by Morgan Winstead

 

Ghost Adventures

I don’t know what possessed me to use my friend’s family computer to search for “ghost videos” on YouTube. Maybe it was an evil spirit. Whatever the motivation was, I know that my friend and I found ourselves sitting at her gigantic mahogany table, Dell computer open, searching for “REAL GHOST SIGHTINGS” and “GHOSTS ON CAMERA.” Somewhere in the results was a hidden gem: “Season 1 Episode 1 Ghost Adventures Bobby Mackey’s Music World.” Click, play. Friend – terrified. Myself – obsessed, immediately.

Even after my friend’s devout Catholic mother banned me from their house for a while for giving her daughter nightmares, I continued to search YouTube for bootleg uploads of the Travel Channel’s “Ghost Adventures.” In my free time, I was watching “Ghost Adventures” and, inevitably, being scared after watching “Ghost Adventures.” When the show’s host, Zak Bagans, released his first book, I begged my Mom to buy it for me. Thankfully she did, and I was the proud owner of Dark World, which I meticulously annotated. I learned so much. 

Zak has a tattoo of an angel-grim-reaper on his back that represents the time he was possessed on live television (Poveglia Island, Season 3 Episode 3). Zak first saw a ghost as a child, when a rat-human hybrid dug through his underwear drawer in the middle of the night. Zak knows he was a gold miner in his past life.  

As the years have passed and season after season of the show has been released, it’s clear that production value has begun to matter more to the creators of the show than capturing evidence of spirits. It’s impossible to find bootlegged uploads of episodes nowadays, so I found myself purchasing a Discovery+ subscription to watch the show in full. From season 1 to the more recent episodes, there is a palpable shift in the theatrics of each episode – lots of yelling, graphic reenactments, trying to solve cold cases by speaking to ghosts, the choice to investigate places where hauntings are being faked – and the way Zak styles his hair. 

I ignore the fakeness of the show and focus on the hair gel.   

LITTLE GIRL

BURIED

IN

RUM KEG

My bag contains a variety of items, and I refuse to not carry said items at any time, regardless of the situation I’m in. Always with me are: 

  • A book. 
  • My journal. 
  • Maybe a second journal. 
  • A pouch filled with pens, pencils, first aid supplies, deodorant, at least two ChapSticks, a Tide pen, and still another journal (this one is small, about the size of my palm).
  • Random tiny objects (think of rocks, coins, clovers, loose glitter… my friends tell me I’m like a crow, with the amount of shiny objects I hoard).

I have always been like this. It serves me well in moments like these, when I find a gravesite decorated with tiny offerings that I should, by principle, add to.

Situated in Beaufort, NC is the Old Burying Grounds, a historic cemetery with graves dating back to the 1700s. It holds a mass grave for sailors who froze to death after their ship, “Crissie Wright,” sank in January 1886; the body of a British officer, buried in his military uniform, standing up with his arm permanently locked in a salute; a woman who believed her first husband, a seaman, was dead, who remarried and had a child, only for her first husband to unexpectedly reappear years later. There are so many noteworthy graves here that there are pamphlets to take containing a Tour Map and grave descriptions at the entrance to the cemetery, a set of gargantuan wrought-iron gates that remains locked from dusk until dawn. I’m standing in front of the graveyard’s most famous grave right now, trying to decide which item from my bag to place on it. 

According to legend, a man from London moved to Beaufort, where he married and had a daughter. As she grew and learned about her father’s homeland, she wished to journey across the sea with her father to see where he was from. On the ship ride to London, though, the girl fell ill and died. The father chose to place her body in a keg of rum to preserve it for burial in her native Beaufort. Upon the ship’s return, the mother and father were too grief-stricken to even look at the body of their daughter, and so she was buried as she was, with the keg as her casket.

The headstone is a simple plank of wood, softened from years upon years of salty air and the oils from the hands of tourists. The inscription has no name or date; it simply reads, “LITTLE GIRL BURIED IN RUM KEG.” At the foot of the marker is a concrete slab, upon which visitors have taken to placing small trinkets. Seashells, rocks, stuffed animals, beads, flowers. 

I rifle through my bag, with Spanish Moss ever so slightly tickling my neck and making me jump, because it could be someone’s ghostly fingers letting me know that I’m not the first person they’ve seen that day. I pull out a playing card: ace of diamonds. I lift one of the seashells from the grave, apologizing for tampering with it, and place the card under it so it won’t blow away. I book it to the front of the cemetery, irrationally scared – as I’ve always been – that I would be locked in the graveyard right at 5 p.m.

