HGB Ep. 548 - Haunted Outer Banks Series - The Upper Islands

Moment in Oddity - House in the Clouds (Suggested by: Jenny Lynn Raines)

In Thorpeness, Suffolk, England, there is a structure that was built in 1923 to receive water pumped from the Thorpeness Windmill. Its founder, Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie designed it as "a fantasy water tower in a fantasy village". What is unique about this structure is that it was turned into a residential home which was incorporated to improve the look of the water tower. The mock Tudor and Jacobean style structure incorporates a residential living space approximately 70 feet from the ground level. The water tower originally was able to hold 50,000 imperial gallons, however during WWII the tower was unintentionally hit by friendly gunfire from anti aircraft guns. Once mended, the water tank saw a reduction in capacity down to 30,000 imperial gallons. By 1977, the main water tower was no longer needed to supply the village. It was then removed, allowing the House in the Clouds to be fully transformed into a home. The residence boasts five bedrooms and three bathrooms with a total of 85 stair steps from top to bottom. The structure is very unique and has been featured in the media many times, but a several story home built around a water tower, certainly is odd.

This Month in History - The USS Indianapolis and the Atomic Bomb

In the month of July, on the 26th, in 1945, the USS Indianapolis arrived at Tinian Island in the Mariana Islands with unassembled atomic bomb parts. The ship was sent on a high speed voyage from San Francisco out into the western Pacific ocean with no one on board knowing what the cargo consisted of. The voyage took 10 days and arrived at the island after the Manhattan Engineer District built special bomb assembly buildings, loading pits, and other facilities at the base. Already prepared was a 37 member team of scientists and specialists who were in charge of last minute experiments and tests, thus resulting in the final assembly of the uranium bomb. Only four days after its delivery, the USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine with a loss of almost 900 lives. On July 30th, the target insert, projectile, and initiators were assembled in the bomb. On August 5th, after consultations with meteorologists to determine that weather predictions were favorable for a visual bombing, the mission was given the 'go ahead'. Consequently, on August 6th, 1945, the bomber Enola Gay took flight and rose to 31,000 feet, deploying the bomb over Hiroshima at 8:15am. Hundreds of thousands of Japanese died either from the initial blast or later from radiation poisoning, with the majority of deaths reported to be civilians. Nagasaki was later bombed on August 9th leading to the surrender of Japan on August 15th with Japan signing the instrument of surrender on September 2nd, 1945.

Outer Banks - The Upper Islands

The Outer Banks are a vast ecosystem that have supported life for millions of years. Humans have been here for centuries. Key moments in American history are connected to the Upper Islands of the Outer Banks from the disappearance of the Roanoke Colony to the Wright brothers' first flight. There are numerous haunted locations and legends in the Upper Islands. On this second episode of our Outer Banks Series, we are going to explore the history and hauntings of the Upper Islands! 

Just north of Hatteras Island is Bodie Island with the Bodie Island Lighthouse. There are two stories behind the name of the island. One is that a man with the last name Boddy had settled the area. A more interesting story claims that so many bodies washed up on the island from shipwrecks that it just made sense to call it Bodie Island. Bodie Island isn't really an island as over the years it has connected to other northern barrier islands to make a peninsula. The government decided to build a lighthouse here in 1837 because this area had lost more vessels than any other area along the Outer Banks. The lighthouse was completed in 1847, but because a man who had no experience in building lighthouses had been put in charge of construction. The lighthouse was leaning within two years. A second lighthouse was built in 1859, but it didn't last long either as the Confederates thought the Union would take it over during the Civil War and they blew it up. The third and current lighthouse was built in 1871. Bricks from Baltimore and iron from New York was used to construct the distinctive lighthouse. A keeper's quarters duplex was built and the first order Fresnal lens was lit on October 1, 1872. Because the lighthouse was remote in those early days, the keeper's wife and children would stay on the mainland. The light was electrified in 1932 and the NPS took over its operation in 1953. The lighthouse is hard to miss at 156 feet and with its horizontal black and white stripes. The lighthouse itself is not haunted, but the keeper's cottage has some stories. People claim to hear knocking coming from the other side of the bricked in fireplace. This usually happens around 4:00 pm. There are also stories that a young female ghost haunts the area, possibly one of the bodies that washed up here. She is seen in period clothing and likes to follow visitors around, occasionally showing up in photos.

