Читать книгу Ghosthunting North Carolina - Kala Ambrose - Страница 17

What happened to Virginia Dare and the rest of the colonists of Roanoke remains a mystery to this day.

“How like a winter hath my absence been

From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year!

What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen!

What old December’s bareness every where!

—William Shakespeare, “Sonnet XCVII”

IN 1584, EXPLORERS WERE SENT to Roanoke Island (a narrow island situated between the Outer Banks and the mainland of North Carolina) by Sir Walter Raleigh to determine if the area would be well suited to establishing a colony. Upon their return, they delivered a positive report of the location, which included a list of the abundant natural resources surrounding the area and findings that Roanoke was better protected from the elements than the Outer Banks. They also brought back with them a Native American chief to show that relations between the tribe’s people and the settlers could be peaceful. The island appeared to be a good all-around choice for a settlement, with live oaks and plenty of other trees with which to build cabins and a variety of wildlife to hunt for food. Raleigh delivered the information to Queen Elizabeth, and she granted him a charter to all the lands that he could claim in the area.

The next year Raleigh sent out a group of 100 men, mostly soldiers and craftsmen, to establish the colony under the guidance of Ralph Lane, a military captain. The group met with poor results from the beginning. One of their ships struck a sandbar and tilted onto its side during their attempt to land. As a result, a good portion of their food and other supplies were lost as they tumbled into the water and sank. In addition, they arrived in late summer and were unable to plant the crops they needed for food. The third and most disastrous occurrence was that instead of making friends with the natives, Lane fought with them and ended up killing their chief over a cup that he believed the natives had stolen. Reports state that the natives retaliated by ransacking the village and setting it on fire. This ended the opportunity of receiving any help from the native tribe. With cold weather approaching, Lane and his men abandoned the area, reportedly leaving a few of the craftsmen behind. As luck or karma would have it, a ship with reinforcements and supplies arrived a week later. Fifteen men from the ship’s crew were ordered to remain behind to secure the area while the captain and the rest of his crew, along with the craftsmen who didn’t leave with Lane, returned to deliver this information to Raleigh in England.

Raleigh responded to the news of Lane’s departure by gathering a party of 117 men, women, and children who were willing to sail from England in order to establish a permanent settlement in the New World. John White was selected to be the new governor of the charter land, which Raleigh had once proclaimed would be called the “citi of Raleigh.” As the group boarded the ship to sail back to the New World, White included in his party his pregnant daughter, Eleanor Dare, and her husband Annanias Dare. The native chief, who had traveled to England with the original explorers, also sailed back with the colonists.

After Lane’s fiasco with the natives, Raleigh had decided that Chesapeake Bay would be a better choice for a settlement, and this was where the ship was supposed to take Governor White and his party. The Portuguese captain of the ship was first ordered to stop at Roanoke to drop off supplies and check on the men who had been left there, as well as to drop off the Native American chief at his home. The ship arrived safely in Roanoke. While there, the ship’s crew discovered that the natives who had fought with Lane had also killed the 15 men who had been left behind to guard the settlement, and most everything there had been burned or destroyed with only a few bones of the dead men found scattered. It was extremely dangerous and considered uninhabitable at this time due to the ongoing battle with the local native tribe.

During the voyage to Roanoke, the ship’s captain had received word that the Spanish were gearing up to fight England, and he decided that this was a golden opportunity to make a fortune pirating and looting the ships carrying cargo back and forth. He made the decision that he would not take the passengers all the way up to Chesapeake Bay; instead they would be left at Roanoke so that he could return to Europe. Even though the captain was aware that everyone who had previously been at Roanoke was now dead, he forced Governor White and all of the passengers off the ship and onto Roanoke Island.

The passengers scrambled to build some sort of shelter, and White immediately reached out to the Croatan people, who had been friendly with the earlier explorers. He also reached out to the other tribe that had fought with Lane. The Croatan people were friendly, but the other tribe refused to make peace with the settlers.

The colonists busied themselves trying to create shelter and unpack their belongings while the ship’s crew was busy loading fresh water and other supplies back onto the ship.

On July 28, 1587, a member of White’s party, George Howe, set out walking along the beach, looking to collect crabs to cook for that evening’s dinner. As he was walking, he was captured and killed by being shot 16 times with arrows, and then his head was beaten into pieces by the native tribe.

