THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 30, 1994 TAG: 9410270201
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 07 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DARA McLEOD, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: Long : 159 lines
AT A NEW HOME tucked away in the woods of Roanoke Island's Mother Vineyard, footsteps can sometimes be heard in an upstairs bedroom on quiet evenings, as if some troubled soul were pacing back and forth across the floor.
Some say it's the ghost of Vanburen ``Webb'' Etheridge, a merchant seaman lost at sea in 1942.
At a residence less than a mile down the road, eerie calliope music has been heard coming from the vents, and the family has stared in amazement as 3-foot-tall creatures in black, hooded clothing dashed across their living room and vanished into the fireplace.
Some say the little ``hoodoos'' live in the woods nearby.
At a popular beachfront restaurant in the old Croatan Inn, four employees had almost finished closing up for the night when they heard someone banging on the piano behind them, obviously trying to attract their attention. Knowing they were the only ones in the building, they glanced back in search of some logical explanation but found none.
Unless, of course, it was the ghost of the young woman who died in the Croatan Inn many years before.
And at a restaurant in the old U.S. Lifesaving Service Station at Kitty Hawk, employees and patrons claim to have seen ashtrays, washed and placed upside-down to dry, slide down the bar and right themselves for no apparent reason.
Legend has it the ghost of a surfman, shot and killed at that station in 1884, still haunts the place.
These are just a few of the tales of ghosts and goblins and unexplainable happenings that persist on the Outer Banks today. Coastal folklore is rich in tales of the supernatural, some originating with the natives and some passed down from generation to generation of European settlers. But of course it's all just romantic folklore - or is it?
WYNNE DOUGH, curator of the Outer Banks History Center, says coastal lore tends to be full of tales of ghosts, goblins and witches simply because the areas have been settled for so long.
Dough says he doesn't know what to believe when it comes to ghosts and other supernatural phenomena.
Most of these legends, Dough says, are based on a core of fact, although it's sometimes difficult to establish just what the facts are. But, he adds, it's what people believe that really matters.
``If enough people believe strongly enough in something, it might as well be reality,'' Dough says.
And sometimes even the most skeptical can be made to believe.
When Angel and Daniel Khoury moved into their new Mother Vineyard home, they weren't concerned about tales of the ghost of Webb Etheridge, who is said to haunt the cemetery and nearby land.
Etheridge was lost at sea in 1942, when the oil tanker on which he served was torpedoed off the Carolina coast. Although his body was never recovered, a gravestone bearing his name and the inscription ``Lost at Sea'' rests in the Etheridge family cemetery that borders the Khourys' property.
Angel Khoury says that when she and her husband started noticing strange things happening in their home, like overhead fans and VCRs turning on and off by themselves, they dismissed it as a simple electrical problem. First they replaced the fan, then the wiring - all to no avail.
``I call him my ghost, but I don't really know,'' Khoury says.
``But I know it's not just my imagination,'' she adds with a laugh, noting that there are no ghosts in her downtown apartment.
``We've never really seen him,'' Khoury says. But she claims she has heard footsteps and other strange noises in the night.
Khoury says if the spirit of Webb Etheridge really does exist, he seems to be a friendly ghost who is fascinated with buttons, switches, electrical devices and, oddly enough, video equipment.
DOUGH, WHO ALSO LIVES in Mother Vineyard, says he's heard quite a few tales of spirits and the like in his neighborhood, where old family cemeteries and wooded lots are intermingled with many new and recently constructed homes.
But the strangest of all are tales of the short, dark-hooded creatures named ``hoodoos'' by a family friend who claims to have seen them on several occasions.
``I've seen one run across the living room and into the fireplace, and then it disappeared,'' says Jeff Clovis, a roofer who rented a home in Mother Vineyard with his family. ``I believe that they are harmless, but I think they live in the woods back behind the houses there.''
He says he also saw a hoodoo on an old bicycle once.
``I don't know what they are really. I just call them `hoodoos.' ''
Clovis said his family and their guests sometimes heard strange noises in the woods and in the house, and they attribute most of the mischievous pranks played upon them to the little creatures.
Dough's daughter Erin, now a student at North Carolina State University, says she spent a lot of time at the Clovis house with her high school friend Cathy Clovis.
``All kinds of creepy stuff happened there,'' Erin Dough says.
She says she once entered the house with her friend and discovered that the thermometer on the fish tank had been turned all the way up.
``The fish had been boiled, essentially,'' she says.
Another time she and Cathy went to the Clovis home after school and discovered they were locked out. The deadbolt, which the family never used because they didn't have a key, had been locked from the inside. They finally got in through a window, but there was no trace of anyone having been inside.
``Later that day, we heard this music - it sounded like calliope music - coming from the vents,'' she says.
Jeff Clovis says the family lived there for a couple of years, and the strange happenings continued.
``You never had an unfriendly feeling about it. They more or less avoided you. You just never had a bad feeling about whatever they were.''
AT LEAST TWO local restaurants also claim to have resident ghosts that assert themselves.
Maxine Rossman, general manager of Papagayo restaurant, located in the old Croatan Inn, says the ghost that haunts that building is ``very playful.''
``Believe me, I was as big a skeptic as the next guy until I experienced it myself,'' she says. ``You just get the feeling that someone is watching, that someone is there.''
Rossman says she once left at closing time just after a co-worker, and then discovered her car wouldn't start. As she waited in the lobby after calling a friend to pick her up, she heard a door creaking, then footsteps - the sound of someone climbing the stairs.
Rossman says she ran to her car to wait for her friend, and when they drove out of the parking lot, she glanced at an upstairs window and noticed a light was on in a part of the building that was closed and locked.
The story passed along from those who've lived and worked in the building is that the ghost is a young woman whose family built the place. She is said to have died of natural causes at an early age, although some family members are skeptical of the tale.
ANOTHER APPARITION is said to haunt The Black Pelican Restaurant, housed in the old U.S. Lifesaving Service Station at Kitty Hawk, where the keeper, James R. Hobbs, shot surfman L. Daniels in 1884.
Written accounts of the shooting on file at the Outer Banks History Center show that the two had been feuding for some time, and that Daniels had charged Hobbs with misusing government paint and manpower for private purposes.
According to the statement of E.C. Clayton, who had come to investigate the charges, both men drew weapons. Hobbs shot and wounded Daniels and during a struggle shot him a second time, killing him almost instantly.
Legend says the slain surfman continues to haunt the building.
Owner Paul Shaver says unexplainable events have occurred at the restaurant as well as his home since the day he acquired the building.
And Mimi Adams, who co-owned a restaurant there previously, says she believes a ghost was tampering with the breakers the day they began renovating the building. Glasses were known to lift themselves from the bar, do a complete flip and land upright, she says.
She doesn't hesitate about attributing it all to a ghost.
``He would sometimes break things in the kitchen when he got mad at the chef,'' she says. ``And he doesn't like change. Anything you did - any construction - he would let it be known that he was around.''
Shaver stops short of attributing the strange phenomena he and others have witnessed to the ghost of the slain surfman, but he doesn't rule it out either.
``I'm not a believer in ghosts,'' Shaver says. ``But I guess I'm not a non-believer either. And I really don't know if it could be the power of suggestion or not.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by ROBIE RAY
Although Webb Etheridge's grave is located in a small private
cemetery behind a private home in Manteo, it's said his ghost still
seeks a resting place.
by CNB