Category: Piedmont

This happened a long time ago. There was a man who had a farm and a farmhouse with a nice big front room. He lived there alone after his wife had died. His wife had loved one thing in this world more than anything else, and that was to play the piano sitting in that front room. When she was alive, she would sit there every night and hit those keys to make beautiful music. And when it came time for her to leave this world, she called her husband to her bedside and made him promise that he would never, ever sell that piano or move if from the house. That’s how much she loved that piano.

So for many years that’s what the man did. He just let that piano sit there. But came time he was getting old, and getting tired of taking care of that big farm and that big house. He decided he wanted to sell it and move somewhere smaller. So he started to pack up all his things and move his furniture out of the house.

He had his bed and his sofa and all his other furniture sitting out on the porch ready to move away. And then he went to move that piano. He hauled that piano out onto the porch with the rest of the furniture. Well, that piano just lifted up its legs and walked right back to where it had been sitting all those years.

The man hauled it out onto the porch again. But it got up again and walked right back to where it had been.

This went on and on. That piano just would not go.

Finally, the man got so angry about it he said he pay a whole bunch of money to anyone who could move that piano.

There was an old root woman who lived nearby. Everybody went to root women in those days to take care of any kind of unusual problem. This old root woman heard that the man was offering a whole bunch of money to anyone who could move that piano, and she thought that she sure would like a whole bunch of money, and that a piano that moved by itself was a mighty unusual problem. So she reckoned that she was just the one to take care of it.

So she went to the old man and told him that she was the one to move that piano, and that she’d be dancing in Hell if she couldn’t move it. The man told her to go get her roots and such and see what she could do.

When the root woman came back, her mother was walking right behind her, yelling at her. Her daughter had told her what she’d said about dancing in Hell, and that root woman’s mother was going on and on about people making big promises and saying what they hoped would happen to them if they couldn’t keep those promises, and how they could come to regret saying what they hoped would happen to them if they couldn’t do what they said they’d do.

But that root woman didn’t listen to her mother. She took her roots and such and started trying to move the piano. She got it out onto the porch, but the same thing happened again. That piano got up and started moving. Only this time that piano was moving fast, so fast that it knocked that root woman down and it killed her and she died. Now everybody says that they believe that she’s dancing in Hell.

About This Story

This story is retold from J. Mason Brewer’s Worser Days and Better Times, a collection of African-American folktales published in 1965. A native of Texas, J. Mason Brewer was one of the most prominent collectors of African American folklore in the 20th Century. Dr. Brewer was the first African-American man to serve on the council of the American Folklore Society, and also the first African-American to be a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. He was a professor at Livingston College in Salisbury, NC, in the 1960s.

Purgatory Mountain is a low, flat mountain at the northern edge of the Uwharrie range in Asheboro. Though the Uhwarries are some of the oldest mountains in the world, this hill went unnamed until near the end of the American Civil War.

In the waining days of the war, the Confederacy knew that it had lost. They were discovering that what it called a noble cause didn’t seem so noble to a lot of the population. With emancipation being declared and the certainty of a victory for the Union, huge numbers of slaves had fled their oppressors and made their way towards freedom. And there were others who lived in North Carolina who also never believed in the justice of slavery, among them the large population of Quakers who had settled in the piedmont around Greensboro.

The Quakers were pacifists, who refused to fight in any way, particularly one which was dedicated to preserving such an unjust system. But an order went out from the Capitol that every able-bodied man was to enlist in the Confederate army. To enforce this law, the state hired gangs of men to go out and capture anyone resisting the draft and bring them to the army.

Among these hired men was a particularly evil man, a burly, black-bearded man who had murdered many men even before the war. Nobody knew his name, he was only called The Hunter. His was paid by the head for every man he brought in, and he determined the Quakers were weak and would be easily captured, bringing him a big bag of cash if he could bring in many men at once.

