One of the most enduring urban legends of the Appalachian Trail is the story of Ottie Cline Powell, in Lexington, Virginia. Powell was only four years old when, on November 9, 1890, he walked from his one-room school near the Powell farm into the forest near Bluff Mountain to collect fallen branches for kindling for…
The Phantom Hiker of the Appalachian Trail
The Appalachian Mountains harbor countless ghost stories, from the phantom hiker of Grandfather Mountain to mysterious figures glimpsed along misty ridges. But few encounters are as chilling as the one that happened on a foggy May evening in 1972. The Appalachian Trail was proposed in 1921 and constructed throughout the 1920s and the 1930s. In…
The Ghostly Lady of Transylvania County
The mountains of western North Carolina can be unforgiving, but more importantly, they can also be a mysterious, ghostly place, where many things may appear out of nowhere, like past residents, who still keep watch over the land. It’s said that many years ago, two men decided to go fishing in Transylvania County, when the…
The Headless Man of Williamson Creek
Williamson Creek is near Brevard, North Carolina. This area, not far from Cedar Mountain, is very rich in ghost stories. One legend dates back to the Civil War, when a group of Union soldiers was discovered camping there. Nearby Confederate officers were sent to investigate the group and reportedly killed them. One of the soldiers…
The Mysterious Summerville Light
In the 1800s, a railroad track once ran near Summerville, near Charleston, South Carolina. According to local lore, the wife of a train conductor would travel a nearby dirt road every night, carrying a lantern in hand at midnight to greet her husband with a meal as he passed through the area. One night, the…
The Ghostly Legend of the Land’s End Light
The Land’s End Light is a famous ghostly legend from the Lowcountry of South Carolina on St. Helena Island. The yellowish orb appears on a 3-mile stretch of Land’s End Road, just a few miles past the Chapel of Ease. Some also refer to this road as one of the most haunted in the state,…
The Unexplained 1973 UFO Sighting over Myrtle Beach
During the summer of 1973, residents and people visiting the Grand Strand in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, were treated to one of the greatest mysteries in South Carolina history. Sometime in the early evening hours, onlookers began noticing lights in the sky over the Atlantic. At first, it appeared as a faint orange-red glow, but…
The Whang-Doodle of Western North Carolina
Most folks in western North Carolina know the creature as the whang-doodle, but some call it the king-doddle. The creature is said to come out after dark, typically hanging around barns and henhouses. The last one spotted was in McDowell County, almost fifty years ago, but the old stories still get passed down. “Way it…
The Chapel of Ease
The Chapel of Ease was built around 1740 on Saint Helena Island, South Carolina, in Beaufort County, to serve the island’s plantation community, but on November 4th, 1861, a messenger arrived with urgent news for Captain William Oliver Perry Fripp about the Union army approaching, during the Civil War, prompting locals to flee and abandon…
Madame Delphine MacCarthy Lalaurie and her House of Horrors
Madame Delphine MacCarthy Lalaurie, a prominent and wealthy socialite in New Orleans, gained infamy for her cruel treatment of enslaved individuals. In 1832, she and her third husband, Dr. Leonard Louis Nicolas Lalaurie, moved into a grand neoclassical mansion at the corner of what are now Royal and Governor Nicholls Streets. The mansion became famous…