up to her chin.

“I don’t feel so good,” said the wife, “I ain’t getting up today”

“You show me your hand,” said the miller, and the wife stuck her right hand out from under the covers.

“It’s your left hand I want to see,” said the miller, but the wife said she wouldn’t show him her left and and so he pulled off the covers and where here left hand should have been there was nothing but a bloody stump.

Now the miller knew that his wife was a witch, and he knew that she was the one who had killed all the men he’d hired to work for him. And just then eleven other women rushed into the room, they were the rest of the witches who knew, like witches do, that their secret was out. And so Jack and the Miller rushed out of the house and barred the door and set the house on fire and pretty soon that house and all those witches were burned up, crackle-pop.

“It was a lucky thing you had that silver knife,” said the miller, “You can’t hurt a witch with a knife unless it’s a silver knife. I had guessed that wife of mine had been mixed up with a passel of witches, and now there’s no more of that.”

And so Jack stayed with the miller some time. He paid Jack well and the miller got himself another, prettier wife who wasn’t a witch. Jack made a good living for a time, until he reckoned he’d done enough milling and set off again to find something else to do.

More About This Story

This story is retold from a group of folktales once common in the Appalachian mountains called The Jack Tales. They all concern the young boy Jack, who uses his luck and wits to overcome enemies and repeatedly make a fortune. These tales are all travelled to America from Europe, and the Jack in the stories is the same Jack who’s now best remembered for his adventures with a beanstalk. These tales were first recorded in America by the folklorist Isobel Gordon Carter, who heard them from a Mrs. Jane Gentry in Hot Springs, North Carolina in the 1920s. Eighteen of the stories have been collected in Richard Chase’s classic The Jack Tales, which is essential, and delightful, reading for anyone interested in North Carolina folklore.

The figure of the mysterious, bearded old man appears in several of the Jack stories. He usually appears to give Jack a present that will be essential in filling his quest. He might be just a narrative convenience, but in this tale his enigmatic statement of “I knowed ye time I saw ye” implies that he’s a religious figure of some kind.

The phrase the witch says when she’s transformed into a cat, “sop doll, sop”, is a little ambiguous in it’s meaning. It’s assumed that a doll is another name for a cat’s paw, but there seems to be no other instance of the word being used that way outside of the story, although on a personal note, I didn’t discover this fact until relatively late in life. Which might explain why, after growing up knowing this story by heart, I received so many curious looks when I called a cat’s paw a doll.

The town of Blowing Rock, North Carolina, is named for The Blowing Rock, an outcropping of rock studded with crystals that hangs over a deep valley in the Appalachian Mountains. The rock is famous for the constant, strong upward draught that comes out of the valley below the rock. This wind is so steady that in the winter, snow will fall upwards around he rock.

The legend that explains this unusual phenomenon is a romantic tale of love triumphing over duty and difference.

Once, long ago, a young Chickasaw woman and her father moved deep into the mountains to escape the constant war between the Chickasaw and the Cherokee. One day, the young woman was out gathering food when she happened upon a handsome young man hunting in the woods. The two fell instantly in love. But they were also aware of the danger their love posed. The young man was a Cherokee. The two were lovers who should have been enemies.

They met secretly in the woods. For months, they enjoyed each others company in secret places in the mountains and ignored what the rest of the world would think.

Then, one evening, the two lovers saw a strange red glow in the sky. They felt drawn towards a certain cliff, and stood on its edge as they watched the sky grow a deeper and deeper red, until it was almost the color of fresh blood.

The young man understood the sign. He knew that it was a warning that the Cherokee and Chickasaw nations were preparing for a huge battle, that blood would be lost on both sides.

The young man knew his duty was with his Cherokee people. He knew his heart was with his Chickasaw love. Unwilling to decide which meant more to him, the young man chose another way. He leapt of the rock the two were standing on into the valley below.