And so The Hunter set off to a Quaker settlement on a hill near Asheboro, where on Sunday morning he burst into the silent meeting house with two shotguns pointed at the congregation. Trapped, and with no way to resist, the young men of the congregation were captured. The hunter tied together twenty-two Quaker boys, some not even as old as fourteen, and marched them out of the town at gunpoint, heading towards the recruitment center in Wilmington.

For days, The Hunter dragged the boys through the hills and fields towards the Cape Fear and down towards Wilmington. But the fall of the Confederacy was imminent, and the land was in confusion. One night, The Hunter stopped into a tavern to drink and hear the latest gossip, leaving the boys tied tightly outside.

When he emerged into the night, the boys could see he had had more than his share to drink. As he collapsed onto the ground, they took advantage of the situation, slipped their knots, and started running back home to Randolph County.

Knowing that The Hunter was not just a threat to themselves, but to everyone in their peaceful community, when the reached Randolph County the boys didn’t head back into the settlement. Instead, they hid in the thick brush that covered a nearby mountain.

The Hunter, furious that his prey had escaped, pursued the boys back to the foothills. He vowed that he would not only kill them, but kill every one of the Quakers. When he had tracked the boys to the mountain, he shouted out his vow at the top of his lungs, knowing they would hear.

The boys were faced with an impossible choice. To kill a man went against everything they believed in. But The Hunter was a dangerous man. Too dangerous to live. Though they hated the thought of it, they knew what they had to do.

And so, with The Hunter drawing closer, the boys set a trap. They laid a snare and waited for the Hunter to come by. As they heard him approaching, one of the boys let himself be seen and ran off quickly towards where the other boys were waiting, with furious Hunter in hot pursuit. As he barreled down on them, the trap was sprung, and The Hunter’s feet were caught in the snare.

The boys quickly descended and overpowered him. Using the very rope that he had bound them with, they hanged him from a high tree. And they vowed never to speak of what they had done.

But some time after that, and after the war had ended, the terrifying ghostly figure of The Hunter began to be seen on that mountain. His huge hulking form appeared in the woods, with an unearthly fire burning in his empty eyes.

And it was for this ghostly figure, a dead man neither in Heaven nor in Hell, that Purgatory Mountain was named.

If the ghost of The Hunter does still haunt Purgatory Mountain, these days he definitely has some more exotic game to hunt, including giraffes, elephants, and some adorable penguins. In 1971, The North Carolina Zoo was built on Purgatory Mountain.

North Carolina was home to America’s first gold rush. When John Reed discovered gold on his property in 1799, he didn’t first realize what he had. Reed’s son Conrad discovered a large, yellow rock in the creek that ran through the Reed farm. The family used the unusual stone as a doorstop until 1802, when a jeweler from Fayetteville who was passing through recognized the rock as gold and paid Reed $3.50 for it, money which Reed used to buy coffee beans and a calico dress for his wife. Later, Reed discovered that the actual retail value of the rock had been over $3,500. Reed successfully recovered $1,000 of that when the Jeweler returned to buy more rocks from him. Word of the discovery soon spread, and what had until then been a quiet corner of Cabarrus County was soon covered with prospectors from across the world.

North Carolina would remain America’s leading producer of gold until the discovery of the precious metal in California in 1848. Reed’s farm became the center of this gold fever, with the mine expanding from surface panning to shafts dug deep beneath the earth in search of lodes of ore. Labor was imported from all across the world, and expert miners from Cornwall in England were brought in to establish the operations. Apart from the expertise these men brought, the immigration was fueled in part by local labor being still heavily dependent upon slavery. There was a general fear that slaves would pocket the gold and quite sensibly use it to buy their freedom.

The Reed Gold Mine expanded, helping the growth of the nearby city of Charlotte. For nearly forty years, North Carolina supplied the U.S. Mint with a substantial portion of its gold, reaching a staggering, for the time, $11,000 in 1804 alone.

