True stories of haunted Ocracoke! This is Part Four of a 5-Part Series of Ghost Stories that we'll post over the next two days. Happy Halloween!
Soaking Wet Spirit Retold by Showell Blades, written by Crystal Canterbury
Showell owns a collection of books containing Outer Banks ghost stories compiled and retold by Charles Harry Whedbee, and while he’s familiar with these stories, he’s never seen a ghost himself. His friend, however, has seen one, and she saw the ghost in Showell’s house.
At the end of Sarah Ellen Drive, where the pavement curves to the left and becomes a dirt road, sits three houses, one of which is Showell’s. About five years ago two friends of Showell, Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien, visited the island and stayed with him. Due to her husband’s loud snoring, Mrs. O’Brien made a makeshift bed on the couch.
It was rainy and windy that night in early March and around 2 o’clock in the morning, Mrs. O’Brien awoke to the feeling that someone was watching her. She didn’t notice anything directly in front of her, but when she turned to look over the back of the couch she saw a woman standing at the top of the stairs, wearing a dress from the 18th or 19th century. The full dress was soaking wet and the woman covered in seaweed, and it appeared as if she was looking for someone, but Mrs. O’Brien didn’t think she was the ghost’s target.
No communication ever occurred between Mrs. O’Brien and the water-logged apparition and she disappeared within seconds of being sighted. The woman hasn’t been seen beyond this one night in the home. Showell speculates this could have been the spirit of Theodosia Burr Alston, whose life – tragic in her final years – mysteriously ended when she was just 29, supposedly at the hands of pirates off the North Carolina coast.
To learn more about her life, read Atlas Obscura's account: “The Dramatic Life and Mysterious Death of Theodosia Burr.” A fictionalized version of her story, linking her to Portsmouth Island, was written by Michael Parker in his novel, The Watery Part of the World, available at Books to Be Red.