The young woman, horrified at what had happened, prayed that the gods who controlled the wind would send her love back to her. They heard her prayer, and the young man was lifted back up into her arms.

The young lovers journeyed together to each others lands, and used the example of their love to bring peace to the two nations. And the wind still blows strongly at Blowing Rock.

In the mountains of the Southern Appalachians, from North Carolina down through Georgia and Alabama, the remains of ancient stone structures line the ridges. Some of these are additions to natural rock formations, others are entirely man-made. Who built these structures? Are they the remains of an ancient war fought in the Appalachians? Are they all that’s left of the Moon-Eyed People?
The Moon-Eyed People are a race of small men who, according to Cherokee legend, once lived in the Southern Appalachians. The Moon-Eyed People were said to being physically very different from the Cherokee, being bearded and having pale, perfectly white skin. They were called Moon-Eyed because they were unable to see in daylight, their sensitive eyes being blinded by the sun. For this reason, they were strictly nocturnal, and lived in underground caverns.

Perhaps the most famous structure associated with The Moon-Eyed People is just over the North Carolina border in Georgia at Fort Mountain. Now a state park, Fort Mountain gets its name form the 850 foot long stone wall that varies in height from two to six feet and stretches along the top of the ridge. This stone wall is thought to have been constructed around 400 – 500 C.E.

According to one Cherokee legend, this wall is a remnant of a war that the Moon-Eyed people fought and lost against the neighboring Creek nation. The Creeks drove the Moon-Eyed People from their homeland during a full moon, which even the pale light of is blinding to these nocturnal people.

Another version of the story has is that it was the Cherokee themselves who waged war against the Moon-Eyed People, driving them from their home at Hiwassee, a village near what is now Murphy, North Carolina, west into Tennessee. Both versions of the story say the Moon-Eyed People began living underground after losing the war.
Cherokee cosmology is complex and fascinating, and describes a universe where humans share the world with other, non-human, supernatural peoples. In the traditional Cherokee concept of the world, races such as the Nunnehi or the Yunwi Tsudi are a part of the natural world who interact with humans at their own discretion, similar to the traditional idea of fairies in the British Isles. However, what’s interesting is that The Moon-Eyed People are never described as being supernatural, but are remembered as another group of humans who were physically very different than the Native Americans.

Because the description of the Moon-Eyed People is that they are pale-skinned and bearded, this has led to some amount of speculation, quite a bit of it wild, that the legend of the Moon-Eyed People represents a Cherokee folk memory of contact with a group of European settlers who made it to the new world before Columbus. Particularly, the Cherokee legend of the Moon-Eyed People has been matched up with the Welsh legend of Prince Madoc.

Acording to the Welsh story, Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd was a Welsh prince who, disenchanted with the civil war wracking his homeland, set sail with his brother Rhirid and a few followers in 1170 across the Atlantic Ocean and landed somewhere around Mobile Bay, Alabama. After some exploring up and down the rivers of southern America, Madoc decided he liked the place well enough and decided to move in. Leaving Rhirid and some of his fellow Welshmen behind, Madoc returned to his native country and recruited enough followers to fill ten ships. He and his colonists set sail back to America and was never heard from in Wales again. Some have speculated that the Moon-Eyed People are the descendants of Madoc’s colonists, and that it was these Welshman who fought a war with the Cherokee, and these Welshmen who built the stone forts that dot the ridges of the mountains.

Driven out by the Cherokee, Madoc’s descendants found their way South to Florida and Alabama, where they continued to live in, slowly absorbing bits of Native American culture, until they became a strange tribe of pale Indians, living and dressing in Native ways but speaking Welsh.