Afraid for their lives, the colonists asked the governor to travel back with the ship when it departed and make his way to England to ask for immediate assistance and reinforcements. This was a risky voyage, as traveling across the Atlantic Ocean in the fall was a very rough journey for ships due to storms and high waves. There was also concern about the Portuguese captain heading into battle and pirating along the way during the trip back to Europe.

Before White’s departure on the ship, his daughter Eleanor gave birth to the first colonist child on August 18, 1587, on Roanoke Island. She named her child Virginia Dare. On August 27, 1587, John White sailed with the ship back to England. What happened subsequently is every father’s nightmare.

Governor White just barely made it back to England, as the captain noted in his ship’s log; they had been lucky to find their way to the English shore. White gathered supplies and resources but could not find a captain who was willing to risk the voyage across the Atlantic during the stormy and choppy seas of the winter months. He was forced to wait, leaving his family and the colonists at the mercy of a long, cold winter with few supplies and a hostile enemy surrounding them.

In spring of the next year, White desperately tried to get back to the colonists at Roanoke. During this time the Anglo-Spanish War broke out and all available ships were being used in the battles. He managed to find two ships, which were small enough that they were deemed unable to be of any assistance in battle. As White sailed toward Roanoke, the two ships encountered Spanish pirates whose crews boarded the English ships and stole all of the cargo. Empty-handed, John White was forced back to England again to gather new resources and supplies. Due to the ongoing war, White was unable to hire a ship until three years later, in 1590, when he managed to get on board with, an expedition that agreed to drop him off at Roanoke.

Three years after Eleanor gave birth to Virginia, her father landed on Roanoke Island to find everyone and everything missing. All traces of the settlement had disappeared. There was no sign of struggle, nor were there any signs of where the group had gone. His heart raced with terror. Were his daughter and granddaughter alive? Had someone taken them? There had been no way to get a direct message to them for the past three years. The colonists had no news source and relied on ships that very infrequently stopped in the area. It’s highly likely that the colonists might not have known about the war that had kept White from traveling back to them. They may have presumed White to be dead or lost at sea.

Imagine how Eleanor must have felt, a new baby and practically defenseless, waiting each day in such dangerous territory, cradling her small daughter while everyone rationed the dwindling supplies. White understood this and more, realizing that his dream of starting the first settlement in the New World and bringing his daughter with him had led to her destruction.

White searched through the entire settlement, and the only clues he found was the word CROATAN carved into one of the trees and the letters CRO carved in a second tree nearby. He had asked the group to leave a sign should they be forced to move further inland and suggested that they use the sign of a Maltese cross carved in a tree should they be under attack and forced to flee for their lives.

Seeing only the word Croatan carved on the tree, his hope was that the settlers had joined the Croatan people, whose chief had been friendly to White. He hoped that they were safe with them where the Croatan people lived on nearby Hatteras Island.

As he asked the ship’s captain to sail to Hatteras Island, a hurricane formed in the Atlantic near the North Carolina coast, damaging the ship. The captain then ordered that the ship immediately return to England for repairs, denying White’s request to sail to Hatteras Island. White returned to England with a heavy heart. By this time, he was out of money. White was never able to return to the New World to find his daughter and granddaughter.

The lost colony of Roanoke remains a mystery to this day. Theories have arisen throughout the years over what happened to the colonists. Here are a few: a hurricane swept over them, destroyed the settlement, and washed all the colonists out to sea; the hostile tribe killed them all, buried their bodies, and destroyed the settlement; the settlers, angry at what they perceived as White’s desertion or death, and now hungry, alone, and cold, set out to live elsewhere and died along their journey, or they left and went to live with the Croatan tribe.

Supernatural explanations have also been raised, including werewolves attacking the group and turning the colonists into werewolves; or as they abandoned the settlement, the native tribes destroyed the camp and cursed it in order to keep others from returning. One theory posits that aliens arrived on the shore and took all of the colonists with them onto their spaceship.

The most plausible theory is that the colonists hung on for a while at the settlement, but as the cold winter blew in, they knew that between the low food supplies, angry natives, and freezing temperatures, their chances of survival were slim. Since White had befriended the chief of the Croatans, most historians believe that they reached out to the Croatans and went to live with them on Hatteras Island. This explains the Croatan message left behind on the tree for White to find.

In 1709, John Lawson, an explorer from England, reported that he spent some time with the descendants of the Croatan tribe, who were now referred to as the Hatteras Indians. This would have been about 120 years after the birth of Virginia Dare. The explorer reported that when meeting the tribe, several of the people had very light skin and gray and blue eyes rather than brown. He reported that he had not seen this among any of the other natives he had encountered in his explorations. They told him that they were of English descent and that they had the ability to “talk in a book,” which meant that they knew how to read.

