North Carolina is a US State located in the southeastern region of the United States and is bordered with the US States of Virginia, Tennessee, Georgia and South Carolina. The state also has a coast along the Atlantic Ocean. Raleigh is the state capital while the largest city is Charlotte. The state is one of the original Thirteen Colonies.
North Carolina is generally split into three major geographical zones, there is the Atlantic Coastal Plain that makes up the Eastern portion of the State which is the part of the state with the lowest elevation leading down to the Atlantic Ocean and there are the Outer Banks, a string of narrow and sandy barrier islands separated from the state’s mainland by sounds and inlets, Cape Hatteras is known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic due to more than a thousand ships having sunk in its waters since records begun.
The Piedmont Region is located in Central North Carolina and is higher in elevation, this area is the most populous of the three, containing most of the state’s major cities. This region includes gently rolling hills within the countryside, which are broken up by larger hills and low mountain ranges.
Then finally there is the Mountain Region in the West of North Carolina, which has the highest elevation of the three geographical areas, it is a part of the Appalachian Mountain Range, parts of this in North Carolina includes the Great Smoky Mountains, the Blue Ridge Mountains, and the Black Mountains. 17 major river basins are located throughout North Carolina, flowing either into the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic Ocean. Sometimes the State can be impacted by hurricanes or their resulting tropical storms that move up the Atlantic Coast.
North Carolina has a diverse economy that includes sectors such as agriculture, manufacturing and services. The Research Triangle Park is found in the state, which is the largest research park in the United States. Like in many states tourism is another important sector.
Now let’s move on to the strange and the unexplained of the state of North Carolina!
North Carolina actually has quite a few legends of unexplained cryptid or paranormal creatures within it, which makes sense as North Carolina is one of the oldest states, giving more time for legends to have grown and come about.
One of the first is the legend of the Santer, some kind of feline cryptid or entity that although is often not dangerous to man, is often seen to be dangerous to livestock, one trademark sign of a Santer being around is the mysterious and unexplained death and mutilation of livestock over a period of time. The creature is most often said to lurk about in Western North Carolina.
The legend itself some have suggested may have originated from lumberjack folklore in the region which means the Santer could be another one of the various beasts apart of the Fearsome Critter folklore. Common descriptions of the beast tell of it having a long body that is covered in fluorescent hair, with a large bald head and small eyes, long legs and tail, and upon its tail are eight hard knots, that can look like beads from a distance. Its tail is said to be powerful, able to swipe at and knock down prey or used to defend itself from other animals/humans.
Some of the beast’s description and especially its unique method of attack is certainly very typical of a Fearsome Critter creature that often have very fanciful descriptions and abilities.
The creature is obviously meant to be elusive, despite its fluorescent hair that one would think may make it easier to spot. The creature is also described as being very fast and will commonly live around wooded swampy areas near to small settlements that keep livestock such as cattle and hogs which it likes to hunt.
Many will likely scoff at the idea of this creature and for good reason, it is certainly unlikely that such a creature exists in this exact form and with such absurd abilities, but it isn’t impossible that some accounts of livestock deaths are actually caused by real big cats, perhaps those that have strayed into areas not native to them, and thus people will be unfamiliar with them.
One such legend exists known as the Beast of Bladenboro, which could possibly be linked by some to the Santer. During the 1950s residents of Bladenboro were terrorized by what was dubbed a large cat that was being blamed for animal mutilations that kept taking place in the town, it is said both livestock and pets had been targeted by whatever the creature was, often the corpses presented broken jaws or even the complete absence of the mutilated animals jaws.
It is said the beast was first sighted in Clarkton before it headed to Bladenboro, and that most often it attacked dogs, in one incidence a woman was also attacked by the beast as well but managed to scare it away by screaming, she had gone out to check on dogs that she could hear yelping. Some residents blamed the attacks on either a panther or bear, some said a cougar. Only Black Bears exist in North Carolina while the panther was largely uncommon at the time (and has been declared extinct from North Carolina since 2011), cougars are also believed to be extinct in the state.
Eventually the residents had enough and banded together to hunt the beast down, at some point a Bobcat, which are native to the state, was killed and many declared that it was the Beast of Bladenboro, although some have disputed it, nonetheless the attacks did stop, although are said to have started up again from 2003, but once again it could just simply be another more aggressive than usual Bobcat.
Another very strange legend in North Carolina is that of the Moon-Eyed People. The legend comes from Cherokee Native American folklore in the area. The Moon-Eyed People are said to be a humanoid race of small peoples (they are very short) and that this race is unable to see during the day-time and as such they are nocturnal, only coming out at night, although sometimes even the Moon can be too bright for them to be able to see anything.