More About this Story

There is absolutely no historical or archaeological evidence to support the tale of Prince Madoc. King Owain Gwynedd was a real enough historical figure, but no contemporary source names either a Madoc or a Rhirid as his son. The story of Madoc’s journey seems to have arisen around 1580 as a piece of propaganda to bolster England’s claim to the new world, which needed some bolstering because at that time England’s arch-rival Spain was doing most of the actual colonization in the Americas. Spreading the idea that someone from the British Isles had gotten there first painted the Spanish as Johnny-Come-Lately’s usurping the rightful English claim to the Americas. Of course, the legitimacy of either claim would have been very correctly questioned by the vast number of people who happened to be living in the “New” World at the time.

Stories of European settlers who encountered Welsh-speaking Indians began circulating in the late 17th Century. A Reverend Morgan Jones claimed to have been captured by a people called the Doeg in present-day South Carolina in 1666, who he was astonished to learn spoke Welsh. According to Jones’ account, he preached Christianity to the Doeg for a few months before being set free. Amazingly, Jones seems not to have told anyone of this interesting experience until twenty years after it happened.

Another story tells of a Welsh sailor named Steadman, who was shipwrecked somewhere on the Gulf Coast of Alabama or Florida in in the 1660s, and was astonished to discover a group of Welsh-speaking Natives. Steadman’s account failed to be published until 1777, and its authenticity is somewhat suspect.

In the 18th and 19th centuries these stories of Welsh Indians were extremely popular. Govenor Robert Dinwidde of Virginia even put forth the staggering sum of £500 to finance an expedition to find the Welsh Indians he believed to be west of the Mississippi. Lewis and Clark even kept an eye out for the Welsh Indians on their famous expedition.

This idea of Welsh Indians persisted long enough that, for a good part of the twentieth century, a historical maker commemorating Prince Madoc’s journey and donated by the Daughters of the American Revolution stood on the beach in Mobile bay until it was removed by a more historically conscientious member of the park service.

When James Mooney published Myths and Legends of the Cherokee in 1902 and introduced the Cherokee legend of the Moon-Eyed People to a larger audience seems to be when the Cherokee story and the story of Prince Madoc began to be conflated.

The idea of Welsh Indians was just one of several popular ideas of pre-Columbian contact with the New World that were circulating in America at the time. The notion that the Lost Tribes of Israel somehow also managed to find their way to North America even found its way into the first new American religion when Joseph Smith published The Book of Mormon.

Many of these stories seem to have risen up from the concept that the citizens of the new American nation had of Native Americans, as opposed to the historical reality of the continent. The romantic idea of Indians as primordial, timeless, and having lived in essentially the same manner for centuries before European contact began to be prevalent in America as the new nation emerged. Ideas about the pre-contact size of the population of America at the time were also grossly underestimated. Americans saw the Indians as being scattered in small populations, unaware that these were the remnants of once populous nations whose ranks had been devastated by European diseases in the early years of contact. Modern estimates say as much as 90% of the native population of North America may have died from disease in the 16th and 17 centuries.

These civilizations left behind physical remains which Europeans encountered. Particularly, the mound-building Cahokian culture left behind the remains of cities and temple complexes across the Southeastern United States along the Mississippi valley, stretching as far east as Town Creek Mound in North Carolina.

At its height around 1200, the city called Cahokia near modern St. Louis was twice the size of contemporary London, and larger than any other city in North America would be again until the 20th century. Encounters with the abundant evidence of this civilization led to wild speculation about who built the mounds and what their purpose was.

Unable to reconcile the physical evidence with their perceptions of the Native Americans, combined with the insidious assumptions of European superiority in all things, wildly speculative ideas about ancient European visitors rose up to fill the gaps. But, except for a brief period of Viking contact in the 10th and 11th Centuries, there is no evidence that such contact ever happened, and quite a bit of evidence that it didn’t happen.

So the hill forts that stretch across the Southern Appalachians, and the Cherokee legend of a conflict with some other people, may very well be related. It could all be evidence of a war that was fought on an impressive scale on North American soil a very long time ago. We may never know the parties involved in the conflict, but we can be fairly certain that none of them were Welsh.

