New 

 Bern 

 at Night 

 Ghost 

 Walk 



Halloween is show time 

 in New Bern's Downtown 

 Historic District as the annual 

 ghost walk visits the spirits of 

 people who have lived in, 

 visited or otherwise been 

 connected with the historic 

 city. 



The New Bern at Night 

 Ghost Walk, now in its 

 seventh year, dramatizes 

 ghostly tales in private homes 

 and on porches in the city's 

 historic district. It also 

 includes a stroll through 

 Cedar Grove Cemetery to 

 visit some of the famous folk 

 buried there. Organizers say 

 some liberties are taken with 

 the tour's dramatizations, but 

 they're as close to the facts as 

 possible. 



Tickets are $1 1 in 

 advance and can be ordered 

 by check payable to New 

 Bern Historical Society, P.O. 

 Box 119, New Bern, NC 

 28563. On the day of the tour, 

 tickets cost $13. For informa- 

 tion, call 919/638-8558. 



T 



JJie spirits in many of these tales return because they're unhappy about 

 something they lost in life, writes John Harden in Tar Heel Ghosts. It could be a 

 life, a love, a friend or a treasure. Some haunt with a purpose and others re-enact 

 their most dramatic moments like a perpetual rerun. 



"These North Carolina spirits have righted wrongs, brought criminals to 

 justice, punished wayward husbands, avenged cruel deeds, and even gotten 

 themselves into court records — as active and hardworking as any lot of spooks 

 ever assembled," Harden writes. "They come from, or inhabit, cabins and 

 mansions, boats, trains, trails and mountain recesses." 



Rodney Kemp, a history teacher in Carteret County, enjoys the legends from 

 a storyteller's point of view. Ghost stories entertain, and there is an art to sharing 

 them. Well-told, they send hair-raising chills over our skin. And the right atmo- 

 sphere of candlelit darkness can heighten the suspense and turn our imaginations 

 to ghouls lurking in the shadows. 



It's a fascination many of us carry from childhood to old age, Kemp says. 

 "We all like to be surprised and be intrigued. At the same time, people always ask 

 me, 'Is that true?' And I say, 'To a storyteller, it's all true.'" 



Ravages of the sea and legends of the Lost Colony are the makings of many 

 coastal ghost stories, Kemp says. For generations, people in isolated coastal 

 communities have repeated these and other tales to entertain themselves. 



"Storytelling was popular at the fish house or the community store," he says. 

 "If you told a good one, they'd buy you a Pepsi." 



But these otherworldly chronicles do more than entertain. In their telling, 

 they reveal information about our past. They are history — oral accounts of how 

 North Carolinians lived and died. 



A good ghost story begins with research to connect the tale with historical 

 fact, says Brooks Newton Preik, author of Haunted Wilmington and the Cape 

 Fear Coast. Details about a deadly mishap or a person's life can be verified at the 

 library, in old news accounts or in public records. 



"The story is important from a history standpoint, of course," Preik says. "I 

 have to put in enough embellishment to fill in the skeleton of the story. But the 

 history is just as important to me as the story. So for that reason, I elected not to 

 do any stories that I couldn't more or less authenticate historically." 



This no-nonsense approach paid off for Preik, whose book has been used in 

 some Wilmington elementary classrooms to teach local history. 



"It's important to me for people to understand that these ghost stories are part 

 of our heritage. ... They're still unexplained," she says. "It's important to keep 

 them intact and embellished as little as possible because they are a part of our 

 history." 



Of course, some enhancements help an author tell a story well. People like 

 details, so Preik says she sometimes lets her imagination supply information that 

 is consistent with the era. She did this with an often-told story about a Wilming- 

 ton man who was buried alive. 



AUTUMN 1997 



