The Ghost Ship of Caswell
In October 1864, the blockade runner Mercy Ellen slipped past the guns of Fort Caswell and was never seen again, at least not by the living. For more than a century, those who flash the old signal from the beach say the ship still answers.
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Theodosia Burr of Bald Head
The Vice President's daughter boarded the schooner Patriot in 1812 and vanished. On Bald Head Island, they say she walks the beach still, searching for a portrait that never reached her father.
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The Maco Light
Brakeman Joe Baldwin lost his head in a train collision at Maco Station in 1867. For 110 years afterward, a swinging lantern light walked the tracks, until the rails were pulled up and the light went out.
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The Phantom Barge
Two Scotsmen executed in the Revolution, a storm-tossed river run, and a rotting barge that rose shrieking from the waves before Captain Harper's crew, a sailor's tale first set down by James Sprunt in 1898.
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Haunted Wilmington
A colonial house built on the city's first jail. Children in the windows of the Latimer House. Helping hands backstage at Thalian Hall. The port city keeps its dead close.
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Upriver Legends
Far above the port, where the Deep and Haw rivers join to form the Cape Fear: a murdered man's glowing ghost, a red-bearded specter pointing west, and the mermaids of Mermaid Point.
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