Chimney Rock, a high stone outcropping near Asheville that can be seen for miles, was the site of one of the oddest series of events ever recorded in North Carolina. In the first few years of the Nineteenth Century, residents around the rock reported a number of unusual sightings, including angelic hosts and an ariel battle between armies on winged horses.

The story begins on July 31, 1806, when eight-year-old Elizabeth Reaves, whose family lived in Buncombe County near Chimney Rock, told her older brother that that she had seen a man on top of Chimney Rock. In the days before rock climbing was a hobby, this would have been unheard of. Her brother refused to believe her, but when she persuaded him to go look young Morgan Reaves saw not just one, but thousands of people flying through the air around Chimney Rock.

The people the Reaves children saw were described as being clothed in brilliant white, ranging in size from infant to adult. While they were generally human in shape, the children could make out no distinct features, and there was no clear differentiation in age or gender.

The children called to their mother, Patsy Reaves, who came running. All in all six people saw the apparition. In addition to Elizabeth, Morgan, and Mrs. Patsy Reaves, the youngest Reaves daughter Polly, a neighbor, Mr. Robert Siercy, and an African-American woman who is unnamed in the original reports, all spent the next hour watching a strange spectacle unfold.

The crowd of beings rose to the top of Chimney Rock, and when all but a few had gathered there, three members of the crowd rose up above the others, hover there, and then led the congregation of shining beings up through the air to disappear into the heavens.

The account of this strange apparition was printed a few weeks later in the Raleigh Register and Gazette, and then cited again in Edward Augustus Kendall’s Travels Through the Northern Parts of the United States in the Years 1807 and 1808.

Several years later in 1811, another, perhaps even more strange, apparition appeared by Chimney Rock, when a pair of armies riding tiny, winged horses met in a fierce battle in the air.

Over the course of several evenings in the summer of that year, multiple witnesses in different locations saw two opposing bands of cavalry riding winged horses circling each other in the sky. On the final evening, the two armies finally engaged each other and clashed in the sky over Chimney Rock. The spectral cavalrymen were armed with swords, and witnesses said they could hear the distend sounds of clashing metal and the groans of the wounded. The battle lasted only about ten minutes, at the end of which the defeated army retreated and the victorious army disappeared into the darkness.

Newspapers across the state carried reports of this strange battle. A public meeting was held in Rutherfordton, and public speculation soon settled on the idea that the battle was a divine vision of highlights from the not-so-far distant Revolutionary War. Why exactly the laws of space and time would be bent so spectacularly to give a handful of spectators an early version of The History Channel wasn’t really questioned, but people had more faith in democracy in those days.

Why Chimney Rock was host to such supernatural spectacle in two centuries ago and whether anything like it will be seen again remains a mystery. Today, however, Chimney Rock is a state park, and the certainty of the spectacle of natural beauty awaits visitors.

One of the most frightening apparitions in the catalog of North Carolina hauntings comes from the quiet mountain town of Valle Crucis. This small town takes its name, which is Latin for “Valley of the Cross” from the two streams which meet at right angles in the middle of the valley. The morning mist lingers longer in the valley of the cross than elsewhere in the mountains, and even on sunny days the town has a quietness to it that seems to set it apart from the rest of the world.

But it’s at night that the supernatural side of Valle Crucis reveals itself. There’s a certain old stone church, located along Highway 194 just on the edge of town, where among the leaning graves in the churchyard cemetery something that could not possibly be from this world steps in and out of the shadows.

It happened one time that that two young men were driving along this road around midnight. It was a clear night and the moon was full, bathing the valley in an eerie white glow.

As their car turned a corner passing the old church, the two young men saw a shadow leap out from behind one of the graves and into the road in front of them. Swerving to avoid whatever had landed in the road, the driver slammed his foot on the brake and pulled off onto the side of the narrow road. Wondering what he had almost hit, he craned his head around over his shoulder to see what was in the road.

