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WELCOME TO Ghosthunting North Carolina!

As your travel guide to the haunted state of North Carolina, it seems appropriate to let you know who is traveling with you on this journey. For as long as I can remember, I’ve seen ghosts. I was also born psychic, as well as an empath. As a child with these abilities, I didn’t quite understand what was happening to me. In large crowds or during the holidays, I would feel the intensity of emotions around me until I would experience severe stomachaches as I absorbed the emotional energy of the people around me.

Later, as I understood what I was experiencing, I learned how not to absorb as much of the energy. I also was able to define the energy that I was feeling, whether it was coming from a person who was upset, or if I was in an area that was holding a significant amount of negative energetic residue. I also learned how to detect if there was a noncorporal entity or spirit around me.

During this time, I also discovered that I had the psychic ability of psychometry, the ability to read the energy imprint that resonates from an object while holding it in your hand or touching it directly. I found that when I put an object in my hand, I could feel its connection to the person who owned it, and sometimes I would see an image of what they had been doing when wearing or using the object.

The first time I became aware of this ability, I was at my grandmother’s house and she had let me play with her jewelry. As I went through the jewelry box, I tried on her bracelets, watches, and rings. As I slipped on one of her watches, I had a vivid image of my grandmother with my grandfather when they were much younger. It was like seeing a film clip of them.

I ran to my grandmother and said, “I know what you used to do with Grandpa,” and described the scene to her. She asked me who had told me this, and I explained that when I put her watch on my wrist, I saw it. That evening, when my grandfather came home from work, I heard my grandmother ask him if he had told me the story that I had related to her.

To be discreet here, it was a rather romantic story and not one that my grandmother would have been open to sharing in polite company. Hearing the conversation in the other room growing more heated and animated between my grandparents, I ran into the room with the watch and climbed into my grandfather’s arms. “Here, Grandpa,” I said, “When I put the watch on my arm, it tells me a story.” I held the watch on my arm again and began to tell him what I could see. He held his arm around me and gave me a hug and said that I should take the watch and go put it back in the jewelry box on my grandmother’s dressing table. I did as I was told, and as I walked back toward the kitchen where my grandparents were still discussing the event, I heard my grandfather say that I was like him and like his mother, my great-grandmother, who was French and read tea leaves for a living. He said to my grandmother, “She has the gift.”

My grandmother never allowed me to play with her jewelry again. Looking back at this now, I have to chuckle. In my innocence at the time, I didn’t fully understand the romantic encounter that I saw back then. Now, in my adulthood, I can sympathize with my grandmother and see why having her privacy invaded with that particular memory would be overwhelming. I can also understand, after feeling the intensity and passion of that event, why its memory was imprinted so strongly on the watch. Thus began my understanding of psychometry and my journey of feeling energy in objects.

My first memory of a psychic prediction in childhood was about my little dog. It was bedtime for me, and I became very agitated. I explained to my parents that someone was going to take our dog that night and we needed to bring him inside. My parents tried to calm me down and put me to bed. I slept fitfully all night, sensing a stranger who was going to take our dog. The next morning, as I awoke, I ran outside to find our dog was gone and the gate was thrown wide open. I ran crying to wake up my parents to tell them. My parents have no idea who took the dog, and he was never seen again. With this experience, I began to understand that sometimes I would see or feel psychic events that I would be somewhat powerless to do anything about at the time. This continues at times today with feeling earth changes and weather movements.

Each night before I went to sleep, I would say my prayers, and when I was done, I would often see and sometimes feel an angelic being or a spirit around me. I was raised Catholic and thought it perfectly normal that I would see my guardian angel at night before I went to sleep. I assumed everyone saw spirits and ghosts, and I talked with my angel each night before going to sleep.

Photo of Kala Ambrose with her mother in front of the window where the young ghost boy would appear (Photo by Kala Ambrose)

The first ghost I remember seeing lived right outside my childhood home in Louisiana. In our dining room was a window that looked out to the front yard. My mother had planted orange daylilies out there, and I loved to look at them while sitting at the table in the dining room. One day while I was eating my lunch, I noticed a young boy standing there at the window, looking at me. I smiled and waved at him, and he waved back to me. A moment later he was gone. The next time he appeared, I noticed something was wrong with part of his head. I called out to my mother to tell her that he was hurt. When she looked through the window, she said no one was there, yet I could still see him standing there. I remember seeing this boy around our home for as long as we lived there. He was very shy and would not speak much. He liked my younger brother and would often appear around him as my brother played outside or in his room. I would always either see him around my brother or standing outside the dining room window in the orange daylilies.

