The Fort Fisher Hermit

Robert E. Harrill

(February 2, 1893 – June 4, 1972)

The Fort Fisher Hermit

At the age of 62 Robert Harrill hitchhiked his way to the end of the earth. If you start driving east in the foothills of North Carolina and don't stop till you run out of land you might end up there too. Fort Fisher is the tip of a peninsula called Federal Point, just before you get to the islands that make up the Cape Fear. Growing up on the coast, I heard stories about the Fort Fisher Hermit my entire life. I think the very earliest I remember learning the story was the early 1980's, I was four or five. My twin sister and I were sitting on a beach blanket in the back of our family's Carolina blue WWII Jeep.

We were holding on as we bounced along the east beach on Bald Head Island. We often went out to 'the point' where the east facing and south facing beaches come together and form the cape. This was the first trip I can recall when we headed north up the beach past Middle Island and into the 12,000 acre preserve. We went all the way to the New Inlet, which by then was not so much an inlet as a flat where the ocean reached across the sand at high tide and spilled into the marshy bay behind it. It was high tide by the time we had our picnic lunch and so going the rest of the way up the beach to Fort Fisher was not an option. Story telling was. Dad told the tale of an old hermit who had lived just up the beach from where we were. People from all over drove out on the beach from Fort Fisher to sit with him, hoping to gain wisdom from his lifestyle. The ride up the beach seemed endless and there was nothing out there but sand dunes, marsh, wind stunted junipers, and palm trees. I imagined the hermit, as a man on a deserted isle.

That is probably how popular culture has imagined him as well. The truth is, he was a troubled homeless man who opted out of the pressures of modern American society.  Harrill was raised in an abusive home, they were poor, with no electricity or indoor plumbing. He spent a lot of his childhood playing in the woods to escape the traumatic home life. In 1913 he got married and the couple had five children. It wasn't a happy home. The eldest son tragically took his own life and Harrill's mental health deteriorated. He was unable to hold a job and support his family. His marriage was failing. His wife knew he would no longer be a caregiver for their family. During the Great Depression the marriage ended and Harrill was institutionalized. In 1955 he took his fateful hitchhike ride.

Life in and out of mental facilities, jail, and, halfway houses was terrible and Harrill decided it was only making his condition worse. Life would be better by the beach. Several hundred miles later he saw the ocean. He walked from Carolina Beach down to the Confederate Fort where he camped for a while in a tent. He was considered a community nuisance, as he was collecting things off the beach and living on land he did not own. He was charged with vagrancy and trespassing but upon release went right back to life by the beach. He met another hermit who lived in the area. Empie Hewett, had lived most of his life in the marshland around Fort Fisher and taught Harrill many necessary life skills. Harrill adapted to his life by the beach with much more success than he had life in the 'real world'. He moved into a concrete bunker that had been built during WWII. He furnished it with driftwood and seashells and anything else that washed up on the nearby beach. He didn't suffer from lack of food. He planted veggies and gathered berries and nuts. He ate an abundance of seafood, crabs, shellfish, flounder, and all sorts of surf fish. He made a hat from palm frons and wore nothing but it and a pair of shorts most of the year. Because Fort Fisher is home to a military recreational facility, people came from all over the country.

They spread the word of the philosophical beach bum far and wide. Eventually, Harrill became one of the most popular tourist destinations on the coast. Beatniks, hippies, and square but curious suburbanites made pilgrimage to his sandy home. Locals partied with him around the bon fire each night. He was rarely alone. People left money in an old cast iron pan outside his home. They also brought him supplies, warm clothes in winter, and booze. Stray dogs had a way of finding him and settling down. Life by the beach was better.

In 1972 a group of college age boys went down to visit the hermit and found his body. The crime scene photographs tell a different story than the police official report. Hindsight is 20/20, but there was an obvious cover up. His death was ruled natural and his family was notified that he died of a heart attack, only learning the truth sometime in the next decade. His body had been found battered and covered in marsh mud and sand, dragged from the marsh up into his bunker, tossed on a pile of trash and then closed in with some boards. The truth shocked the community. Demands for an investigation led to release of the crime scene images and public interest reignited. Books have been written, movies, documentaries, and plays have all been produced. Fort Fisher State park and recreational area has added a well maintained trail out to the bunker, which now has a plaque, commemorating the famous man that lived there for 17 years.

Tourists from all over can still visit his home and his gravesite, where people continue to leave coins in a cast iron pan. He is buried in the historic Federal Point Cemetery, in the Dow Road Woods, just north of Fort Fisher. (Click HERE to read about the cemetery and what's hiding in those woods.)  Watch the movie below for a great look at the life and death of the Hermit of Fort Fisher. Warning: Movie contains crime scene photos, including his body.