Many indigenous tribes called the Outer Banks home. These were the Secotan, Poteskeet and Chowanoke. They would head out to the eastern banks in the summer for fishing and then move back inland to places like Roanoke Island and the mainland during the winter. Early relationships between the indigenous people and European explorers were good. In 1584, the English attempted to colonize Roanoke Island for the first time. Roanoke Island is across from Bodie Island. Governor Ralph Lane founded Roanoke Colony and it wasn't long before they needed more supplies. Sir Richard Grenville was bringing a resupply and he was delayed, so Lane threw in the towel and headed back to England. Grenville finally made it to the colony two weeks later and he left the supplies and a small detachment of men. 

The second attempt to colonize Roanoke came in 1587, led by John White. The original plan by Sir Walter Raleigh was to set up the city of Raleigh in Chesapeake Bay. Grenville's men had become pretty desperate by this time because they needed supplies, so when White showed up to check in on them, they forced White to stay there and Roanoke Colony was re-established. White needed to get supplies, so he promised to be back in 1588, but White wouldn't return until 1590 because of the Anglo-Spanish War. He found the settlement still there and it had clearly been fortified, but all of the settlers were missing. The only clue left as to where they had gone was the word "CROATOAN" carved into the stakewall. White assumed that this meant they had gone to Croatoan Island. He couldn't investigate that theory because of rough seas and he headed back to England. His granddaughter was born at Roanoke Colony and was the first English person born in this New World. Her name was Virginia Dare and the county where Roanoke Island is located is named for her, Dare County. We still don't know what happened to the 115 colonists that disappeared.

Manteo is the main city on Roanoke Island. They do offer a ghost tour here, but it wasn't available the night we were in the area. There's a good reason for the tour because several locations here are haunted. Manteo was incorporated in 1899 and was a bustling trade center. In the mid 1980s, the town was renovated for a 400th anniversary party and Princess Anne came to dedicate the Elizabeth II, a representative 16th-century sailing ship like what the colonists would have used to come to the island. There are several hotels on the island and a few of them are reputedly haunted. The first is Roanoke Island Inn. The inn overlooks the harbor of Shallowbag Bay and has over 1.5 acres of gardens. Asa Warren Jones built the inn as his home in the 1860s. It eventually became a boarding house in the early 1900s. Through the generations, the same family continued to own the house and each would expand the house. The post office for Manteo was once housed in the inn and one of the postmasters there was named Roscoe Jones. The Roanoke Inn opened in 1990 with eight rooms under John Wilson and Billy Parker. Lauren and Jason Borland bought the inn in 2017. 

The spirit at the inn is thought to be Roscoe. He was laid off from the post office and he was absolutely devastated. He begged to keep his job to no avail. He walked home, smelled the roses growing near the front porch one last time, walked up the stairs to his bedroom and locked himself in. He never left the room again and his wife took to leaving a meal for him on the table and he would come down when everyone had gone to bed, to get the plate of food. Roscoe passed away a few years later, never having spoken to his family again. Neighbors started claiming to see Roscoe leaving the inn in his postal uniform. The apparition would disappear when it reached the post office. Some people would see the apparition return to the inn as well. Two of the rooms that had previous been Roscoe's room have had prankster activity. One couple reported that their jewelry had been played with. Boxes and other items have been thrown around on the third floor and screams and disembodied footsteps have been heard coming from that floor as well.