More than 300 years after Eleanor and Virginia Dare’s arrival in Roanoke, a North Carolina man, Hamilton MacMillan, reported that he lived near a tribe of Native Americans who claimed that their ancestors were from Roanoke. MacMillan reported that they were able to speak English and that many of them had light skin, blue eyes, and light-colored hair, and that their bone and facial structure was different in comparison to the other native tribes in North Carolina. Some people believe that this is the Lumbee Tribe, who showed English habits of living. Some of them had facial hair, including beards, which Native Americans traditionally do not have. Researchers continue to discuss and debate the lost colony of Roanoke. The most recent theory is that the settlers argued during the months after White left, some believing that he would never return and others holding out hope. The opinion is that the group broke into two parties and went their separate ways, some heading toward Chesapeake Bay, where they had originally intended to settle, and the others partnered up and assimilated into the Croatan tribe.

Historians have traced this theory, and there is some evidence that a group of settlers did arrive in Chesapeake around this time. In 1607, John Smith and the Jamestown colonists settled in the Chesapeake area, and Smith engaged in conversation with the Native Chief Powhatan. Smith reported that Powhatan did not like new people entering his area and when they did, he attacked and killed most of them. In a conversation with Smith, Powhatan mentioned committing the murders of a group of settlers. When asked when this occurred, the date coincides with the time that a party of settlers might have arrived from Roanoke if they had left in early winter. Powhatan showed Smith proof of the colonists’ existence with trinkets he had saved from the massacre. They included a musket barrel, buttons, and pieces of iron. Other historians are quick to note, though, that Smith liked to embellish his stories, as did Powhatan, and that it is likely that Powhatan had obtained the musket barrel and other pieces by trading with other tribes, and used these artifacts to intimidate and scare colonists like Smith.

Visitors to the Roanoke settlement can see the small remnants left behind by the colonists. Ghosts are seen walking around where the fort stood and often appear standing along the beach, perhaps hoping to see a ship on the horizon bringing much needed supplies and reinforcements. Theories suggest that one of the ghosts may be the colonist George Howe, who was savagely attacked and killed by the natives while he walked the beach looking for crabs. Other ghosts may include the 15 men who were left behind to guard the settlement and murdered by the angry natives.

During my research of the Lost Colony, I had the opportunity to speak with Anne Poole, cofounder and research director of The Lost Colony Genealogy DNA and Archaeology Research Group. Anne and I were able to discuss many of the haunted sites in North Carolina, as she also leads the Carolina Ghost Hunters, which researches paranormal events around the state. Anne arranged the overnight ghost hunt in the state capitol building during the night that my research group, The Rowan Society, attended and had paranormal experiences of our own.

I spoke with Anne about her ongoing research and archaeological work at the Lost Colony area with cofounder Roberta Estes. The two women work with a team of archaeologists from England who are studying the site, and together they are determined to solve the mystery of what happened to Virginia Dare and the Lost Colony. They’re doing some incredible research, including using DNA from the descendants of the colonist families in England in order to test families in North Carolina who may be genetically linked.

For Anne, researching the Lost Colony became a passion for her at the age of ten, when her parents first brought her to the area to show her the history of North Carolina and the Lost Colony. She was hooked on the mystery from that point and has dedicated a generous portion of her time to researching the history of the Dare family and the other colonists. I asked Anne which theory she subscribed to as to where the colonists went, and she feels they stuck together and went to live with the Croatan tribe. She said from a logical standpoint, they were strangers in a new world, and there is safety in numbers. They were facing the unknown, as well as hostile native tribes, swamps, poor maps, high heat and humidity that they had not been exposed to in England, as well as the threat of alligators, bears, wolves, poisonous snakes, and other predators. She went on to explain that there’s also the evidence of Croatan written on the tree. She pointed out that if the people had headed to Chesapeake Bay, wouldn’t they have written the word Chesapeake on the tree? It certainly makes the most sense of all.

Little physical evidence remains of the colonists from Roanoke. An eerie stillness hangs in the air and in the surrounding woods.

