THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610250285
SECTION: CAROLINA COAST PAGE: 19 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY CATHERINE KOZAK, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 90 lines
THEY'RE PEACEFUL neighbors. Dead quiet, actually.
Haunting likely has no better setting, and Halloween no better scare potential than a cemetery. But residing near a graveyard loses some chill in areas like the Outer Banks, where most of its residents are kin.
``My grandparents are buried over there and I have aunts and uncles there,'' says Judy Deaver, who has lived next to the Hilltop cemetery on Colington Island for 13 years. ``It's like a big family cemetery.''
The situation is a familiar one to natives whose roots are deeply planted.
``Basically, just about everyone is related, maybe two or three times removed. At one time in Colington, there were only three or four families,'' Deaver says. ``There's not too many over there I don't know.''
Betty Henley, who lives down the road from the Austin cemetery in Kitty Hawk, says she used to run past as fast as she could at night when growing up by the graveyard. Now she says she enjoys long walks through the nearby paths. ``When I go around, I see relatives,'' she says.
Approximately 232 cemeteries exist throughout Dare County, including the small family plots that are scattered throughout the Outer Banks, said Charles Aguirre, who lives near the Baum cemetery in Kitty Hawk.
Billing himself the ``chief ghoul,'' Aguirre says he had decided to survey the number of gravesites within the county as an offshoot of his own geneological search. Spending his early years in a Raleigh orphanage, Aguirre eventually discovered that he was a Hayman, an old family in the Albemarle region.
Deaver, a relation to the Moore's and Beasley's, says her grandfather - who witnessed the Wright Brothers flight - was once buried in the front yard of her family home on Colington Road. He has since been relocated to Hilltop.
Other coffins have been moved in a less orderly fashion.
Ashley Morton, who lives across from the big ``public'' cemetery in Ocracoke, recalls what happened after Hurricane Gloria hit the island in the mid-80s.
``The tide got so high that the water level literally brought a couple of caskets to the surface. And they actually floated down the road and landed on someone's front lawn,'' Morton says.
Morton, 21, works at Island Hammock, which is located across from the more famous graveyard, the British cemetery.
A nearby neighbor of the Stumpy Point graveyard had also heard of an incident of bobbing coffins.
``The water did come up; the caskets did come out of the ground,'' recalls Tracy Hooper. ``That's kinda spooky.''
In fact, it was creepy enough that Hooper says she feels definite reservations about visiting the cemetery at night. She confesses no inspiration to take walks through the headstones at the cemetery, day or night.
Hooper moved to Stumpy Point six years ago when she married. When asked if she knows of any stories about a ghost that has been rumored to haunt the graveyard, she hesitated.
``I never heard about a ghost,'' she says, her voicing trailing off. Then, laughing softly, she says maybe her husband surmised she'd not want to live in the house, two doors down from the cemetery, if she knew. ``He might not have told me that . . . because I'm not real brave about that stuff.''
But Rita Roberts, a broker with Resort Realty, says cemeteries as neighbors don't seem to inspire strong feelings one way or another in the real estate business.
``It's sort of like a swimming pool,'' she says. ``People who have one think it should be considered an asset when selling their house.''
Occasionally, a buyer will try to use the nearby graveyard as a reason to make a lower offer on a house. But the peace and tranquility can also be a selling point for nearby homes.
``They do sell,'' Roberts says. ``It's not an asset, but I don't think it's a detriment either.''
And they are safe. Outer Banks cemeteries are seldom plagued by vandals.
At the Manteo cemetery about seven years ago, some kids broke tombstones and ``tore things up a lot'' on Halloween night, says June Neri, whose house abuts the graveyard. But no problems have happened since, she adds.
Morton explains that teenagers here have their own history is held by residents of many of the area cemeteries.
``Because it's everybody's family members, you kinda have a little more respect for them,'' he says.
Even with great granddad and a slew of distant relatives under the ground, kids here still delight in using the headstones and general creepiness of graveyards to their advantage on Halloween.
Morton says kids in Ocracoke don't vandalize, but delight in hiding behind the tombstones and ``egging'' anyone who goes by.
``If you go down Howard Street - that's the worst. It's the darkest street on the island. You never went down Howard Street on Halloween because you knew you were gonna get it.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by DREW C. WILSON
Rita Roberts, a broker with Resort Realty, says cemeteries as
neighbors don't seem to inspire strong feelings one way or another
in the real estate business. by CNB