Ancient monuments of stone and mounds found in the Appalachian Mountains have been credited as creations of the Moon-Eyed People back when they used to live on the surface, in such very small accommodations. The beings as well as being short are often described as having white or very pale skin. The peoples were said to have been driven away underground by the Cherokee Native Americans.
Some theories say that these Moon-Eyed people could have originated from legends of European-American legends of Welsh Indians, with such ancient ruins and mounds being attributed to a Welsh pre-Columbian voyage possibly even connected to the legend of Prince Madoc who is said to have sailed to America around about 300-years before Christipher Columbus. Another theory is that the Moon-Eyed People were people of the Adena Culture from current-day Ohio who merged with the Cherokee around 200 BCE. Another is that they may be ancestors of the Kuna People albinos from Panama – such people were said to be able to see better at night than day.
Of course, like in almost every US state there is often one or more legends about a particular body of water harboring a sea/water serpent or other monster of the deep. North Carolina is no different and one of its most well-known water cryptid legends is that of the Lake Norman Monster, with the monster itself having been nicknamed Normie, this name may be found funny by some of those who dwell on the depths of anonymous internet discussion as a nickname for people considered average, boring and sheep-like. Of course, that is far from the case with Normie the water serpent, who clearly isn’t normal at all.
Lake Norman is a manmade lake created from 1959 and completed by 1964 via the construction of the Cowans Ford Dam which also includes a hydroelectricity power plant. It is the largest man-made body of fresh water in the state. Being that it was man-made makes it less likely that a sea serpent would be living within it, although some may say such a creature could have been trapped within the lake when it was being created. As well as that some also believe that many sea cryptids are actual supernatural beings and so could have possibly just materialized there, whatever it is the belief came about somehow over the years.
The lake has a surface area of 32,510 acres and is 33.6 miles in length and 9 miles in width with an average depth of 33.5 feet and a max depth of 112 feet. Two airparks exist in the area and seaplanes have commonly landed on the lake.
There have been hundreds of sightings since the lake’s creation even up until 2020 as well, reports are still coming in, most of which can be found here on the on the lake monsters very own website. The lake monster itself often has a similar description to the Loch Ness Monster, and many believe that influence from Scottish settlers may have actually led to the creation of the Normie Lake Monster legend, Presbyterian Churches and the tradition of Highland Games in the area are evidence of this influence. Sightings are often made by people who are either fishing or boating in the lake or those who live in the nearby communities close to the lake’s shores.
The Lake itself is also surrounded by other mysterious phenomena as well, including UFO and ghost sightings and so it seems to be an all-around window area for paranormal and unexplainable activity for whatever reason. A submerged plane was even found in the deepest area of the lake in 2013, which a local woman claimed she had lost in the lake during a training session in the 1970s and of which she had reported.
UFOs have been spotted around Lake Norman since at least 1968 with dozens of reported sightings. Some of the nearby ghost legends include the Holly Bend Plantation, built between 1795-1800, it was owned by the Davidson family originally who owned a number of slaves there up until the Civil War, families who have lived there since have reported ghostly apparitions, sounds of children playing and figures hung from trees. Another ghost legend is that of General William Lee Davidson, who fought in the Revolutionary War and was one of the first deaths in the Battle of Cowans Ford on February 1st, 1781. The British stripped the clothes off his deceased corpse and left him there, General Davidsons men later returned and gave him a hasty burial at the Hopewell Presbyterian Church, each year now his ghostly apparition is said to be able to be seen each year on 1st February riding back off to battle.
Finally, we move on to a legend in a small community called Valle Crucis found in the Appalachian Mountains. The legend is about a large black hound, some say it is a demonic entity while others say it is a guardian of the St. John’s Episcopal Church graveyard. As we have covered before there are entities known as the Grim which take the form of often large black dogs that guard the graveyards of Christian holy sites.
The main story is that two students driving down a road past the graveyard were startled by the massive black hound that jumped out at them from behind a tombstone. The driver had to brake hard as they were afraid, they would hit whatever it was, there stopped on the shoulder they witnessed the massive black hound which had eyes of glowing red, the beast growled and them and begun moving on the car, and as such they sped away scared, but the dog seemed to have unnatural speed, closing in on the car as they tried to get away, eventually after their car crossed a bridge the beast stopped following them and vanished.
Well that’s it for North Carolina. Next up will be the strange and the unexplained of South Carolina!
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