A couple of years later, a 19-year-old set the grave ablaze and was ordered to pay a fine of $3,500. Within hours of the fire being extinguished, the trinkets had all been replaced.

(NAME REDACTED)

When I enter abandoned houses, I find myself saying “Hello?” to the air, following it with a purpose statement of sorts: “I’m only here to look around. If someone is living here please say something so I know I need to leave to avoid bothering you.” If anyone ever did answer me, I’m sure I would jump out of my skin and leave it in a heap on the floor in the dust my shoes tracked in. 

In Appalachia it’s pretty common to come across abandoned homes, and it’s also pretty common to find items within them that have remained untouched in the years since their abandonment. One of these houses was located mere meters away from my university. You couldn’t tell from the outside, which was blanketed in brambles and kudzu, but the one-story home contained four rooms: the living room with a kitchenette, a small bedroom (green walls), a second small bedroom (bright pink walls), and a room with a clunky office desk, situated askew in the center of the floor. 

My first date with my fiancé was spent exploring that house. We walked through it, looking at the space and trying to imagine what it looked like before kudzu began squatting there. In the desk room, I noticed that there were over three dozen photographs scattered across the floor, gathering dust. I picked up a handful of them, observing the moments captured on film: A man and a woman, sitting together on a bed. The same man on a hunting trip with his friends. One of the friends from the previous picture with his pants around his ankles, with another friend running away and the others laughing. A road that had fallen half-off the mountain. 

I took the photos and placed them in my journal, because leaving them on the floor felt sad. 

On a separate occasion, my fiancé, a friend, and I returned to the house. As the friend took some dirty lace curtains off of a window – “Who’s going to miss them anyway?” she said – I made my way to the desk room. The photos I hadn’t taken were still there, so I looked through them again. At the very bottom of the spread was a small white pamphlet. 

IN MEMORY OF

(NAME REDACTED)

(Birthday) – (Death Date)

*An image of the man whose photos I took from the house he presumably lived in, at one point*

I had photos that belonged to a dead man. Did his family even know those pictures were there? Certainly not, because who would know that and just let them sit there gathering dust? Then, the guilt. I have photos from a dead man’s life, his most normal moments, the ones people miss the most after death… and they’re stuck in my journal. That haunted me.

In my dorm the next day, I used the information in the pamphlet to find where (NAME REDACTED) was buried. A mere 15 minutes away from where I slept each night, and 18 minutes away from the house of photos. I gathered up the images I had stolen and sealed them in an envelope, along with a hand-drawn simplistic map of the area in which I found the pictures, and a note explaining the envelope’s contents.

“I hope this isn’t weird, but I’m a student at WCU and I found these photos and a funeral pamphlet in the house marked with an X on the map. It’s located on the corner of (street) and (street) in Cullowhee. I thought someone would like to know about this, in case you didn’t already.”

I then walked around campus picking flowers to make a bouquet to leave alongside the note and traveled the 15 minutes, struggling to find the entrance to the church graveyard (NAME REDACTED) rested in, struggling up the gravel road with washouts and sharp turns. The typical Southern, small, white church sat in a small parking lot, newly paved. The graveyard was built over and into the hills, weaving throughout the landscape. Two elderly people, presumably members of the church, stare at me, pink hair obnoxiously vibrant in the sun, as I get out of my car and begin wandering aimlessly, searching for the grave of someone I don’t even know.

Eventually, I find it. A beautifully maintained gravestone decorated with flowers, the colors of which matched the flowers I brought with me. On the stone was the same image on his funeral pamphlet, alongside the inscription: “Beloved Father and Grandfather.” I stand there for a moment, wondering if I should just leave the photos alone and let them remain where they were. The two churchgoers are still watching me. I can’t just go and stand there. I leave the flowers and the envelope, speedwalk to my car, and leave. 

Within the month, I drive by the house and see that the foliage surrounding it has been whacked. There are boards on the windows and front door and a new “NO TRESPASSING” sign nailed to one of the posts on the porch. Could I have been the cause?

A few months later, I have a dream about the gravestone. I see myself walk to it and place a single rose at the base, before walking back to my car and driving away. I take this as a sign. The next day, I buy a bouquet of a dozen roses from Ingles. After giving my fiancé 11 of them, I get into my car and venture once again up the gravel road, which I am prepared for this time around. Winter has snuffed out spring at this point, and the graveyard is decorated for Christmas. I walk from my car to the grave, not being observed this time, and place the single orange rose in the frost below (NAME REDACTED)’s picture. I have never dreamed about the grave again.