Happy Halloween!!

Wnctimes wishes everyone, of all ages a Happy Halloween!

Have lots of fun! Stay Safe!

Here are a few stories we found to share with you, maybe you'd like to tell others this Halloween night!

Maco Light

On a night in 1867, at the small Brunswick County station of Maco fifteen miles west of Wilmington, a slow freight train was puffing down the track.  In the caboose was Joe Baldwin, the flagman.  A jerking noise startled him, and he was aware that his caboose had become uncoupled from the rest of the train, which went heedlessly on its way.  As the caboose slackened speed, Joe looked up and saw the beaming light of a fast passenger train bearing down upon him.  Grabbing his lantern, he waved it frantically to warn the oncoming engineer of the imminent danger.  It was too late.   At a trestle over the swamp, the passenger train plowed into the caboose.  Joe was decapitated:  his head flew into the swamp on one side of the track, his lantern on the other.  It was days before the destruction caused by the wreck was cleared away.  And when Joe's head could not be found, his body was buried without it.

Thereafter on misty nights, Joe's headless ghost appeared at Maco, a lantern in its hand.  Anyone standing at the trestle first saw an indistinct flicker moving up and down, back and forth.  Then the beam swiftly moved forward, growing brighter and brighter as it neared the trestle.  About fifty feet away it burst into a brilliant, burning radiance.  After that, it dimmed, backed away down the track, and disappeared.

It was Joe with his lantern, of course.  But what was he doing?   Was he looking for his head?  Or was he trying to signal an approaching train?

In 1889 President Grover Cleveland, on a political campaign, saw the mysterious light, as have hundreds of people throughout the years.  But in 1977 when the railroad tracks were removed and the swamp reclaimed his haunting grounds, Joe seems to have lost interest in Maco.  At least, he has not been seen there lately.

Specter at the Gold Mine

During the Carolina gold rush of the 1830s and 1840s, a miserly old codger called Skinflint McIntosh owned a rich vein in southern Cabarrus County.  So tightfisted was he that he wouldn't pay adequate wages to the miners to dig for the gold, nor would he provide sufficient safety measures to prevent accidents in his mine.   The vein of gold was 450 feet down a narrow shaft.

One of the best workers in the district was Joe McGee, whom Skinflint kept trying to hire.  "If I got killed down there," said Joe, "would you pay my wife Jennie $1,000?"  "Joe," Skinflint shouted, "I'd pay her $2,000."  And so it was that Joe gave up his other job and went to work for Skinflint.

One cold, drizzly night, when Joe didn't come home at the usual hour, Jennie became worried.  Finally she persuaded Joe's friend Shaun to gather up a few men and look for Joe in the mine.  They search the deep hole but found nothing.  After several weeks Jennie asked Skinflint for her money.  "Oh, no," said Skinflint, "Joe's just gone off somewhere."  And he didn't pay her.

Soon after, on another bitter night, a loud knock came on Shaun's door.  Opening it, he was startled by a ghostly white specter who spoke with the voice of his friend Joe and told Shaun to go to the mine that very night; it told him to dig a certain spot where the green timbers had given away and caused a cave-in.  It asked if Skinflint had paid Jennie, and when Shaun said no, the specter wailed, "I'll haunt that mine of his forever."

McGee's body was found exactly where the specter said.  Skinflint paid up, but only when threatened by Joe's old friends.  Word spread about the haunted mine, and no one would work for McIntosh.  All of this happened 150 years ago but the gold is still in the mine--as is the specter of Joe McGee.

The Ship of Fire

On a certain evening every year, at the mouth of the wide Neuse River, a large bright object speeds into view.  It looks like a sailing ship being destroyed by fire, its deck and masts in blazing outline.  The apparition disappears, then reappears, then again disappears for another year.  It burns furiously but is not consumed.

It is the ship of the Palatines.  The Palatines were a group of German Protestants who left England in 1710 to settle New Bern.  As the vessel crossed the Atlantic, the prosperous Palatines, pretending to be poor, hid their gold coins and silver dishes from the eyes of the ship's sinister captain and crew.  When the Palatines caught sight of the shore which they believed to be their future home, so excited were they that up from the hold and out from hiding places came all their belongings in preparation for landing.  Unwisely displayed on the deck was their precious wealth, all of it in full view of the corrupt captain and his first mate.

Quickly the captain formed a plan.  He announced to the passengers than no landing could be made until the morrow.  The disappointed Palatines once more hid their valuables and lay down to a sound sleep in anticipation of soon landing at their destination.  When all was quiet, the captain gathered his crew together and revealed to them his plan.  They would murder every Palatine aboard--the young and the old, the women and children as well as the men--then gather together the gold and silver, set afire the ship filled with its dead, and escape in the lifeboats.

The strike was sudden.  Many Palatines were knifed before they awoke and in a very few moments every one of them was dead.  As planned, the ship was set afire, and the murderers pushed off in the small boats.  From a distance they looked back at the ship.  It burned brighter and brighter, the brilliant blaze of the fire shooting into the air, but the vessel did not sink into the water.  And then the thing began to move.

"It continued to burn all night," according to an old account, "--speeding on with the wind,--now passing out from sight, and anon, visible, flaming forever, back again, on the very spot where the crime had been committed.  With the dawn of day, it had ceased to burn,--but there it stood, erect as ever, with the spars, sails, masts, unconsumed,--everything in place, but everything blackened, charred."   At sundown the flames leaped up again--"a ship on fire that would not burn!"

The frightened murderers could bear no more.  They abandoned their boats on the bank of the river and fled into the forest.  There they and their descendants lived on their "ill-gotten spoils."  To this day the crime has not been avenged, and so every year on a certain evening the burning ship appears off New Bern, and so it will continue to appear till the blood of the Palatines has been paid for in kind.

The following stories all come from North Carolina Legends by Richard Walser. This book is available from:
Historical Publications Section
Division of Archives and History
109 E. Jones Street
Raleigh, NC 27601-2816
919-733-7442.

We greatly appreciate their generosity in allowing us to reprint these stories.

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photo credit: Marjorie Farrington