From that point, my experiences continued to grow, from prophetic dreams at night to waking up and realizing that my grandfather was passing away. I experienced his death empathically before anyone else knew it had happened. By the time I was seven, I remember seeing auras, sensing positive and negative energy around people and places, and seeing ghosts and spirits around people, places, and things. I had the good fortune to be raised by parents and grandparents who encouraged my spiritual exploration and education. I was allowed to attend and study almost all forms of religions and their places of worship, and I explored them in depth, beginning in my teen years. My parents also supported my unique abilities. At the age of 13, I began to study the tarot and astrology and was creating astrological charts the old-fashioned way (before computers), along with reading tarot for friends. I also began to study the symbols in dreams and dream interpretation, as I have consistently had at least three dreams a night that I can remember. I’ve classified them into three categories: teaching and prophetic dreams, which I refer to as “going to night school;” subconscious dreams, which allow us to work through situations here on the earth plane; and dreams with others, where we encounter beings from the spirit world. In my adult years, I began to study many forms of spirituality, including Eastern mysticism, esoteric teachings, earth wisdom, and many others. My connection and interest in the metaphysical, supernatural, and paranormal has only grown over the years, never diminishing.

Along my journey, I came to this understanding: “Spirit does not exist in just one location; rather, it is all encompassing, living within and among us in each moment, thought, and action. I believe that Spirit is raised to its highest level when individuals gather with wisdom, compassion, and a discerning desire to provide service to humanity.”

This understanding led me to study and later become a teacher of the ancient wisdom teachings and the hidden mysteries. It also guided me to create the Explore Your Spirit with Kala show, where I speak with authors, teachers, researchers, and other experts on metaphysical and paranormal topics.

I’ve lived in North Carolina for the past 15 years and have met up with many ghosts who wander this great state. Over the years I’ve worked to help people here who have experienced problems of a supernatural nature, which led to my founding of The Rowan Society in 2004. The Rowan Society (TRS) is a private organization founded to research and explore paranormal phenomena in many of its forms, including hauntings, psychic development, and ancient mysteries. We respond to reports of paranormal activity and are dedicated to scientific and compassionate research in these areas. In our endeavors, we present what we believe to be documentation of paranormal activity. This includes, but is not limited to, ghost activity, folklore, exploration of ancient sites and cultures, and other paranormal research.

What we’ve discovered over the years with our research is that with all of the highly technical equipment available, the best receiver to detect ghosts is still someone with the psychic ability to see or sense the presence of a noncorporal entity. Since my childhood, I’ve seen ghosts and restless spirits. As an adult, I’ve had many experiences with the supernatural and paranormal realms. I’ve interacted with powerful beings of light, faced encounters with beings from the dark side, and seen ghosts from every walk of life. In my work, I share my experience and training in workshops around the country. I teach others how to become more intuitive, how to connect with the other side, how to sense negative energy in a home or building, and, more importantly, how to discern whether the energy can be removed and cleansed or whether it is best left alone.

Over the past decade, I have seen a rise in paranormal activity, which corresponds to the lifting of the veil between the earth plane and the spiritual realms at this time. I believe that a conscious evolution is occurring at the mind, body, and spirit level, and as this evolution continues, many people will connect with their intuitive abilities and be able to communicate with the spirit world, including with ghosts that have remained on the earth plane.

I write about some of these experiences in Kala’s Bohemian Blog, and it is now my pleasure to share with you these stories from the ghosts of North Carolina. Each haunted site here has a profound and deeply moving story to tell.

So gather your family and friends, and join me as I share what I see and what I experience as I go ghosthunting across the state of North Carolina. The journey begins in the coastal wetlands of East Carolina, where I explore haunted lighthouses, battleships, and the shipwrecked beaches where Blackbeard and his pirates still roam. Next I journey across the Piedmont area of North Carolina, where I spend the night in the most actively haunted capitol in the United States and interact with the ghost of a former North Carolina State Governor. My research continues west into the Blue Ridge Mountains, where the ghost known as the Pink Lady and her friends await your presence at the historic Grove Park Inn, where many presidents, celebrities, and ghosts have stayed over the decades.

I visited more than 100 reportedly haunted sites located in North Carolina and culled this list down to the 25 chapters here in this book. My reason for choosing this particular 25 had to do first and foremost with finding historical research that confirmed some of the details of the legend of a reportedly haunted site. The second most important criteria in my selection process included being able to confirm reports of ghost activity around the site from a variety of people over a generous span of time. After each site made the cut on these two selections, the final decision then came down to my personal experiences at each of these locations, including what I psychically experienced firsthand at each location relative to paranormal activity. My intent in this book is to provide you with all three of the above-listed criteria in order to assist you in your paranormal research and investigations.