The Tranquil House Inn has a great view of the Roanoke Island Festival Park and sits on the historic water front. The inn has a Nantucket styling to it with custom cypress woodwork and stained glass. Donnie Just and his father Don had owned the inn since 1993 and then Mike and Holly Harrington purchased the property in 2020. Mike had proposed to Holly there in 2005. The inn had originally been located across the street, but a fire in the 1930s destroyed it, so it was rebuilt here. The desk manager had been Carolyn and she told Peggy Schmidt who wrote "Ghosts of the Outer Banks" that the first floor had the most activity. One morning a guest staying on the first floor approached Carolyn when she was alone and asked her if anything strange had been reported in her room before. Carolyn didn't get a chance to respond before the guest told her that she had seen a female apparition that very morning. She awakened to see the ghost standing by her bedside. This spirit was in period clothing and every time the guest tried to get up, the spirit would push her gently back down. The guest got really annoyed and yelled, "Stop!" and the spirit disappeared. Carolyn said that other guests reported disembodied whispers in that room. Other rooms have had their televisions turning on on their own. They checked wiring and found no issues, so they bought all new TVs. That didn't solve the issue. Another time, a couple approached Carolyn and and told her there was a ghost in their room. She asked how they knew and the man said that the night before he went to the bathroom and he made sure to put the toilet seat down. His wife had him trained properly. He was the first person in the bathroom the next morning and he found the toilet seat up. As he looked at the seat, he watched as it slammed down.

The charming Victorian White Doe Inn was opened near the turn-of-the-century and is named for the legend about Virginia Dare and the White Doe. It is said that Virginia grew into a beautiful woman with fair skin, blonde hair and gray eyes. She caught the eye of two Native American men in the tribe that had rescued her and her mother from the Roanoke Colony. One was a warrior and the other a medicine man. Virginia fell in love with the warrior and the heartbroken medicine man used his magic to turn Virginia into a white doe. The only way to snap her out of the spell would be to hit her with a magic arrow. Warriors would hunt for the white doe, but it was elusive. One day, the Medicine Man decided he needed to find the white doe because he was afraid she would be killed. He wasn't aware that the warrior who was his competitor in love was hunting the white doe too. The Medicine Man found the white doe and he fired his arrow. At the same time, the warrior had found the doe and fired his arrow as well. The Medicine Man's arrow turned the white doe back into Virginia and the warrior's arrow hit and killed her after that. Now it is said that her spirit still haunted the island as a white doe. The white doe speaks with a woman's voice.

Ok, so that is a legend, but the haunts at the White Doe Inn seem very real. The Meekins family had lived in the Outer Banks since before the American Revolution. Theodore Meekins came to Manteo from Rodanthe on Hatteras Island. He married Rosa P. Midgett in 1896 and the couple had seven children. They purchased a lot in 1904 and built a house with the help of Theodore's brother-in-law John Wilson and local carpenter Joe Dailey. They built the three-story Queen Anne style house in Manteo using a photograph that Rosa had found of a house she liked. The home had seventeen rooms when completed. This is the largest house on Roanoke Island. Meekins became a magistrate and also served in the North Carolina State Legislature from 1945-1947. Meekins also built the Chicamacomico Life-Saving Station near Rodanthe, which is one of the most famous life-saving outposts in the history of the US Coast Guard. Meekins died in 1952 and his son Theodore Jr. inherited the house, which passed onto his wife Goldie when he died in 1959. Everyone called her “Miss Goldie.” Eventually, the house was too much for Goldie and she sold it in 1993 to  David and Tonia Roberts who turned it into a bed and breakfast. The current innkeepers of the inn are Bob and Bebe Woody. There are nine rooms and a gourmet breakfast is served in the mornings. Both employees and guests have had strange experiences at the White Doe Inn. Lights and electronics turn on and off by themselves. A small door behind the staircase opens and closes on its own. Guests will here it periodically at night and go to check about the sound. They won't find anything but the closed door. But when they walk away, it opens again slowly. 

There's a haunted theater in Manteo too. The Pioneer Theater was built in 1918 by the Creef family and they owned it until 2023 when they closed the theater. It was purchased in February of that year by the Basnight and Hatchell families and they retained the name and paid homage to the Creef family. The theater hosts movies, music, theater and events. There are rumors that members of the Cleef family haunt the old movie theatre. People in the theater have had their cell phones knocked out of their hands.