But where there’s gold, there’s greed. And where’s there’s greed, there’s violence. One property near Reed’s where gold was also found was owned by a man named McIntosh, remembered to legend as “Skinflint” McIntosh. McIntosh sough the services of an expert miner named Joe McGee, but McGee was concerned over the tight-fisted mine owner’s lack of concern for miner’s safety. McGee asked McIntosh if he took the job and died in the mine, would McIntosh pay his widow $1,000? McIntosh responded that he would pay her $2,000. And so McGee went to work for Skinflint.

One night, Joe McGee failed to return home. His wife, Jennie, rounded up his friends and formed a search party. Joe’s friends, all experienced miners, searched all of Skinflint’s mine but found nothing. When several weeks passed and with her husband still missing, Jennie McGee approached McIntosh, demanding the promised payment of $2,000. Skinflint told the woman that her husband had run off on her, and slammed the door in the woman’s face.

Soon after, McGee’s friend Shaun heard a knocking on his cabin door late one night. When he opened the door, he was startled to see a ghastly apparition, a specter that spoke to him in the voice of Joe McGee.

The ghost told him that McIntosh had cut costs on building the mine, and had used unsafe green timbers to secure the shaft. McGee’s specter told Shaun exactly where to look in the mine where the timbers had given way and he had died in the cave-in. And then, the ghost asked if McIntosh had paid Jennie the money. When Shaun said no, the ghost wailed and said “I’ll haunt that mine of his forever”, and disappeared into the night.

The next day, Shaun led a party back into the mine and uncovered Joe’s body just where the ghost told him it would be. Shaun and his friends formed a well-armed delegation and confronted McIntosh, who confessed he had known of Joe’s death and concealed it from the miner’s widow. McIntosh paid Jennie the promised $2,000.

After this, McIntosh could not find anyone willing to work for him. Some say it was because of his disregard for the worker’s safety. Others say it was because of the terrifying white figure that would appear, wailing, deep in the mine. Skinflint McIntosh died a poor man, and some say that the ghost of Skinflint’s mine can still be seen to this day.

Devil’s Rock is said to hold the footprint of Satan himself. Located off State Road 1131 in Largo, there’s a place where the print of a left foot that is slightly larger than human size can be seen imprinted deep into a large rock.

How did The Devil’s footprint get in a rock in North Carolina? This is one North Carolina legend that starts in South Carolina. There, in Flat Rock, the Devil’s matching right footprint can be found.

Some time in the last century, there was a man in Flat Rock who was reported to be one of the meanest men ever to walk the Earth. This man spent his time brawling, drinking, cussing, and racking up a list of sins so long that if you wrote them all out the paper would stretch for miles.

Now, this man grew old, as we all do, and nearing the end he looked back on his life and knew where he was headed. He also knew he didn’t want to go there. But the man was such a mean-spirited cuss that Heaven didn’t look like much fun to him either. So he set out a plan to avoid going to either place.

When he knew his time was drawing near, the man went out and bought a bunch of the sharpest tacks he could find. He then went up onto the rock from which Flat Rock gets his name, spread these tacks around, covered them with old leaves, sat down, and waited.

Soon enough The Devil appeared before him, come to carry his soul away to the fiery pits below.

“You ready to go?” The Devil asked him.

“I am,” said the man, “But before I do I’d light to get a good look at you. I’ve been on your side this whole life. I’ve heard so much about how magnificent you are to look at. I know that you’re a busy man. And when I’m down in your place I won’t get much of a chance to see you, there being so many wicked people up here needing your attention, so if you could kindly step back a bit so I can take you all in, I’d much appreciate it. It’d be the best reward I can think of in this evil life I’ve led.”

Now, the Devil is a vain creature, and he ate this flattery right up. He puffed himself up and stepped back to show off, and stepped down hard on to those hidden tacks laying on the ground.

The Devil hollered and jumped up in the air. When he jumped, he pushed down so that he left his right footprint in that rock in South Carolina. He went up so high that when he landed he landed miles and miles away in North Carolina. And when he came down he came down so hard that when he hit the ground he forced his left footprint into that rock in Largo.

