Ghosthunting North Carolina. Kala Ambrose
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