Back on the road and off Roanoke Island to the Outer Banks islands again brings us to Nags Head. This village was founded in the 1830s as a tourist colony. Francis Nixon brought his family here shortly before that, looking to avoid malaria in the area where they had been living. He encouraged other friends to visit as well. The huts where the fishermen and ship salvagers lived on Nags Head were soon replaced by beach cottages. The Bankers weren't upset about this development as it brought a new form of income. They sold vegetables and seafood and took people on tours aboard horse-drawn carts. Hotels were built in 1838. A boardwalk was built in 1850 to the beach and there was a Pavilion where music was played and a bowling alley was built. During the Civil War, the Union marched in and commandeered hotels to use as headquarters. The city was incorporated in 1923. Hurricanes hit in 1899 and 1933 and World War II brought danger near the shore. One story on how it got the name Nags Head claims that "nags" was for the ponies there and that ship salvagers put lamps on the heads of their nags to get ships to crash into the shoals. The real story is probably that some shipwrecked sailors named it after a place they had come from in Europe.

The Oasis Suites Hotel is located at 7721 S. Virginia Dare Trail. This originally was a waterfront restaurant that was also named Oasis. Violet Kellem was the woman who opened that restaurant in 1950 and she had an ingenious plan for getting people to flock to the restaurant. This was perhaps the 1950s version of Hooters. The waitresses wore white Bermuda shorts and shirts, blue ties and aprons and no shoes. The servers were provided on-site housing. The specialty at the restaurant was lace cornbread, which was like a crunchy hushpuppy served with lots of butter. The Oasis closed in 1980 and was reopened as The Dock by Warren Jones. In 1990, Violet's grandchildren bought the restaurant and renovated it and opened it as The Oasis once again. The Hatchell Family bought it in 2003, but the restaurant burned to the ground in 2004 and that was it for the original restaurant. The Hatchell's decided to rebuild, but this time they would open a hotel. This is a boutique hotel of suites with kitchens and ghosts.

When the restaurant was still open, a group of four fishermen approached the building late one fall evening thinking that the restaurant was still serving because they saw lights on, but the doors were locked. When they looked in the windows, they saw a black tails and tie party going on. It was strange because there were no cars parked outside. The men peered in again and suddenly the party was gone. No one was inside. Another ghost that haunted the restaurant was an old sea captain with a long wiry beard in a blue sailor's cap and long blue coat with three big black buttons. His full-bodied apparition was seen occasionally running in slow motion from the grill to the freezer. Other times he just stood staring.

There was also the spirit of a monk that had the total monk hair and robe that appeared once to the restaurant manager named Ron. Seems he was just passing through. And then there was this female ghost with red hair and blue eyes in a pink 1950s-style dress. She liked to appear and scare the staff. Ron also claimed that a spirit may have saved his life. This was in March of 2004 when the fire erupted that destroyed the building. A flammable liquid was used for renovating the floors near the grill and it caught fire. Ron got everybody out except for one person. When he realized someone was still inside, he ran inside and immediately heard a very loud male voice say, "You have three seconds to get out!" Ron ran out and saw with relief that the employee was outside. Then the building became entirely engulfed. 

Nags Head Woods is supposed to be haunted as well. In the woods there is a small, yellow hunting cabin that people claim had been the home of the Goat Man. He obtained that name because he raised goats. One night some local teens decided to antagonize him, but they didn't find him at home so they killed his goats. The man sought revenge and chased down the teens with an axe, which he threw. He missed them all. It is said that through the years, he took on the look of a goat. He was a half-man and half-goat. Legends claim that he chases people at night through the woods. There's not just a Goatman in this 640 acres of wetlands, but also a witch. Peggy Schmidt conveys the story in "Ghosts of the Outer Banks." (p. 21) There is also a woman who was walking her dog and saw a man approaching her. Her dog got his hackles up and started barking, which immediately put her on guard. The man continued to come towards here and then she noticed he was wearing an old sea captain's uniform and then he disappeared.