After that, Satan was too scared to have that man, and Heaven wouldn’t have him, either. So now his ghost walks the Earth, up and down between those two footprints, laughing to himself all the while.

A strange, sad, and beautiful place that has slipped into the legends of North Carolina once existed off of I-95 near Halifax. The Yogi Bear Graveyard was a field filled with fiberglass statues of Yogi Bear, Boo Boo, Cindy Bear, and the ever-vigilant Ranger Smith that had been left to slowly fall apart beside an abandoned truck stop. The site attracted many visitors who would climb over the chain-link fence around what came to be known as The Yogi Bear Graveyard to wander among the fading statues. The story of how they got there is a tale of a tradition of family road trips and a different time in the story of North Carolina.

The statues were originally from the Yogi Bear Honey-Fried Chicken chain of restaurants, which was spread across the southeast from the late Sixties through the Seventies. The statues stood outside of the restaurants, hoping to attract the attention of children in passing cars who would be excited enough to persuade their parents that this was the perfect time to pull of the road and Yogi Bear’s Honey-Fried Chicken was exactly what they were in the mood to eat. The statues were produced for the franchise by American Fiberglass, once the king of roadside signs and statues, responsible for many of the Shoney’s Big Boy statues, giant muffler men, and Sinclair dinosaurs that once decorated the American roadsides.

The Honey-Fried Chicken franchises gradually shut down, but the statues from those stores were bought up by the owner of another Yogi Bear themed business, a Jellystone Park Campground located in Halifax. The statues graced the campground and its miniature golf course until that business, too, met its end.

When the campground closed, the statues were left in a field beside the Lakewood Truck stop, which was at one time the largest truck stop along all of America’s East Coast. But eventually that truck stop also closed, and all that was left was the sad spectacle of memories of family road trips lying exposed the to the wind and the rain.

But fittingly enough with its origins in multiple vanished tourist attractions, the field of abandoned statues eventually became a tourist attraction itself. As word spread of this strange spectacle, road trippers from across the state and beyond would seek out this field for a chance to see the sadly beautiful spectacle and connect with memories of a time when family road trips took longer, when the road held promise and excitement, and when business owners went all out to make sure that theirs was the one place on the long road from New York to Florida that everyone had to stop at.

But even that, too, has vanished. The land the Lakewood Truck stop stood on was bought by new owners in 2008, the statues removed, and the sleek, beautiful Mid-Century Modern architecture of the Lakewood building fell to the wrecking ball.

But there’s still a chance to connect with this part of North Carolina’s past. Several of the statues were rescued and now stand outside a private residence in Rocky Mount. There is also one Yogi Bear’s Honey Fried Chicken Restaurant still operating in Hartsville, S.C., and even though they don’t have statues they do have a beautiful vintage Yogi Bear sign and chicken that’s so good it really is worth the trip to from anywhere in North Carolina.

There’s also the hope of rebirth for Yogi and company. When American Fiberglass closed, many of its molds, including the ones used to make the statues for Yogi Bear’s Honey Fried Chicken, were bought by a company located in Bladenboro. So these wonderful statues that are a joyous part of our history may spring up again along the American roadsides, made right here in North Carolina.

In the 19th century William Poole owned vast tracts of wooded land South of Raleigh. Poole was a wealthy man, a mill owner, and above anything he loved trees and horses. Particularly he loved white horses. It was noted by all who knew him that he always rode a fine white horse.

Poole also loved the woods. Despite their value as timber, Poole let his woods grow wild and untouched. He loved to ride through the acres and acres of woodlands that covered his property, and in his will he specified that not a single one of his trees should ever be cut down.

During the Civil War, when Union troops marched into Raleigh, rumor spread that William Poole had gold hidden on his estate. A small band of Union Troops heard the story, and hungry for plunder split off from their company to find Poole.