It was a dog. But not an ordinary dog. This was a dog a tall and as wide as a full-grown man, covered with bristling black fur and baring its massive, yellow teeth. And the animal’s eyes were glowing. Not reflecting light like a dog’s eyes will do, but actually glowing, burning with a smoldering red light that seemed to have about it something of the very fires of Hell.

The one young man turned to the other and asked “Do you see that?”

“No,” his friend replied, “and neither do you.”

The animal began to walk towards their parked car. By mutual and unspoken agreement the driver lifted his foot off of the brake and slammed it down on the accelerator. They roared off down the mountain road, taking the hairpin turns and twists of the road and sixty …seventy…eighty miles an hour.

It was only when the driver looked in the rear view mirror that he realized the dog was still following them.

And keeping up with them.

And even gaining on them.

Panicked, and expecting the jaws of the dog to wrap around the bumper of the car and drag it back into hell, the driver gave one final push on the accelerator, and just as the beast was about to catch them, the car leapt over the bridge the water just below where the streams meet in a cross.

And the dog stopped following them.

Thy watched it fade into the distance and wondered what supernatural law it was that the animal was obliged to obey that kept its territory limited by the boundaries of the water. The two young men drove into Boone and went to the local waffle house, since it was the only place around that was open twenty four hours and they both knew that neither one was going to sleep that night.

In a field by a stream in Jackson county lies the mysterious artifact called Judaculla Rock. Judaculla rock is an outcropping of soapstone, covered with hundreds of ancient carvings. The origin and meaning of these carvings is unknown. Archaeologists think that they were carved over the course of several centuries, beginning about five thousand years ago. But according to one legend, these markings in this huge boulder are the handiwork of a giant.

The name Judaculla is a corruption of the Cherokee word Tsulkälû´, the name of a giant who was said to live in the area. Tsulkälû´ literally translates as “he has them slanting.” In this case, what’s slanting is the giant’s eyes, so the name Tsulkälû´ is usually translated as “Slant-Eyed Giant.” Someone must have been being polite to this towering figure when they gave him that name, because that’s not the most distinguishing physical feature of the giant. Tsulkälû´ was over seven feet tall, with seven fingers on each hand and seven fingers on each foot. Tsulkälû´ is also reportedly tremendously ugly, with an exceptionally hairy body and claw-like fingernails and toenails. An important and powerful figure in the Cherokee cosmos, Tsulkälû´ had control of the winds, the rain, thunder, and lightning. Tsulkälû´ also owned all of the game in the mountains, and it was only with his blessing that the Cherokee were allowed to hunt. Tsulkälû´ was actively involved in he lives of the Cherokee, even at one point taking a human wife.

There are several different explanations for how Tsulkälû´ came to make the carvings on the rock. One explanation is that the carvings are the hunting laws that Tsulkälû´ lay down for the Cherokee to obey. Another says that the markings were caused by Tsul`kälû´ using the rock to catch himself as he jumped down from his farm, which was located in a nearby clearing known as Judaculla Old Fields.

One more story focuses on a carving in the lower right hand side of the rock that resembles a seven-toed foot. It’s said that Tsul`kälû´ was angered by a Cherokee hunting party that had trespassed on his land. In his rage, he jumped down from his farm to run the hunters off of his land, and hit the rock with such strength that he forced his footprint into it.

Early European settlers viewed both Judaculla Rock and the nearby Judaculla Old Fields with a degree of superstition, and insisted that the area was the home of the “Indian Satan.” Rumors circulated of a giant snake that ives in the area that would swallow people by the dozen.

The rock seems to have been an important focal point of Cherokee life in the area, and it’s said that it was the site of Cherokee religious rituals up until the forced expulsion in the 19th Century. Archaeological evidence has shown that the soapstone in the area around the rock was quarried and shaped on the site over the course of several centuries.

The meaning of the carvings on the rock itself remain mysterious, although archaeologists think that some of the more recent carvings may be a map of the area noting the availability of resources and game.

