North Carolina Ghosts and Legends by Nancy Roberts

Author:Nancy Roberts [Roberts, Nancy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Folklore & Mythology, History, United States, State & Local, South (AL; AR; FL; GA; KY; LA; MS; NC; SC; TN; VA; WV)
ISBN: 9781643360461
Google: ljiqDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
Published: 2019-10-11T02:44:34+00:00

THE LOVELY APPARITION

Beautiful Lydia haunts the highway pleading for help, and no mortal man can help her … though many have tried.

There are few men who do not hold within them some experience that time cannot erase. For some men that experience is a woman. And for Burke Hardison it will always be Lydia.

Nor is he the only man who has encountered her. Since 1923 this young lady has appeared from time to time at her favorite spot. Men who have tried to help her have all told the same story afterwards. The story has been one of complete bewilderment and mystery.

Burke Hardison met Lydia late one rainy night in the early spring of 1924. He was on his way back from Raleigh to his home in High Point. The evening had been spent with friends made during his college years at State. And it must have been almost two o’clock as he neared the little community of Jamestown.

All around him the countryside slumbered under a billowing blanket of fog. Even the most obvious landmarks had silently vanished and there was an air of unreality about the misty world through which he drove. Along with this air of unreality came the feeling that all other life had ceased to exist save himself.

For miles there had been no other cars, but his eyes still strained as he peered through the mist for taillights ahead. In front of him loomed the Highway 70 underpass. For a moment the fog seemed to clear. He was no longer alone. At the mouth of the underpass stood the slight, graceful figure of a girl. Dressed in a white evening gown, she flung her arm upward signaling desperately for him to stop.

Even before he pulled to the side of the road, he knew she must be in some terrible distress. He opened the door of the car as she came toward him.

“Please, will you help me get to High Point?” pleaded a soft, tear-laden voice.

“I’m on my way there now, and I’ll be glad to help you,” replied Burke. A gust of fog entered the car as the girl slid in beside him. He could see the pale blur of a lovely face surrounded by a halo of dark hair. And the diaphanous cloud of her white dress rested on the seat.

After she had given him the address of a street he was vaguely familiar with, they drove in silence. Nearing High Point he felt that he must find out more about her and began to question her.

Her name was Lydia and if there was more than that it faded into the fog. Her words seemed almost detached and so faint that he could hear them above the sound of the motor only with the greatest effort.

She seemed deeply distressed at the late hour and afraid her mother would be worried about her. Gradually he gathered that she had been to a dance that evening in Raleigh. But what had happened and how she came to be standing alone in the fog at the underpass, she either could not or would not tell him.

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