Ghosts from the Coast

by Nancy Roberts

Overview

Acclaimed storyteller Nancy Roberts takes the reader on a haunted tour of coastal North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia in this engaging new collection of thirty-three ghost stories and legends.

In North Carolina, we hear of the restless spirit who troubles visitors to the Currituck Beach Lighthouse and the phantom ship that, though lost in a storm at sea, sailed into Beaufort Harbor for a final farewell. South Carolina provides the backdrop for tales such as that of the Union soldier killed at Charleston's Fort Sumter—more than a century later, a tourist is startled to discover the eerie, blue-coated figure of the soldier standing next to him. And in Georgia, we encounter ghostly pirates doomed to sail the creeks and inlets of St. Simons Island forever without rest, as well as rambunctious child spirits who roll pool balls down the hallways of a Savannah bed and breakfast, just as they did when their family lived in the house following the Civil War.

These new tales and classic legends, all collected firsthand by the author, reveal a thrilling undercurrent to some of the southern coast's most popular destinations.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807849910
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	10/01/2001
Edition description:	1
Pages:	184
Sales rank:	1,065,942
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.42(d)

About the Author

Among the late Nancy Roberts's many books are Civil War Ghost Stories and Legends, Blackbeard and Other Pirates of the Atlantic Coast, and Haunted Houses: Chilling Tales from American Homes. A storyteller dedicated to inspiring students to read, she performed at seminars, on radio and television, and at hundreds of schools and libraries across the South.

Read an Excerpt

From The North Room
Currituck Lighthouse, Corolla, North Carolina

Built in 1874, Currituck Beach Lighthouse has been a comfort to mariners along the dark and hazardous forty miles of coast that lie between Cape Henry to the north and Bodie Island to the south. Visible to ships from nineteen miles away at sea, the flashing light says—keep your distance. Today this once isolated area swarms with tourists, but few of them know the eerie story that took place here. It started first with one death and then another until superstition grew. This story is about the "strange feeling" people have when they enter the North Room of the keeper's house.

The families of both the keeper and the assistant keeper live in the same building, but, if this sounds a bit too cozy, it is really a duplex with each family enjoying its own private quarters. Scarcely visible from the exterior of the building, in its lovely setting of trees, is the fact that we are actually looking at two identical houses divided imperceptibly down the middle.

Historian Lloyd Childress, a tall, dignified lady, relates something that happened when she first arrived at the historic site and was showing a tour group through the house. "When we came to the north bedroom, I led the way so that they could follow and then turned and waited for them all to go in. A young man entered and then, quite suddenly, he backed out of the room! I asked, 'What's the matter?' and he said, 'Oh, I can't possibly stay in this room.'

"'Why not?' I inquired.

"'Because there is a presence here, and I can't be in the same room with it!' he said. He would not go in there. I went to one of the members of the board of directors and said to him, 'Do you want to tell me about any of the bedrooms in the house?'

"He smiled and immediately answered, 'Oh you must mean the north bedroom. That's where the ghost of Lovey is said to be. She was the wife of William Riley Austin, one of the last keepers stationed at Currituck. Mrs. Lockwood Powers, a friend of hers, visited her here and stayed in the North Room. Mrs. Powers, who was stricken with a mysterious illness, died during her visit, and her body was placed in a horse-drawn cart and taken home to Kitty Hawk for burial.'"

Ms. Childress continued. "A gentleman who stayed in this side of the house during the early stages of the restoration would not enter the room. It's no wonder. Did I tell you about little Sadie?" she asked, and I shook my head.

"Well, Sadie was the child of the first lighthouse family to live here, and everyone in the village knew the little girl. Her parents, George and Lucy Johnson, doted on her. Mrs. Johnson would do needlework to occupy herself, but her child was never far from her thoughts. I'm afraid Sadie was more venturesome than she should have been, and her favorite pastime was building castles in the sand not far from the surf. Day after day her mother would walk outside to check on Sadie and see her little body crouched down, small hands pressing sand together for a tower or digging a moat around an elaborate castle. Her head, with its lovely golden hair, would be bent in concentration.

"Sometimes Sadie would lose herself in the details of walls and turrets as the tide crept closer and closer. When she came home, her shoes and dress would be drenched if a sudden surge of foaming surf had caught her and with its malicious hand swept away part of her castle. The natives said she would stamp her foot in anger and shout at the sea, 'Don't do that! Do you hear me? Don't do it, I said' as she tried to replace a destroyed section of a tower or bridge.

"But one day, playing at the edge of the water, she took off her shoes to wade. There must have been a powerful riptide, for before she realized what was happening the sea swept her out far beyond her depth. Her little arms must have flailed out, and perhaps she shouted angrily at the water, 'Don't do that! Do you hear me? Don't do it, I said!'

"Her frantic parents searched until dusk and then were joined by volunteers with lanterns, but to no avail. It was not until the next day that Sadie's body washed ashore and was found by a local fisherman. And since the North Room had been hers, her parents laid her there before the burial.

"Several visitors believe they sense spirits in this room," continued Lloyd Childress.

So saying, she opened the door to the North Room. "At least two have received the impression of a very strong presence in here," she confided as we entered a gloomy little room with only two windows. It was as depressing and foreboding as a mausoleum in contrast to the bright world outside where parents and children chattered as they queued up, waiting to crowd into the souvenir shop or the lighthouse. There was an unreality about all that happy activity below in contrast to the gloomy aura of the room I stood in. I thought of Sadie and her bright life snuffed out by the sea. And then of the keeper's wife who died here. "Who was she?" I asked, "and of what did she die?"

Table of Contents

Preface

Part I. North Carolina

Part II. South Carolina

Part III. Georgia

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

With her Ghosts from the Coast, Nancy Roberts proves once again that she is the preeminent author of true ghost stories in the American South. Although her compelling stories are filled with historical detail, she brings each tale right up to date through interviews with eyewitnesses to the haunting or, in many cases, her own personal accounts of visiting the ghostly lairs. From a spectral black funeral carriage on Hilton Head Island, to tales of sea monsters in the Altahama River of Georgia and haunted libraries with clerks more ethereal than real, to numerous inns, B&Bs, and pubs teeming with the wandering dead, Nancy Roberts includes enough authentic ghosts to give even the most skeptical reader a sudden chill on a steamy Carolina summer night." —Michael Norman, coauthor of Haunted Heartland and Haunted America

Editorial Reviews

With her "Ghosts from the Coast", Nancy Roberts proves once again that she is the preeminent author of true ghost stories in the American South. (Michael Norman, coauthor of "Haunted Heartland" and "Haunted America")

With her "Ghosts from the Coast," Nancy Roberts proves once again that she is the preeminent author of true ghost stories in the American South. (Michael Norman, coauthor of "Haunted Heartland" and "Haunted America")

With her "Ghosts from the Coast, Nancy Roberts proves once again that she is the preeminent author of true ghost stories in the American South. (Michael Norman, coauthor of "Haunted Heartland and "Haunted America)

From the Publisher

With her Ghosts from the Coast, Nancy Roberts proves once again that she is the preeminent author of true ghost stories in the American South.

Michael Norman