Judaculla Rock is unique among rock carving, or petroglyph, sites East of the Mississippi. There are 1,548 individual carvings that have been identified on the rock, more than three times the number of the next-nearest petroglyph boulder in this part of the country at Track Rock Gap in Northern Georgia.

Recent excavations at the site have revealed that Judaculla Rock was once part of a larger site, arranged with other boulders that have since been removed or destroyed. The rock is also part of a large number of petroglyphs that are found carved on rocks and cliffs across the entire Southern Appalachians, and which are only now being rediscovered and extensively catalogued.

Hot Springs is a quiet little town nestled deep in the Blue Ridge, just North of Asheville and Just South of the Tennessee border. The French Broad River cuts through the town, making it a draw for paddlers and kayakers. The Town gets its name from the natural hot springs which bubble up from the ground. It was these waters that brought tourists to Hot Springs throughout the nineteenth century. The springs are reported to have natural healing properties, and tourists seeking relief from various ailments or just a pleasant way to relax came to the town in droves. The sense of calm and relaxation seems to have spread from those spring throughout the entire town, and there is something of a mildly otherwordldy aura about the little town of Hot Springs. The town has been called where Mayberry meets The Twilight Zone.

Perhaps its something about this aura that seems to be doing its best from keeping Hot Springs from getting too big. Over the years, two grand hotels have been built near the springs, both of which came to ruin.

Patton’s White House, which was built in 1837, had 350 rooms and a dining room that could seat 600.The hotel also boasted the largest ballroom in North Carolina, ad was a destination for the well-to-do tourist until it burned to the ground in the middle of the century.

Its successor, the Mountain Park Inn, was built in 1886 and was an even grander. This 200 room hotel with a nine-hole golf course and sixteen marble baths fed by the springs.

But the Mountain Park Inn also burned to the ground in 1920. Something seemed intent on keeping Hot Springs from getting too crowded.

The warm waters flowing from the earth were sacred to the Cherokee, and a few miles down the river is the important Cherokee religious site of Paint Rock. Ever since the 19th Century, people have reported seeing the figure of a Cherokee man walking in the woods near the river and the springs.

The Hot Springs are once again open for business, only now on a much smaller scale than the grand hotels of the past. The water flowing from the springs is pumped into a series of sheltered hot tubs along the banks of the French Broad. It’s said that the ghost of the Cherokee keeps his eyes on these, and a number of surprised soakers have even reported the ghost slipping into the tub next to them!

Is there some remnant of energy from when Hot Springs was Cherokee sacred ground that’s keeping development in check? Today, Hot Springs is a magnet for artists and spiritual seekers, all of whom seem to agree there is something unique about the feeling of the town. The town is also once again a booming tourist attraction, and starting to grow. Maybe something will let us know if it gets too big.

Roan Mountain stands right on the border between North Carolina and Tennessee, about one hour west of Banner Elk. Roan Mountain is not just one mountain, but a five-mile long ridgetop that reaches it’s highest elevation a Roan High Top nearly two miles above sea level. This long ridge is covered with shady balsams and rhododendrons that fill the hills with beautiful patches of pink and white when they’re in bloom. But some people say that there’s more than immediately appears along this high ridge. Some say that on the heights of Roan Mountain supernatural voices can be heard.

The wind is powerful on Roan Mountain. In 1799, the survey team that was sent out to determine the border between North Carolina and Tennessee noted when passing through the area that the wind had worn large holes in the face of the rock on top of the mountain. As European settlers began to descend on the area in the early 19th Century, stories soon began to be told that the wind that whipped around Roan Mountain carried something else with it. They said that when you stood at the highest points along the ridge, you could hear voices singing in the wind.

But no one agreed what kind of singing it was. Some said it was the sound of a beautiful angelic choir, that the voices were ones of heavenly beauty. Some said that Roan Mountain was the place where the angels gathered to practice singing for the Christian Judgement Day, that on Roan Mountain could be heard the sounds of heaven.

