This story is brought to you through our news-gathering partnership with The Outer Banks Voice.
With the Halloween season upon us, let’s not forget some of the scary, ghost-y legends of the Outer Banks. There are those who long ago shuffled off this mortal coil but are still believed to wander their old haunts. And some say they have even seen the shadows of their spirits lurking in the corners. Here are a few of the places you can go if you want to feel spooked.
News
Ghost hunters investigate Elbow Road after decades-long rumors of hauntings
The Black Pelican Restaurant in Kitty Hawk
The Black Pelican Restaurant, one of the Outer Banks best-known and historic eateries, was once the Kitty Hawk Lifesaving Station. Constructed back in 1874, the station was one of seven facilities whose purpose was to rescue sailors in danger along the Atlantic shoreline. According to official records from the Coast Guard, Captain James Hobbs fatally shot one of his six surfmen, T.L. Daniels, on July 7, 1884, in the lifesaving station. Allegedly, Daniels had been making threats and reporting false charges to Hobbs’ superiors in an attempt to take Hobbs’ job. Daniels accused Hobbs of using surfmen to do private work on his family farm and using paint from the station to paint his own boat.
E.C. Chaylor, a representative from the Coast Guard, came to investigate the claims, according to those records. Soon after he arrived, Chaylor wrote that Captain Hobbs walked into the room where he and Daniels were speaking. When he did, Daniels used “blasphemous” language toward him and reached for his pistol. As he was struggling to get the pistol, Captain Hobbs grabbed a shotgun and after a scuffle between the three men, ultimately shot Daniels twice, in what was ultimately determined an act of self -defense in the eyes of the law.
According to Martin Fucci, who worked at Black Pelican for many years, coworkers there had reported seeing unusual occurrences around the building, including two female employees who say they witnessed a man inside the restaurant wearing a long, black raincoat walking into the dark. “One girl saw it because she was facing it, the other saw her facial reaction and said, ‘Let’s get out of here,’” recounts Fucci.
Fucci says that after those occurrences, he even stayed up all night with paranormal investigators trying to catch a sign of the man in the long coat.
Miss Mabe, the Wicked Witch of Nags Head Woods
According to the late Charles H. Whedbee, author of the book Outer Banks Tales to Remember, there once was a woman believed to be a witch who lived in Nags Head Woods in the early 1900s. In his book, he writes that the woman, known as Miss Mabe, lived there with a group of black cats and was known for telling fortunes to children and adults.
In the book, Whedbee writes that she lived near the Roanoke Sound and got to know the local fisherman. The fisherman started bringing fish to her dock on their way home at night, but eventually they began to forget to do so. Whidbee wrote that on the days when the men would forget, she would use an incantation to change the course of the wind so that the men wouldn’t catch any fish. Once they realized what was happening, the fishermen would beg her to change the wind back, and once she did, the fishing was even better than before—as long as they brought her fish.
Aside from being an author, Whedbee was a former chief District Court Judge and a lifelong Greenville resident who lived from 1911 to 1990. According to his bio on Amazon, “at the age of two months, [he] made his first trip to Nag’s Head in his mother’s arms aboard a sailboat. Thus began his lifelong love affair with the Outer Banks. By the time of his death in 1990, Whedbee had established a reputation as a master storyteller and an authority on coastal folklore.”
Whedbee at one point, hosted a morning TV talk show, where he discussed his Outer Banks legends, and he ultimately wrote five books about OBX folklore.
Asked about Whedbee’s account of the mysterious Miss Mabe and the local fishermen, a representative from Nags Head Woods told the Voice that they have no knowledge of the purported witch.
The Wandering Ghost of Theodosia Burr Alston
Theodosia Burr Alston was the daughter of Vice President Aaron Burr, who famously killed Alexander Hamilton in a duel in 1804. Burr has been in the limelight quite a bit in recent years, thanks to the Broadway hit play Hamilton. But, as legend has it, Burr also has an Outer Banks connection because his daughter, Theodosia Burr Alston, mysteriously vanished here in 1812.
According to the Library of Congress, Alston was one of America’s first great women of learning and achievement. Burr made sure she had the best education, equal to what a man would have, and she adored him, once writing in a letter once that, “you appear to me so superior, so elevated above all other me.”
Once her father was disgraced for the killing of Hamilton and exiled himself to Europe, however, Alston became severely depressed. When she lost her young son right before her father’s return to New York in 1812, her depression worsened.
Alston was married to the governor of South Carolina, and when her father returned to New York she longed to see him. “Theodosia was on board [the schooner] Patriot leaving South Carolina to visit her father,” says Mary Ellen Riddle, author of Outer Banks Shipwrecks, Graveyard of the Atlantic and retired Curator of Education at Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. “But she never made it.”
“A storm was howling off Cape Hatteras at the time, but it remains a mystery whether the vessel shipwrecked or fell into the hands of pirates or was a casualty of war,” explains Riddle.
According to Library of Congress records, in 1869, a doctor was attending an elderly woman in Nags Head and his payment was a fine oil portrait of a young woman. After the doctor did some research, he realized that the painting was of Theodosia Burr Alston and even had it positively identified as her by members of her family.
In an episode of “Mysteries At the Museum” on the Travel Channel in 2017, Joseph Schwartzer, Director of Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum, tells the host that the painting was taken onto the missing ship with Alston as a present for her father. Discussing the many rumors surrounding what happened to the ship, Schweitzer told the host, “It’s much more likely that the Patriot was hit by a rogue wave, or encountered something that sank it almost immediately…but for whatever reason, this painting survived, and it showed up in Nags Head.”
The original portrait now sits at the Lewis Walpole Library at Yale University with a replica hanging at the Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum. But some say they have spotted Alston roaming the shores, searching for the portrait for all eternity.
The Whalehead Club in Corolla
Jill Landen, Whalehead Club manager and curator says they have heard all sorts of stories and reports of strange occurrences there over the years. So many, that they have their own ghost tour in the summer when they take groups around the property and share some of the spookiest stories.
“I guess the most famous one is about our portrait of Mr. Knight in the dining room. He and his wife are the ones that built the building in the 1920s,” says Landen, referring to Edward Collings Knight Jr. and his wife, Marie-Louise LeBel.
Landen explains that after the original owners died, there were a number of different owners over the years. In the 1960s, she says there was a group called the Atlanta Research Group who would use the property to test rocket fuel. According to Landen, the group came down from Northern Virginia, where they had their headquarters, because they had privacy to do their tests, and the winds in the area were ideal.
“And the scientists would be down here, and if they had tests that were going to go over on the weekend, they could have family members come down and stay in the house,” says Landen. “So there was one family that was here one time, and there was a little girl who woke up in the middle of the night and said she smelled smoke.”
Landen says the family got up and searched the house because they thought it was a fire in the home.
“They looked all over, and they didn’t see any flames anywhere. But then, I guess they turned around and looked into the dining room at Mr. Knight’s portrait,” says Landen. “He’s holding a cigar in the portrait, and it was smoking, evidently.”
This is only one of the reports of strange occurrences at the Club. Landen explains there’s been enough suspicious activity that paranormal investigators have come there to see what they can find. There is no information on what they did or did not find.
