Category: Travel

Also known as the “Ghost Ship of the Outer Banks,” the Carroll A. Deering was a very real schooner at the center of a mystery. The National Park Service website tells the details of the ship’s true fate: In August 1920, “the Carroll A. Deering set sail from Norfolk, Virginia, in tip-top shape, with an experienced captain and a crew of 10 men bound for Rio de Janeiro with a cargo of coal. The ship departed on August 22, and although Captain William H. Merritt fell ill a few days later and had to be replaced by the hastily-recruited Captain W. B. Wormell, the ship delivered its cargo on schedule and set sail to return in December.”

In January 1921, the captain of a lightship reported having seen the Deering and crew at what is now the Cape Hatteras National Seashore, heading for home. When the Deering was next spotted, on January 31, the schooner was abandoned and caught against the Diamond Shoals. “The crew had vanished like ghosts. Gone with them were personal belongings, key navigational equipment, some papers, and the ship’s anchors. Despite an exhaustive investigation by the FBI, no trace of the crew or the ship’s logs has ever been uncovered.” The ship was later scuttled but people say the ship can still be seen floating along the coast of North Carolina.

The Pope Lick Monster, also known as the Goat Man, is said to be a half-man, half-goat creature (some say a sheep is in the mix somehow) who lives beneath a railroad trestle in Fisherville, near Louisville.

According to an article by WDRB News in Louisville, the creature hypnotizes or lures his victims onto the Pope Lick trestle where they will be struck by a train. In other legends, the creature jumps from the trestle onto cars below or attacks victims with a blood-stained ax. The Pope Lick trestle is still in use and is extremely dangerous to visit.

Like many lakes in the South, Lake Lanier is the source of numerous legends. One of the most frightening stems from the fact that a town with cemeteries and homes was flooded by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to create the lake.

According to reports the Georgia Department of Natural Resources reported more than 200 deaths in the lake in the past 30 years. Supposedly, the lake is cursed because some of the bodies were not removed from the cemeteries before the land was flooded in the 1950s.

“Legend has it the ghost of a long-dead woman roams this lake in a flowing blue dress. Mysterious arms reach out for swimmers from the watery depths. Angry spirits call people home to submerged graves,” CNN says.

Adjoining Huntsville’s historic Maple Hill Cemetery is a playground that looks much like any other, featuring a modern swing set and climbing apparatus. But this playground isn’t like others. Passersby often say they can see the swings moving on their own volition, as well as orbs or spectral figures.

So how did the innocent place get its gruesome name? According to legend, many children who died in Huntsville during the 1918 Spanish Flu Pandemic are buried in Maple Hill plots adjoining the playground. The spirits of those children, some say, come out after dark to run and play, as they might have in life. An online search turns up photos of unexplained shadows and orbs.

According to legend, a young bride dressed in her white dress took her life at a natural geologic formation near the Arkansas River in Pulaski County.

The woman, Martha Sanders “lost her husband, Gustavus Sanders, days after their wedding,” according to a Arkansas Facts for kids website. Gustavus and Martha were married at the top of the Natural Steps, their favorite rendezvous.

“Unfortunately, the honeymoon was short for the young couple because just days later he was dead and was laid to rest behind the old wooden church,” the website says. Martha, overcome with grief, disappeared not long after his funeral and was never seen again. Legend says she took her life by jumping from the Natural Steps into the Arkansas River and her ghost haunts the site until this day.