The soldiers cornered Poole in his home, but Poole denied the existence of any gold. The Union Soldiers didn’t like the answer, and threatened to burn down his mill unless he handed over the treasure. Again, Poole denied there was a hoard of gold.

The soldiers still didn’t believe him. The Union troops burned Poole’s mil to the ground, forcing him to watch as his livelihood was destroyed. But Poole still protested there was no gold.

Poole was telling the truth, their was no gold, but the soldiers carried off something more precious to Poole than his gold. To his great dismay, the soldiers heard a whinnying coming from the nearby woods. Poole had hidden his prized white stallion in the woods to keep it out of the hands of the marauding soldiers.

The soldiers finally decided that Poole was telling the truth about the gold, and that if there was no treasure other than the fine horse, then the horse would have to do. Poole was heartbroken as he saw his precious companion being led away.

But after Poole died, it’s said that his horse returned to him in spirit. For years afterwards, a pale white rider on a pale white horse was seen galloping through the woods.

Eventually, greed won out over Poole’s wishes and the trees in his precious forrest were cut down for timber. But perhaps Poole had his revenge on the people who destroyed his beloved forest — all of the trees were worthless, having rotted from the inside.

While during his lifetime Poole’s refusal to cut town his trees for timer and profit was derided as foolish, it’s hard not to sympathize with him now. The tract of land that Poole owned and was once covered by old growth forest is now along Poole road in Southeast Raleigh. It’s hard not to think that the deep woods where Poole rode his white horse would have been preferable to the endless chain of strip malls and gas stations that occupies the land now.

Marshall Michel Ney was born in 1769 in Sarrelouis, a town along the French-German border. He enlisted in the French Army in 1787 and rose rapidly through the ranks, fighting on the side of the Republic during the French Revolution and eventually casting his lot in with Napoleon Bonaparte. France’s new Emperor would continually praise Ney for his intelligence and bravery, awarding him the title of Marshall of the Empire in 1804. Marshall Michel Ney was known as the “Last Frenchman in Russia” after standing with the rear guard of the French invasion force as it retreated from the disastrous 1812 invasion of Russia. But Ney eventually turned against Napoleon, leading a military revolt seeking the Emperor’s abdication in 1814. The restored Louis XVIII granted Ney the title of Duc d’Elchingen. Ney’s sympathies for the restored monarchy proved short-lived, and when Napoleon returned to France in 1815 Ney once again joined with Bonaparte. It was a decision with great consequences for Marshall Ney. When Napoleon was defeated, Ney was arrested for treason, and executed by firing squad on December 6, 1815.

Peter Stuart Ney was a man seemingly without a past who appeared in America in the early 1820s. He moved from town to town throughout the Carolinas, working as teacher of French and Latin. He eventually settled in Cleveland, NC, where he supported himself teaching.

Peter Ney kept to himself. He was known to voraciously read any newspaper he could get his hands on, paying particular attention to news from France or of the Emperor. He would spend many of his evenings drinking and would reportedly occasionally let slip hints of of a former life in the French army. He once challenged a French fencing instructor who had set up residence in Mocksville to a duel, and defeated the much younger man almost effortlessly. When news of Napoleon’s death reached Peter Ney, he dropped to the floor in a cold faint, and when he recovered tried,unsuccessfully, to end his own life. Many veterans of the French wars had settled in America after Napoleon’s defeat, and those that passed through this small North Carolina town noted unanimously on the striking resemblance between this tall, red-headed schoolmaster and the late Marshall Michel Nay of France.

Soon, people began to speculate they were one and the same man.