As Anne and I continued to chat, the most interesting thing occurred. I saw a Native American man standing behind her in spirit. The more she talked about the Lost Colony and the Croatan, the stronger his energy became. His presence was so strong that I felt compelled to mention this to Anne. I described the Native American man to her and told her that I felt he was a protective guide for her, and beyond that, I had the impression that he was helping her on her quest to find the evidence of the Lost Colony. As I spoke to this man in spirit, he told me that Anne is a descendant of the Lost Colony and that it is part of her destiny to assist in finding what happened to the colonists. It appeared to me that he intends to stay with her on every step of this journey until it is complete. As I shared what I had seen with Anne, it surprised her a bit, and then she shared with me a story of a place she had been only a short while back where she had been giving a lecture on the history of North Carolina. After the talk, a woman approached her and said that she had seen a Native American man standing behind Anne during her talk. My having seen the same spirit during my conversation with Anne served to confirm this even further. It certainly left me with the understanding that Anne may very well be the person to discover the evidence that so many have looked for, as I believe her to be one of the descendants of these colonists.

Finishing up my conversation with Anne, I thanked her for her time, and we discussed holding a ghosthunting event in the future for other paranormal researchers and interested people who wish to explore North Carolina. She also confirmed for me the history of what I had found in my research about the Lost Colony. She then shared that she had experienced some supernatural experiences in some of the other places I was writing about, including the Mordecai House in Raleigh. While Anne and her daughter were there, her daughter had a ghost touch her and blow in her ear while they were in Mary Turk’s room on the Mordecai House tour.

There’s so much still to uncover about the Lost Colony of Roanoke. One thing is for sure: when you visit the Lost Colony area, it feels eerie and isolated. It looks open and unprotected, and the woods surrounding you feel dangerous. The area remains much the same as it was when the settlers arrived, and you’ll get a good idea of what it was like to live at that time.

I enjoyed the natural beauty and scenic views of the area. At the same time, I tried to imagine what it was like to be Eleanor Dare, pregnant in a new world and facing starvation, exposure to the elements, and the constant threat of being attacked and killed by natives. I also wondered how John White had been given the position and responsibility of being governor, as research shows that he was an artist by trade.

As I tuned in to the energy around the area, I thought I would sense fear, but it felt more like nervous tension, like anxiety. The daily struggle of waiting, hoping, and wondering if help would come or if an attack by the natives would occur each night would be so much to bear on a daily basis. The area has a haunted, lonely feeling that still remains today. With that much anxiety, fear, and death, it’s not surprising that ghost stories continue to be reported in the local area.

The Roanoke Island Historical Association presents an outdoor drama each summer portraying what happened to the settlers of the lost colony. The scene is striking, set outdoors on the area where the settlement once stood, using the Atlantic Ocean as the backdrop.

In my conversation with Anne Poole about the surrounding area, she shared with me another haunted story, which she has personally experienced on Roanoke Island. It began on Mother Vineyard Road, where the oldest grapevine in the United States is reported to exist. When the colonists first arrived at Roanoke, they reported that the island was covered with wild grapes, which may have been scuppernong vines. Mother’s Vineyard is a private location that has continued to produce grapes from this vine for more than 400 years, surviving explorers, colonists, the elements, and the Civil War. Over the years, locals and visitors have reported seeing a ghost man with an eerie glow riding a bike on this road. When the man appears, many report also hearing a cat scream and the ringing of a bike bell. They also describe some of the activity as “hoodoos.” Hoodoos are small, dark creatures that appear as shadowy figures and are sometimes mischievous. Many locals believe that the ghost riding the bicycle is a hoodoo. All of the people who encounter this hoodoo energy describe it as feeling ancient and intensely overpowering.

Anne was called in to investigate the hoodoo with her paranormal research group, and she interviewed several witnesses who personally attest to seeing the ghostly man, including two college students. During her investigation, Anne sensed the presence of a woman in the area who she describes as a granny type character. The woman appeared to be a caretaker, watching over the land and the Mother Vineyard. While she didn’t experience the hoodoo while investigating, she did come away with the impression that the area is haunted by several beings.

When you plan your visit to the Lost Colony of Roanoke, remember that the actual area is quite bare. The Lost Colony is open to visit, but there is not much here at the site. Mother’s Vineyard is private property and not open to visitors, but you can drive down the road to see if a hoodoo appears to you one night. The nearby town of Manteo offers accommodations and restaurants. While you’re this far out on the Outer Banks, you might also enjoy driving another half hour to Rodanthe, where the movie Nights in Rodanthe was filmed, starring Richard Gere. The movie was based on the book of the same title by Nicholas Sparks.