Legends of the Outer Banks and Tar Heel Tidewater by Charles Harry Whedbee

Author:Charles Harry Whedbee
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Folklore/Ghosts
ISBN: 9780895874955
Publisher: Blair
Published: 1966-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

10

THE DEVIL’S HOOFPRINTS

About twelve miles east of the “original” town of Washington in eastern North Carolina is the pleasant little town of Bath. Partially restored now through the efforts of public-spirited and history-conscious people of the section, it is a charming replica of the town as it originally looked. This is the way it appeared when Governor Eden maintained the capital of North Carolina there and when Edward Teach, the notorious pirate Blackbeard, roamed the sounds and estuaries of the Tar Heel State before the American Revolution.

Some there are who say that the ghost of Blackbeard still roams these waters and tramps the midnight streets of this restored colonial town in search of his head, which Lieutenant Maynard long since carried back to Virginia. It seems probable that pirate and governor were business partners, and there are people who still maintain that Eden owed his associate better protection than he got, or at least a warning that Maynard was coming. They even go so far as to suggest with a knowing wink not only that Governor Eden knew of Maynard’s expedition but also that a large amount of Blackbeard’s undivided treasure reposed in Eden’s cellar at the time, and this helps to explain the extraordinary failure of gubernatorial protection. Since it is not recorded that any heirs of the headless pirate came forward to claim a portion of this supposed cache, it seems only logical to assume that, if there were, indeed, any undivided profits at the time, they must have remained in the private treasury of the governor.

Some years later, in fact after the Revolution but before the War Between the States, and in this same history-haunted neighborhood of Bath, there sprang up a legend that is almost unique, since the folk memory of the area is clear and in substantial agreement about it. Further, the physical phenomena involved are still right there in the open for anyone to see. “In the open” is perhaps an inappropriate figure of speech because the apparently deathless death marks are in a wooded area, but they are plain enough to see and easy enough to get to. One can literally do his own research and draw his own conclusions.

In the year 1850, so the story goes, there lived near Bath Town a gentleman by the name of Elliott, who owned a stallion of which he was very proud, and quite justly so. Tradition has it that this was the fastest race horse in that part of the State and that it had shown its heels to every other animal it had raced against.

It seems that one Sunday afternoon Elliott, while in his cups, was preparing this noble stallion for a race to be held the following day on the town commons in Bath. A part of the preparation was to have been a trial run around the race track on the commons. Although already unsteady on his feet, Elliott had saddled and mounted his fine steed and was on his way the

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