Did You Say (gulp!) G-g-ghosts?
Mysterious footsteps . . . misty apparitions . . . playful pranks . . . empty rockers rocking . . . . Some say the true soul of an old town is its ghosts, and the southern coast region has more specters than golfers. (We're not complaining.) Sleep in a historic house long enough — a night or two might do it — and you're likely to make an eerie acquaintance! Insiders take their ectoplasms seriously because, as the following oft-told tidbits suggest, wraiths have been a coastal way of life (and death) for a long, long time.
Bellamy's Ghostly Prank
The Bellamy Mansion, a beautiful pre-Civil War home built by Dr. John Bellamy, had scarcely been built when it was taken over by General Hawley's Federal troops during the Civil War to be used as a headquarters. After seven months of deplorable activity by the Union soldiers, the mansion was returned to the family in a shambles. After the Bellamy family returned to the mansion, servants began to tell stories about terrifying spirits they had seen, including a skeleton in the basement. Truth be told, the servants really had seen a skeleton wandering about. It seems that one of the Bellamy sons, William, had returned from medical school and was using a room in the basement as his office. He brought his skeleton from medical home school with him, and amused himself greatly by placing the skeleton on a coffin-lid-shaped ironing board for the servants to discover. William took great delight making the skeleton appear now and then, keeping the legend of the bony apparition alive and well.
Capt. Harper's Ghostly Rescue
Back in 1897, Captain John M. Harper, a renowned Cape Fear River skipper, found he didn't need a dark and stormy night for a convincing ghost story — but it sure didn't hurt. He used to tell this story himself. While making the passage from Wilmington to Smithville (now Southport) through a terrible winter storm, Harper was regaled by his sole passenger, a Scot, within the ferry's pilot house. The Scot told a tale about an ancestor of his, one of three Highlanders captured by the British during the American Revolution and imprisoned nearby at colonial Brunswick Town. The three captives were condemned to die, but one of them, the passenger's ancestor, made his escape. The other two were not so lucky. Soon after the tale was told, Capt. Harper's steamer ran hard aground on a shoal opposite the site of old Brunswick Town. There was nothing to do but wait for the tide to change and keep warm below decks. While they were there, a deckhand burst in, terrified. On deck moments before, he said, he had seen an unkempt man, dripping wet, his face contorted as if in pain. The apparition held the rail with one hand and pointed into the darkness with the other, and when the deckhand went to touch his arm, the man vanished. Harper doubted the crewman's sobriety. But when the tide had shifted and the ship was again underway, Harper, too, witnessed the impossible. After distinctly hearing a human cry, he and his entire crew spied an old rowing barge with two emaciated men on deck, their injured legs and arms manacled and chained. Harper ordered a rope cast to them, but the barge disappeared into the darkness. Harper continued on his course and very soon came upon a capsized ship to which two men clung for their lives in the icy, black waters. They were found in the direction in which the first apparition on deck had pointed. With the Scotsman's tale fresh in their minds, Harper's crew rescued the two survivors, the last of a riverboat's crew of seven. Evidently some ghosts, despite their own former suffering, believe in doing good deeds.
The Maco Light
Until the Atlantic Coast Railroad tore up the tracks running west through Maco, many locals living today had witnessed the strange swaying light at the old Maco crossing. President Grover Cleveland spoke about it publicly during his 1888 reelection campaign. Life magazine even reported it to the nation in 1957. The story is that of Joe Baldwin, a flagman who, one pitch-dark night in 1867, was riding a caboose that lost its coupling pin. Separated from the train, the caboose had slowed nearly to a halt when Joe spied the light of a speeding passenger train coming right at him. He stood at the back of the caboose waving a lantern in warning, but the oncoming train couldn't stop. In the collision Joe was killed instantly, decapitated. His head was never found, but ever since then, a single swaying light could be seen over the tracks at that very spot. It was seen so frequently that trainmen routinely mounted two lights on their trains, one red and one green, so as not to be confused with the Maco Light, which hasn't been seen since the tracks were lifted. It seems Old Joe Baldwin's warnings are no longer needed.
The House on Gallows Hill
It is said that back when Wilmington barely stretched beyond what is now Third Street, the high ground just off the main road, past the old St. James burial ground, was a hanging ground. Criminals, we're told, who went to their Maker on the hill were buried nearby. But when the town outgrew its former bounds, the old gallows were dismantled and houses constructed, among them the Price-Gause House, built in 1843. Fortunately for its residents, this home's invisible guest is a playful one, occasionally mischievous but never baleful. The ghost, who is lately called George, seems to favor phantom pipe tobacco and spectral sweet potatoes — judging by the smells that occasionally greet the living occupants, employees of an architectural firm. Other incidents? A rocker that rocks itself no matter where it's placed, clearly audible footsteps when no one's there, mysteriously clouding mirrors and, perhaps best of all, quilts yanked from beds while people lie sleeping. It's a wonder no one hears hearty laughter too.
There are many other ghostly yarns to spin about North Carolina's southern coast — the Edwardian thespians of Thalian Hall; the visitations of Samuel Jocelyn to prove he was buried alive; the phantom Confederate General William Whiting, still leading the defense of Fort Fisher. You can read the stories in books available at regional public libraries and stores: Tar Heel Ghosts by John Harden (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1954); Haunted Wilmington . . . and the Cape Fear Coast by Brooks Newton Preik (Wilmington, N.C.: Banks Channel Books, 1995); Ghosts of the Carolinas by Nancy Roberts (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1962); Ghosts on the Battleship NORTH CAROLINA by Danny Bradshaw (Wilmington: Bradshaw Publishing Co., 2002).