Others disagreed. They said that the sounds that called out on Roan Mountain were an unearthly wailing, the sounds of demons and tormented souls crying in pain and torture. They said that the voices of Roan Mountain were echoes coming from Hell.

In 1878, Colonel John T. Wilder, a Union Army officer during the Civil War who had settled in Tennessee after the fighting had stopped noticed the growing attraction of the Blue Ridge Mountains as a tourist destination. By that time, Asheville and Hot Springs were both already well-established stops for people seeking beautiful views and cool summer air. Wilder realized that Roan Mountain had spectacular views, and was also now easily accessible by the newly-built East Tennessee and Western North Carolina Railroad. So Wilder build The Cloudland Hotel on top of Roan Mountain and hoped to draw visitors from across the country.

The 166 room hotel offered full service, beautiful views, and reasonable rates of only $2 a day, $10 a week, and $39 a month. It also sat directly on top of the border line between Tennessee and North Carolina. At that time, consuming and selling alcohol was illegal on the North Carolina side of the property, but legal on the Tennessee side. To keep things straight, a wide white line was drawn down the center of the dining room, even dividing the central banquet table in half, to let patrons know exactly where they could enjoy a drink. According to legend, the Sheriff of Avery County spent a good deal of time hanging around the dining room, keeping his eye peeled for anyone who strayed over the border into North Carolina holding a drink. One foot across the state line would immediately result in a very stiff fine, payable on the spot in cash.

But it was guests at this hotel who had some of the most notable encounters with the strange music of Roan Mountain. Henry E, Colton, a geologist and naturalist visited the mountain in 1878 and there recorded that he did hear a clear and distinct sound “like the humming of a thousand bees” when standing on the mountain. He attributed this sound the electrical energy generated by the friction of air currents rising up from the valley.

Another visitor who trekked out from the Hotel in the late 19th Century had a completely different experience of the phantom music. This young man hiked out onto the mountain on a gloomy day against Wilder’s warnings and soon found himself caught in a raging thunderstorm. As the wind around him raged, he began to hear unearthly howls and moans calling from the air around him. He took shelter in a cave, where he found himself confronted by much more than he had bargained for.

In the cave, the voices didn’t cease, but grew even louder. The air around the young man soon began to be filled with spectral visions, gashed and torn bodies bearing the marks of torture floated around him. Their screams of torment filled the air, as the hideous shapes danced around him. The man passed out from fear. When he awoke, he found his clothing was torn and as white as if it had been bleached. The man returned to the cave convinced he had seen a vision of Hell.

People say they hear the phantom choir of Roan Mountain singing to this day, and to this day some hear angelic voices and some hear tormented screams. It’s said that the sounds are most often heard after a thunderstorm has passed through the valley. Some say that it’s the wind moving through the balsams, some say it’s something not of this world, and that whether your the voices of angels or demons on Roan Mountain is a taste of what awaits you in the next world.

There’s another unusual phenomenon associated with Roan Mountain, although this one is entirely natural. Multiple people have reported seeing circular rainbows in the sky above the mountain. While all rainbows are full circles, rainbows are also very large, and from the perspective of the viewer the arc of the bow is most often interrupted by intersecting with the Earth. While this is something that is often seen by airline pilots flying high above the ground, it’s only from very high altitudes when atmospheric conditions are exactly right that the full circle of the rainbow can be seen from the surface. Roan Mountain seems to have just the right conditions to make it one of the few places on the planet where this can happen.

The Cloudland Hotel closed early in the 20th Century, and the building was demolished and the land sold to the National Forest Service. Today, Roan Mountain is protected forrest land and the Appalachian Trail crosses the top of the ridge. Its beauty is open and enjoyable to anyone who cares to take a challenging hike through the hills, and to anyone who may be prepared to hear voices singing to them from outside of this world.

