Windchimes

The rum-soaked girl and yankee rockers

Okay, two more Beaufort ghost stories and I'll leave it.

Coupla centuries ago or so, a young girl lived with her mother in Beaufort. Her father, a sea captain from England, lived with them when docked a while. This young girl dreamed of sailing to England with her father and repeated requests that he take her along on one of his voyages until he agreed. Then they both had to convince her mother. The mother objected, of course. She did not want her husband taking her baby so far away. However, she finally said yes, on the condition that he swear to bring their daughter back to her. She couldn't bear the thought of never seeing her baby again.

And so they made the voyage. At last, the little girl met her London grandmother, who'd been sewing while she waited. She made her granddaughter many pretty frocks, including a beautiful white dress. The girl wanted to wear that dress when she saw her mother again. She wrote home, telling about her London adventures. The entire city anticipated each letter, especially the girls close to her age. None of them had ever been so far from home.

Everything went well until they were on their way back, when she came down with yellow fever (or the plague, or something deadly and contagious) and died. Having promised her mother he would bring their daughter back to her, the sea captain had to devise a way to keep the corpse until the ship reached its destination. Normally, of course, they would have buried her at sea, especially considering the cause of death. But the captain stored the corpse in a barrel of rum, so he could keep his promise.

Sounds like the mother didn't appreciate his promise-keeping too much. She wouldn't let them open the barrel. Didn't want to see her daughter like that, go figure. They buried her in the barrel, and the shape of the plot strongly suggests what's buried there, I can tell ya.

The lady who told this story went on to tell us about a recent sighting of this little girl ghost. A man who worked at one of those nice restaurants close across the road from the waterfront was walking home from work one night, and went past that cemetery. His boss found him running up the street and away from the graveyard, offered him a ride and teased him about running away from the police. The guy, still trying to catch his breath, told his boss to just drive, he'd tell him what happened later.

After that tour, I'd never walk anywhere in historic Beaufort at night by myself. Definitely no where near the cemetery. But this guy did, and as he neared the cemetery, a little girl approached him. He couldn't see her very well, but she was laughing and seemed playful. He thought (according to the story his boss told someone who told someone else, until it became part of the ghost tour lore) her family was somewhere close by, maybe part of one of the tour groups that went by the cemetery earlier that evening.

She got closer and would have looked him in the eye, instigating his midnight sprint. She would have looked him in the eye, but she had no eyes.

Just as the storyteller said the line "she had no eyes," someone sounded one of those loud honking noisemakers (you know, the kind people take to football games). I nearly jumped out of my skin and I doubt I was the only one.

Now, the three yankee soldier ghosts. A rebel-sympathizer doctor in Beaufort didn't want to cooperate with the yankee army, even though the city had already surrendered (I hope I'm remembering this correctly). For some reason, these three soldiers came to his house. He killed them and buried them under his porch. Got pretty smelly there for a while, but no one knew where the stench came from. Until subsequent homeowners decided they wanted to rebuild the porch in the early 1900's, the remains of the invaders remained undiscovered. The porchbuilders found them, found brass buttons, suspected they were from yankee uniforms, solved a decades old Beaufort mystery.

The fun little ghost-catch here: No one ever puts more than two rocking chairs on that porch now, because if there are three, they rock in synch. Not a slow, relaxed rock. More like angry people rocking quicker and quicker while seething.

There were three or four more ghost stories on our tour, but those stand out to me. I hope I haven't changed, added or left out, too many details.

I don't know that I'll go on any more ghost tours. Realzing I've written more about that than anything else we did in NC, though, I'd conclude that's what I'll remember the longest. LOL, I suppose I just love stories.

J.H. Larrew
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