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ANSON COUNTY

The cave at Indian Rock

If the devil doesn’t exist, but man has created him, he has created him in his own image and likeness.

Fyodor Dostoevsky

Geographers and historians have often referred to Bladen County as the “Mother of Counties” in North Carolina, since so many of the state’s one hundred counties were created from land that once fell within Bladen’s boundaries. Perhaps a more appropriate nickname would be “Grandmother of Counties,” for it was Bladen’s first child, Anson County, that gave birth to all of the counties in the western half of the state. Established in 1750 as the fifteenth county in the colony, Anson once stretched westward from Bladen to the Mississippi River and included all of what is now the state of Tennessee. Now greatly reduced in size, the modern county covers 536 square miles.

Historians believe that the first white settler put down roots in the area now encompassed by Anson in 1740. Prior to that time, this land was the domain of the Catawba Indians. And so, in this ancient county, it is fitting that Anson’s oldest haunted spot should be associated with its Indian residents of long ago.

Approximately three and a half miles northeast of the county seat of Wadesboro, NC 742 crosses Gould’s Fork Creek. Located not far from the highway bridge in an almost inaccessible location is a small, spooky cave that has been the site of strange happenings and bizarre tales since the arrival of Anson’s first permanent settlers.

Catawba hunting parties in search of shelter are said to have carved the cavern out of solid rock. In its dark, damp, creepy interior is a single room. It measures roughly eight by ten feet and has enough clearance for a man of average height to walk in relative comfort. Strange markings—not the usual graffiti—are on the walls. Odd-shaped holes in the cavern are said to have held the peace pipes of the Indians.

While camping here, the Catawbas reportedly buried gold on the surrounding property. As a result, the adjacent landscape is pockmarked with many holes—evidence of the treasure hunting that has gone on here. As far as anyone knows, none of the precious metal hidden by the Indians has ever been found. And for good reason. Few people who have mustered the courage to venture to this ominous place have lingered long, for phantom voices emanate from the vicinity of the cave. The strange voices are said to belong to Indian spirits who gather at the site to discuss their gold.

A man whose house stood nearby refused to rebuild his dwelling in the mid-1950s after the original structure burned. Instead, he chose to live elsewhere because of the frightening voices coming from the Indian Rock, as the cave is known locally.

There is more to the legend. After the Catawbas were forced to abandon the cave following the influx of white settlers, the darkest, most menacing of all supernatural forces took up residence at the Indian Rock. The devil himself slept in the cave and used a nearby natural stone floor as his racetrack. Close by is an enormous, flat rock set flush with the ground. Much in the tradition of the more famous Devil’s Tramping Ground in Chatham County, items placed on the stone bed during daylight hours mysteriously vanish when darkness engulfs this desolate place. Area residents claim that Satan removes the objects when he uses his racetrack under cover of night.

So remote and so hidden are the cave and the racetrack that they are almost impossible to find. Maybe that is as it should be. Most folks in Anson County agree that it is best to leave both the ghosts of the Catawbas, who guard hidden gold, and the devil, who amuses himself at his stone race course, to their supernatural devices at this place called Indian Rock.