The Eagles Aerie Club FOE #4506 is located at 2706 S. Croatan Hwy. They moved in to the building in November of 2017. Before the Eagles obtained the property, this was a variety of restaurants. There had been FireFly Restaurant, Almost Eleven Restaurant, and Mykonos Restaurant and Bar. Staff at the restaurants reported wine glasses flying off counters and some wine bottles doing the same. Shadow figures were also seen and the bathrooms would sometimes lock themselves.

We arrived in Kill Devil Hills next and even though we're always taught that the Wright Brothers conducted their flying experiments in Kitty Hawk, it's actually Kill Devil Hills where their National Memorial is located. This is where most of the people in the Outer Banks live. It's very commercial here, so if you are looking for a peaceful beach vacation, this might not be the area for you. The town was founded on the site of Orville and Wilbur's first controlled, powered airplane flight, which happened on December 17, 1903. The breezes coming in off the Atlantic were perfect and there was a big sand hill for them to fly the airplane off from. After each test, they would have to hike up the sand with the plane. Locals helped them carry the planes. They eventually planted the grass to make it easier. There was no town here so the brothers built simple wooden buildings to use as workshops and living quarters. The Wright Brothers National Memorial was dedicated in 1932. Kill Devil Hills got its municipal charter in 1953 and there are a few legends about how the Town got its unique name. One claims that cargo ships carrying rum would sometimes wreck along the coast and the rum cargo would wash up ashore on the sand hills and locals who found the rum said it was strong enough "to kill the devil." The more interesting story claims a man tried to extort money from the Devil and he trapped him in a pit at the top of the hill that the Wright Brothers had built. A huge granite pylon sits in the spot today as part of the memorial.

After we visited the memorial, we headed the four miles up to Kitty Hawk to the Black Pelican restaurant to have lunch. Kitty Hawk was named for the Algonquin Chickahawk, which means "a place to hunt geese." We picked it because we read it was haunted. This is a large restaurant tucked right behind the sand dunes leading out to the beach. During the late 1800s, this was one of seven lifesaving stations along the Outer Banks, Old Station Six. The Station Keeper here was named James Hobbs and he didn't get along with one of the surfmen in his charge named T.L. Daniels. No one knows if there was an animosity here because Daniels disrespected Hobbs' wife or if Daniels was just generally unruly, but Daniels ended up dead from a gunshot wound. His body was found on the floor near where the front desk of the restaurant lobby sits today. There were no police to report the crime to and nobody at the station liked the guy. So a decision was made to bury the body at sea and clean up the station and that's what the crew did and Hobbs never faced any punishment and that might be why Daniels' spirit is still here. Disembodied footsteps are heard and doors have closed all on their own. People sometimes see blood on the wall. This is that kind of thing that keeps reappearing and then disappearing. Some staff have reported seeing the ghost of Daniels. Male bartenders claimed that they got pushed by something they couldn't see. Unfortunately, our server was new and she hadn't had any experiences yet.

Currituck was named by the Native Americans who fished and hunted here. The name means "land of the wild goose," which was fitting because there was an abundance of geese here during migration. The name carried over for the Sound and the county where the town of Corolla (kuh rah luh) is located. A herd of feral Banker horses call this home. The town had originally been named Jones Hill after an early settler, which was later changed to Whalehead. A post office was established in 1895 and the name was changed to Corolla at that time after the petals of a flower. Development really didn't happen until the 1960s with a big burst in the 1980s.