Was it possible the Marshall Ney had somehow avoided execution had relocated across the ocean to North Carolina, hoping to one day return when Napoleon once again rose to power? Even at the time of Marshal Ney’s death, there had been speculation that his execution may have been faked. Michel Ney was a Freemason, as were many of the peers who oversaw his trial and execution. There were rumors that the Freemasons were unwilling to execute a fellow member, and so had arranged for Ney’s death to be staged and for him to be transported to safety. There may also be some clue in the name Peter Stuart Ney itself. Michel Ney’s father was Pierre Ney, which would be Anglicized as “Peter”, and the name “Stuart” recalls another famous exile. England’s Charles II of the Stuart line spent the years during the interregnum in exile in France, to return to the throne in 1660 when the monarchy was restored. This connection to another exile may have appealed to Ney’s sense of irony, or his sense of self-aggrandizement.

Throughout his life in North Carolina, rumors circulated that Peter Ney was, indeed, Marshal Ney. The schoolmaster’s surprising military skill, his inebriated recollections, his natural command of the French language, and his surprising resemblance to the fallen Marshall all fueled the speculation.

It should be noted that at this time in America there was widespread fascination with the fallen French monarchy and with Napoleon’s fallen court. Impersonating exiled French aristocracy was even something of a career choice. Many small-time con men with enough French to pass themselves off as members of the Gallic upper crust could spend years dining out on their invented recollections, to the point where Mark Twain even parodied the trend in the Duke and Dauphin episode of Huckleberry Finn.

Still, according to the legend Peter Ney himself may have had the final word on the matter. When asked on his deathbed in 1846 if he was indeed Marshall Michel Ney, the Schoolteacher’s dying words were reported to be “I will not die with a lie on my lips! I am Marshall Ney of France!”

Whether or not Marshall Ney was Peter Ney, and whether Marshall Ney’s glorious grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris is empty will probably be forever unknown. But there is a tomb in a Presbyterian church in Rowan County over which a French flag flies and where a plaque bears the words “In memory of Peter Stuart Ney, a native of France and soldier of the French Revolution under Napoleon Bonaparte, who departed this life November 15, 1846, aged 77 years.”

Some time ago before the Civil War there was a free black man who owned a mill not too far from Raleigh. His mill was doing fine and many people from around the county brought their corn to the mill to be ground. He thought his luck was doing fine, particularly when a beautiful young woman came to town one day. He took such a fancy to her that he married her and they settled down together in the mill house. But soon after he got married, people stopped bringing their corn to the mill. Rumors started spreading around town about the young wife’s strange behavior, and folks became convinced that the miller had married a witch. Soon no one would even set foot in the mill.

Now the miller was a brave and generous man. He would often shelter runaway slaves within the mill, giving them a place to hide and plan their route up north to freedom. One night, a young boy who had run away from a nearby plantation made his way to the millers house. The boy had heard that the miller’s wife was a witch but he said he wasn’t afraid. He had a butcher’s knife with him and he said he could protect himself from anything. So the miller opened the quiet mill for him and showed him where to hide if anyone should come looking for him.

The boy was settling down for the night when out of the shadows walked the biggest, blackest cat he had ever seen. That cat was bigger than a dog, as big as a panther, and its eyes glowed like firelight. As it came closer and closer the boy saw that the cat meant to do him harm. As it raised up its paw to trike, the boy pulled out his butcher’s knife and chopped off the paw with one quick strike. The cat howled and ran away out the window.

The boy stayed awake all that night, and the next morning when the miller came to call on him the boy told the miller everything that had happened.

The miller went to rouse his wife out of bed, but she refused to get up. She kept herself wrapped up in the covers and said she was feeling ill. She said she wasn’t going to get out of bed at all that day. But the miller pulled the covers off of her, and when he did he saw that the bed was covered in blood and that here right hand had been chopped clean off. It was clear enough what had happened, the wife was a witch. She had been driving the mill’s customers away and last night she had turned herself into a big black cat and headed out into the mill to kill the young boy.

Well the miller tied up his witch wife and called for the neighbors. They all agreed there was only one thing to be done. They killed the woman and burnt her body so she couldn’t come back to haunt them.

