Tar Heel Ghosts By Dorian Sanders

A Colonial Apparition Captain John M. Harper, owner and master of the steamer "Wilmington," which made daily sailings from Wilmington to Southport over half a century ago, was one of Wilmington's most familiar figures and best beloved residents. In the days before automobiles and before rail connections between the two ports, he and his steamer were important features of the Lower Cape Fear section. The trip between Wilmington and Southport took about two hours each way and the "Wilmington" made charter or excursion sailings as well as regularly scheduled runs.

Buried Alive Buried alive!" The very term brings a chill that grips the spine. Many people have had a secret dread that it might happen to them, and it actually has happened to a few. One of these rare instances is dealt with here—because a ghost is also involved. Wilmington in 1810 is the setting for this chiller-duller. A young man named Samuel R. Jocelyn lived in Wilmington at that time. He stood well in the community, was clean of habit, and had a fine character. His father was a well known attorney, who had also been reared in Wilmington, and, like his son, enjoyed a fine reputation. Young Jocelyn had a friend, Alexander Hostler. According to a record of this ghostly episode written more than a century ago, the two were inseparable. Their Damon-and-Pithiest relationship knew no interruption or misunderstanding; there were no recognized breaches or interferences in it. Where one went, the other usually went too. They shared their thoughts, their ideals, their aspirations. At work and play, in study, in sports, in entertainment they were almost always to be found side by side.

The Skull Hangs High Myths, legends, folk tales form the primary literature of any people. It takes eons of time and years of loneliness to create them. It takes hunger and imagination. In the Western North Carolina mountains, we have had the time, the loneliness, the imagination, the hunger. Before the American Revolution, the mountain folk brought the beginnings of their mythology with them from eighteenth-century Europe. The eastern colonies held them long enough—before they moved through the Piedmont to the mountain ranges—to give their folklore an authentic colonial flavor.

Ghostly Gold Ghosts have always had a close affinity with gold. They are frequently found associating with legendary wealth, missing fortunes, hidden treasure. The more hopelessly lost the riches, the more likelihood of a first-class ghost. Few ghosts ever actually point a finger to these bonanzas, or deliver them into deserving or undeserving hands. More often they are found in the role of protectors of lost loot.Such a ghostly protector still guards a cache of gold near Grandfather Mountain, although the ghost is on record as having once placed it within the grasp of a tippling hillbilly and his easy-going wife.