As a psychic and paranormal researcher, I have often been asked what it’s like to see or sense a ghost. The best way I can describe the experience is that most of the ghostly activity I immediately feel when entering a new space or building is the time loop/energy imprint type of haunting activity. That’s the easiest to detect because it’s like seeing a projector playing a movie in the home. To imagine what it looks like to me, picture walking into a home that you have never been in before. You don’t know your way around and so you cautiously walk around the home. You have been told that no one is home, but as you continue walking through the rooms, you hear a sound. As your ears strain to detect where the sound is coming from, you hear the soft murmur of voices. You are now fairly sure that someone is here in the home, but you are not sure what room they are in. You’re now a little ill at ease because you’ve been told the house is empty, but you can hear the sound of voices and as you move toward them, they are getting stronger. You see a closed door and can see a bit of light coming from this room, and you softly open the door to see what’s inside. As the door opens, you see what looks like an image from a projector that has been left on playing a family movie. The projected image plays a scene from the family’s life, and when it ends, it rewinds and plays the movie over and over again. Sometimes the image is crystal clear, and sometimes it’s worn and old with parts of the film missing, having burned away like the old celluloid films that would become damaged on the reel in old theaters. Many times, this is similar to what I see, only there’s no projector playing, it is just happening in the room, like a 3-D video being projected in the open.

These energy imprints/time loops are the easiest to detect when ghosthunting because they are running on a frequent basis like a movie, appearing nightly at a haunted house near you.

Ghostly visitations and apparitions that I have experienced, on the other hand, are much more subjective, and the ghost has the choice to appear or not appear and decides whether or not to engage with you. This is why on ghost television shows and investigations you will see some investigators attempt to draw out the ghost to interact with them by asking them questions or goading them at times to make them angry enough to show themselves. I don’t recommend doing this, as you may run into the wrong ghost who just may decide that rather than hanging around where they have been, they are now angry enough to spend their time hanging around you. One thing ghosts have that we don’t is all the time in the world. They don’t eat, they don’t sleep, and they don’t need to work for a living. Would you really want to antagonize a being like this who would have all the time they wanted to mess with you? Or worse, you could find out that it’s not a ghost, but an entity that is stronger and could cause even more trouble for you. Most of us don’t go to a dangerous part of town and attempt to pick a fight with thugs, inviting them to show us what they’ve got, so why would we want to invite this kind of trouble from a ghost? Most of the people I’ve met who do quickly regret their actions. My advice is to tread lightly and respectfully when ghosthunting. Have respect for the living and the dead at each location, protect yourself at all times, and ask politely to connect with the other side in the same manner you would if you were knocking on a stranger’s door and asking to tour their home.

The ghost stories in this book begin in East Carolina. Eastern North Carolina can be lonely and desolate in some places. There are still some areas along the Outer Banks that are only reachable by foot, horseback, or with a 4x4 vehicle. These areas are remote, isolated, and sometimes dangerous.

The shoreline of North Carolina is not welcoming to ships, and even with the abundance of lighthouses warning ships to steer clear, the number of shipwrecks reported along the coast is in the hundreds. Pirate ghosts wander the land, looking to save their sunken ships, hide their treasure, or settle a score. Blackbeard is the most famous and infamous of them all, and remains in good company with the men and women who followed a similar path.

Traveling along the coastline and the Outer Banks, I visited areas where nature appears untouched. The land appears as fresh as the day early European settlers arrived to colonize the area, including young Virginia Dare and the legend of the Lost Colony of Roanoke. Standing there looking at the shore, I was touched by the beauty of the land and sea and by the bravery of those early colonists who arrived here not knowing what was in store for them. I’m struck by the fact that here on these tiny barrier islands, we now have 24-hour communications advising us of hurricanes days before the storms arrive in order to evacuate to safety. In the days of the early colonists, there was little warning, and the wind and waves crashing down on these tiny islands had to be extremely frightening to both the living and the dead.

This is where our haunted history of North Carolina begins, on the beaches and outer islands of the state. Join me as we step back into time and walk in the footsteps of pirates, colonists, adventurers, plantation owners, and the people who loved them. Perhaps Blackbeard will finally share where his treasure has been buried all this time.

Some believe that your soul can’t rest when you are lost at sea, and thus you remain a ghost. The coast of North Carolina is full of stories of ghosts said to appear and disappear at will, some to warn of approaching storms, others on patrol to guard a fort, and lighthouse keepers who remain at their station long after their final retirement.

I find it interesting to note that should you sail directly east from the coast of North Carolina, you will reach Bermuda, putting you directly into the Bermuda Triangle. Were the souls who dared to cross the Bermuda Triangle to enter the North Carolina coast doomed even before they began?

As with all of the America’s Haunted Road Trip books, travel information is provided for each haunted location for those brave enough to make the journey in person to see these sites for themselves and for paranormal researchers who are interested in exploring haunted North Carolina.

Tuck Ghosthunting North Carolina in your pocket and take the journey behind the scenes with detailed historic and personal information that I share about each destination.

Happy haunting! I look forward to hearing from you as you ghosthunt your way across the state. Visit me at www.ghosthuntingnorthcarolina.com.

All the best,

Kala Ambrose

May 2011