After that witch was out of the mill, folks started bringing their corn back to the mill. The miller became wealthy and found another young woman, this one who wasn’t a witch, and they married and he had a happy life. And that young boy made his way north and to freedom.

More About This Story

In 1935, at the height of the Great Depression, president Franklin Roosevelt established the Federal Writers Project. The Federal Writers Project employed men and women to go out and gather stories from across the country. Writers throughout the south recorded the experiences of former slaves. The Slave Narrative Project recorded the histories of over 2,300 former slaves. Apart from being an invaluable insight into the experience of slavery told by those who lived it, the Slave Narrative project also recorded a tremendous wealth of folklore. One of the questions asked was about belief in the supernatural. This story is retold from one of those slave narratives recorded by the Federal Writers Project, and was originally told by Richard Moring, a former slave who lived in Raleigh and was Eighty-Six years old at the time of the interview.

Some time ago, a man and his wife were walking along a big road on a cold and rainy night. They were soaked through and shivering and their shoes were sticking in the mud. They were hungry and it got dark before they got where they were going.

Then they came upon a big house with smoke coming out of the chimney and the light from a fire shining from the window. The kind of house rich folks live in. They went round the back and knocked on the door and heard somebody say “Come on in!” so they went on it, but didn’t see anyone there.

What they did see was a kitchen with skillets and pots and everything needed for cooking. There was meat and lard and flour and cornmeal. There was a pot of beans smoking on the fire and a rabbit boiling in a covered pot. And it all smelled so good.

But there was still nobody around for them to see. But everything was set and ready for somebody, and they had been told to come on in, so they decided then and there that the somebody all that good food was for might as well be them. The woman took off her muddy shoes and peeled off her wet stockings and sat down. The man took a bucket went out to the springhouse to get fresh water for the coffee. They allowed they were going to eat those brown beans and cornbread and that molly cottontail, and drink it all down with some good hot coffee.

The man was gone outside and the woman was resting her feet, when in through the door came a man with no head. He was dressed fine in a coat and vest, shoes and galoshes, britches, and a starched shirt with a high collar, but he had no head. Just raw neck and bloody stump.

“What in the name of the Lord do you want?” said the woman.

And then that man started talking with no mouth to talk. He said he was in an awful misery. He said robbers killed him for his money. He said they dug around all day in the field looking for his money but they couldn’t find it, so they took him into the cellar and buried him in two pieces. He said it’s awful miserable being buried with your head in one place and your body in another. He said he was hankering to get rid of that misery. And he said that other folks had been there asked him what he wanted, but they hadn’t asked him in the name of the Lord, but she had, and that’s why he could tell her all about his misery.

About that time, the woman’s husband came back in and near jumped out of his skin when he saw that raw neck standing there. The woman told the ghost who her husband was, and the haint told who he was, and that started the whole thing all over again about how he came to be the way he was, until that haint said if they’d come down to the cellar with him and dig up his head he’d be mighty grateful and would make them rich.

Naturally, they said they would and they said just let us get a torch.

“Don’t need no torch” said the haint, and he stuck his finger in the fire and caught fire and lit up bright enough to light the whole room.

They went down a long way of steps until they got to the cellar. The haint said “Here’s where my head’s buried and here’s where the rest of me’s buried. Y’all dig over yonder where I throw a spot of light until you touch my barrels of gold and silver money.”

And they dug up those barrels of gold and silver money buried under the cellar floor. And then they dug up the haint’s head and hoisted it up the shovel. And he reached right over and stuck it back on his neck. Then he took his burning finger off and stuck it in a candlestick, and crawled right back into the hole he had crawled out of and the man and the woman covered him up with dirt again.

And they heard him talking again from under the ground. He said he was mighty grateful to them for burying him head and body together and it sure did ease his misery. And he said they could have all of his land and all of his money and be as rich as he had been.