Corolla features the Currituck Lighthouse, which is the fourth and final lighthouse in the Outer Banks. The lighthouse rises 162 feet and was built from red brick that was left unpainted. It opened in December of 1875 and became automated in 1939. The lighthouse still has its original Fresnal first order lens. This lens replaced an incandescent oil vapor lamp that replaced a Funck's hydraulic float lamp that was fueled with lard oil. A system of weights rotated the huge lens until electricity came to the lighthouse. A keeper would have to crank the weights by hand every two and a half hours. Visitors are allowed to climbs its 220 steps and the Outer Banks Conservationists own it. The lighthouse keeper's house is still here and its reputedly the North Room that is haunted. One of the lighthouse keeper's daughters died while playing on the beach. The North Room had been her room and people think somehow it ended up cursed. A friend came to stay at the house and slept in that room and contracted an illness that she eventually died from. A wife of a lighthouse keeper came down with TB and she quarantined in that room until she died. Now people who go into the room say they get an uneasy feeling and some even become physically ill. Disembodied voices are heard in the room sometimes and sheets have occasionally been tugged.

The Whalehead Club is located at 1100 Club Road and was built in 1922 by Edward Collings Knight Jr. who was a conservationist and waterfowl hunter. The hunting lodge was built in the Art Nouveau style. During World War II, it was used as a training base for the US Coast Guard. This brought hundreds of sailors to Corolla and they built support buildings and barracks. The next iteration was a boys' correctional school and then it was a rocket fuel testing site. In the 1990s, the building was restored to its original condition and is open to visitors. The 21,000 square foot building is open for historic tours and ghost tours. The smell of cigar smoke has been detected, especially near the portrait of Edward Knight. The first story of this occurrence was in the 1960s when families of the corporation testing the rocket fuel were staying there. A daughter went to her parents room and said she smelled smoke. They searched the house and when they got to the dining room they saw smoke coming out of the portrait of Mr. Knight. It was as though the cigar he held in the picture were real. There is the ghost a young girl here who once tried to grab another young child down in the basement. When an adult went to go see who was in the basement, there was no one there. A staff member once heard disembodied footsteps coming up behind them on the basement stairs. The basement is said to be the most haunted area. A visitor claimed that something grabbed his leg when he was walking on the second floor alone. Pots and pans have banged themselves together in the kitchen. Doors open and close on their own. One of the reasons it might be haunted here is because dead bodies from shipwrecks were brought to get them off the beach.

And finally there is the legend about the portrait of Theodosia Burr. Theodosia was the only child of Aaron Burr. Aaron Burr was a Founding Father and the third Vice President of the US, serving under Thomas Jefferson. He had been a lawyer and served as an officer during the American Revolution. Burr is probably most famous for having a duel with Alexander Hamilton in which he mortally wounded Hamilton in 1804. His daughter Theodosia was born in 1783 and was named after her mother. The Burrs would have three other children, but two were stillborn and one died at age three. Burr and his daughter were very close and he made sure she had a good education. He considered her to be a confidante. She married Joseph Alston in 1801 and they had one son who died in 1811. Theodosia was aboard a schooner named Patriot that was sailing off the Carolinas in 1812 when it was either hit by pirates or became shipwrecked. 

What happened to Theodosia is an ongoing mystery. And this was added to by the discovery of a portrait on the Outer Banks fifty years after Theodosia disappeared. In 1869, Dr. William Pool was visiting Nags Head when he was given a portrait of a young woman as payment for his services. No one knew the woman, but the Doctor knew the portrait was valuable. The fisherman who gave him the portrait said that a young woman had drifted ashore near Nags Head and that she didn't know who she was and all she had with her was the portrait. The fisherman had cared for her and he asked her to be his wife. The portrait hung in their cottage. The doctor had helped the fisherman's wife and when the doctor tried to take the portrait, the elderly wife jumped from the bed howling that the portrait was her's and then she ran into the ocean. The portrait washed up on the shore the next day. Dr. Pool took the picture home with him and it hangs today in the Lewis Walpole Library. The portrait is known as the Nag's Head Portrait of Theodosia Burr. Peggy Schmidt adds a twist to this. (p. 65)

The entire Outer Banks is a fun, relaxing and beautiful place full of history and what seems to be a lot of haunts. Are any of these locations in the Upper Islands of the Outer Banks haunted? That is for you to decide!