The French Broad River meanders slowly through Asheville on its way to Tennessee, where in the vicinity of Knoxville it joins with the Holston River to form the Tennessee River. The Tennessee flows into the Ohio, which connects to the Mississippi. It’s this convergence which gave the river such an important place in the early economy of North Carolina. In the days when rivers were the most important transportation routes across the county, it was the French Broad which connected North Carolina to the West. The French Broad was the early lifeblood of Asheville, and from the settling of the mountains by Europeans until the early 20th century the river was lined with logging camps and sawmills cutting and shipping timber out into the wide world.

But apart from it’s economic importance, the French Broad has also been a source of joy for those who lived in Asheville. It’s slow path through the city and cool, inviting waters made it the perfect place to take a dip on a hot summer day. It’s from this that we get the story of one of North Carolina’s most unusual ghosts, the naked ghost of the Craven Street bridge.

The story goes that sometime in the early 20th century, one evening a group of young boys went swimming in the river on a hot summer day. They were out on what was then the western edge of the city, just south of where now I-240 crosses the river. These were the days before bathing suits were something that most everyone owned, and so the boys stripped off and dove into the river as naked as the day they were born. In a few ways, things were a little more relaxed back then.

The boys chose a bad time to go swimming. There had been bad storms upriver a few days before, and the usually calm French Broad was flowing more swiftly than normal. The gentle eddies where the river flowed over the boulders lying in its bed had become dangerous undercurrents. They had also ventured out late in the evening, the sun was already heading down as they first swam into the waters.

The boys were playing and laughing, not noticing that they were floating further and faster down the river than usual. When they noticed that the light was fading and they had drifted down to close to the pilings of the bridge where Craven Street crossed the French Broad, and where the water was flowing in dangerous rapids around the bridge, they realized they needed to head home. And they also realized that one of their party was missing.

The boys began a frantic search for their missing friend. They called out his name, dove underwater, and sent one of their number running for help. As the neighbors came down a frantic search was organized, boats were set out on the water, and lanterns lit up the river.

As the night grew deeper, they sadly realized their chances had run out. They made the choice to call off the search. Boats would be sent out in the daylight to dredge the river. But even that was to no avail. The poor child’s body was never found.

But soon after the boy disappeared, some of those traveling across the bridge at the time when night fell began to speak of something strange. They said that they saw a naked boy running across the bridge, but that when they called out to him he kept running as if he couldn’t hear. And if they ran to catch up with him, he vanished into thin air.

Naked ghosts are something of a rarity in American Folklore, although the topic of why ghosts wear clothes has been a surprisingly hotly debated one in the history of religion and belief in the supernatural. Those arguing against the possibility of the spirits of the dead returning to earth have presented multiple variations on the premise that if a ghost is the appearance of a soul on Earth, for a ghost to be clothed that means that the clothing must also be possessed with some immortal element capable of returning to earth. To put it simply, they say that if a ghost isn’t barefoot it means that shoes have souls. Which is to many people on both sides of the argument a theological absurdity.

The American satirist and short story writer Ambrose Bierce lampooned the idea of clothed spirits in his 1902 essay The Clothing of Ghosts, stating that he would only accept as real a spirit who appeared to him while completely nude. “We draw the line at clothing,” Bierce wrote, “The materialized spook appealing to our senses for recognition of his ghostly character must authenticate himself otherwise than by familiar and remembered habiliments. He must be credentialed by nudity —and that regardless of temperature or who may happen to be present.”

If the clothed or unclothed spirit of Ambrose Bierce ever returns to this earth, we expect that he will at least have a definite answer to the question for us all. If you don’t want to wait around for his spirit to return, the naked ghost of Craven Street bridge is supposedly still seen until this day, when drivers in the early evening hours on the hottest days of summer are surprised to see a naked boy running along side their car who disappears before he finishes crossing the bridge.