So they took the candlestick and went back upstairs. They washed themselves with lye soap and the woman mixed up the cornmeal and spring water and greased the skillet with lard. She put hot coals around the skillet and on top of the lid and cooked that hoecake until it was done. The man put coffee and water in the pot and set it to boil. And they ate that supper of beans and rabbit and cornbread and coffee. And they lived in that house all their lives and had barrels of money. And the haint with no head never came up those stairs to bother them again.

About This Story

This story is adapted from a Bundle Of Troubles And Other Tarheel Tales, a collection of North Carolina folklore assembled in the 1930s by the Federal Writers’ Project. The Federal Writers’ Project was started in 1935 to provide employment to writers, historians, and librarians during the Great Depression. This story was recorded by Nancy Watkins, who first heard it when she was a child from Dez Foy, an enslaved African-American. The name Foy suggest that Dez may have been related to the enslaved families at Poplar Grove plantation, built in 1850 by Joseph Mumford Foy. The families at Foy’s plantation were separated and sold across the state. This is speculation, it’s our loss that we know nothing of Mr. Foy beyond his name.

This story is a remarkable blending of African-American and European storytelling traditions. The ghost who guards a hidden treasure is a common motif found in European folklore. Before about the 19th Century, ghosts in most stories from Britain tend to exist for a purpose. A ghost in a story will deliver a message that some secret has to be revealed or some injustice avenged, and once that is done it disappears.

The notion of a ghost who will only speak if commanded to do so “in the Lord’s name” is also an old one. It’s present in the earliest known ghost story written in English, written in the back pages of a manuscript by a monk in Byland in the 14th Century. There are clearly European roots to this story.

But the style of telling is very much in line with African-American storytelling traditions. The supernatural element is duly regarded as being ridiculous, and never suggests and kind of real terror or threat. The emphasis here is much more on the pleasures of warmth and having comfort and good food, real pleasures in a difficult life. The subtext in these stories is that when you are living in the state of constant peril that is slavery, you don’t need ghosts to scare you. Real life is frightening enough.

This kind of complex cross-cultural interaction is integral to folklore traditions in North Carolina, and throughout the American South. Different traditions respond to and comment upon each other. In embracing that diversity, we can acknowledge the sorrow at the roots of many of these stories, while still enjoying the beauty of what’s grown form those roots. They can taste as good as that imagined hoecake.

On the Northern end of Durham, The Catsburg Country store was, for years, a gathering place for locals to talk and buy everyday goods. The fading sign on the store remains a well-loved local landmark.This building with its distinctive painted sign was once run by Durham’s longest-serving sheriff, Eugene “Cat” Belvin, who served in that role from 1928 – 1958.

Belvin earned his nickname “Cat” for his quick reflexes and quiet footsteps, which allowed him to creep up on the stills of the moonshiners who were still very active in the area during his tenure. Cat Belvin’s motives may not have been entirely ones of law and order. Rumors persist to this day that his chief reason for taking up the badge was to have the power to shut down the rivals to his own illegal moonshining business.

Cat Belvin’s family owned the Catsburg Country Store until it closed in the 1980s. But it’s the railroad tracks that run close to the store that hold the stories of a haunted train still running the tracks.

The story behind the light tells of a man who was killed when walking on the tracks late at night. Ever since then, that accident seems to be replaying itself again and again on those abandoned tracks near the Catsburg store.

It’s said that every so often on a moonless night a mysterious light, like that of an oncoming train, will appear in the woods down the rails from the store. The sound of a train whistle and an engine running can be heard when the light appears, but the light itself never seems to move. It just hangs in the air for some time and then fades away into the darkness. Some even say that at times you can see the ghost of that man who lost his life to that train. His, headless, shadowy form can be seen walking up and down the tracks, looking for his lost head.

There’s one more ghost in this story, the Catsburg Country Store itself. Even though it was a much-beloved landmark, the store fell into disrepair after it ceased operating. The story was dismantled in 2020 and moved into storage by a local preservation group, hoping to find a new location to raise this piece of Durham history from the grave.