Carolina Coal Demon

 Death in the Dark 

The Story of the Deep River Coal Demon

Deep under the North Carolina ground is a black vein of dirty decay. The Deep River coal field is an area of Triassic rocks stretching 36 miles along the river in Chatham, Lee, and Moore Counties. In the age of dinosaurs there was a vast swamp along an ancient river. As swamps tend to do, decaying plant matter formed layers of peat in the humid dense environment. Over huge amounts of time shifts in plates and other events changed the landscape and large amounts of sediment flowed down and gathered in the area. The pressure of the massive layers of sediment created the perfect situation to turn the peat into coal. For 200 years people have attempted to dig this coal out of the ground. Deep River is NC’s only commercial coal bed. 

The coal industry has always been extremely dangerous and historically, many tragedies have been associated with mines. Over time, the abundance of illness, death, and mishap creates a need for explanation in the human mind. As we often do, people created legends to place blame somewhere that would give them the opportunity to feel like they could continue working by creating superstitious ways to protect themselves. It was a way to rationalize a terrible industrial human rights travesty without placing blame on the industrialists.

 In NC's coal mines, the scapegoat came in the form of a demon. The Deep River coal field is cursed by this disturbed demon, and many have lost their lives in his clutches. 

The demon has guarded his coal through each attempt to plunder it. No one has been profitable off of the mine due to the disastrous explosions, cave ins, and flood outs. The Old Egypt mine and the Carolina mine should have been successful, they supplied coal to the railroad and the Confederate Army during the Civil War. But unfortunately the complex geology of the region made mining difficult. There was ground water and there were intrusions and veins of softer minerals that caused unexpected weakness in the tunnels. The coal itself seemed to be cursed and stories came back from the battlefields of the dreaded Deep River coal that burned yellow giving away their location to the Union soldiers. Sales to the military stopped and money owed was not paid due to the loss of life. The mines closed for almost two decades. 

A company with a new plan opened the mine to great success. The mine employed upwards of 80 miners who earned what was considered a good wage, drawing miners from the north.  A few specialized men worked as blasters, places and igniting the TNT to break loose the coal. Most of the men worked as loaders. They shoveled the freed coal into carts, which were then carried away by mule.

The first disaster struck on a winter morning. At 8:30 a.m. on  December 19, 1895 an explosion ripped through the Egypt Mine. Forty-six of the sixty-seven men in the mine at the time perished.  The cause was believed to be natural gas ignited by a flame in a miners helmet.  

The company struggled to keep going but in May of 1900 another gas explosion killed twenty-two miners. It really was too much for the already limping company.  In two years, the Egypt coal mine was closed again.

The Carolina Coal Company was formed in 1921 with the intention of developing a mine across the river from the Egypt Mine. In its first year of full-scale operation it more than doubled the best of the Old Egypt Mine's output. Again things were looking up for the Deep River Coal Bed.  But once again the profits failed to materialize.  

In the spring of 1925 at seven in the morning seventy-four miners went down into the dark of the Carolina Mine.  Fifty-three of those men did not leave the mine alive.

   

The Carolina Mine closed a few years later when the mine began to flood through an air shaft.  The water was pumped, but they made no precautions against future flooding.  So it happened again and after the mine flooded again in 1930 it was closed.

During the post WWII boom era the mines were reopened as tourist attractions but the stories of tragedy attracted night time trespassers and the mines went into disrepair with miss use and were later closed completely. The coal still sits under the earth. Tempting modern fortune seekers to risk it all and tempt their fate with the Carolina coal demon.

Dreaming of going camping again!

Who wants to go Cold Weather Camping?

 

Updated:

It was a nice idea, but Corona quarantine and unemployment will be preventing any 2020 camping.

Maybe, I can go camping in the first few months of 2021... Stay Tuned...

 

    I'd like to reserve a site at my favorite campground, Huntington Beach State Park. I have gone in November, the first week of December, and in March. The March trip with my mom was the coldest. But we had a great time. 

    The weather for the last week of December in Murrells Inlet is cloudy about half the time, but only about 25% precipitation. The average low is around 42, and the high is around 59 degrees Fahrenheit. The sun that week will be rising around 7:15 am and setting just after five in the evening.

    The park is usually very full of RVers during the winter, however it doesn't feel crowded, the beaches are usually empty, the castle feels like you have it to yourself, and Brookgreen Gardens seems deserted. (Yes, I said castle. If you haven't been reading my blogs, you might not know, there is a castle in South Carolina, you can click HERE to check out the inside of the castle! Click HERE for the history.) The RVers are mostly baby boomers who stay in their warm cozy RVs, or go shopping, and go out for supper to enjoy nearby seafood restaurants. 

    I have enjoyed my other trips to HBSP during winter. Currently all of the primitive sites are available during the time I'd like to go and only one RV site. That means I need to plan a hike in, no electricity, cold weather camping trip. (Baby will need to stay with Grandparents for this trip, too much exposure to elements for an infant.)

Primitive Hike In Tent Camping

  

 I have stayed in one of the primitive sites before. Last November with my twin sister. I was several months pregnant. We had a fantastic time and really enjoyed it! Hopefully, for this trip I can convince some friends to join the fun. I have camped for New Years Eve several times before, including on the beach in very cold temperatures. I am confident that if I plan ahead and prepare, we will have fun no matter the weather. 

The primitive sites are listed on the map as T-1 through T-6. Each site can have six people with two vehicles in the parking area. They have large tent pads with a fire ring and a picnic table. They also have a food safety lock box so you can keep critters out of your food and trash. They are technically 'hike-in' sites, but it is just a short walk down a sandy path through the trees. The primitive sites are not far from a beach access and a bathroom. The bathrooms are heated and have showers. They are usually kept very clean. For the four nights and five days at the end of 2020, each primitive site is only $100. That doesn't include taxes or and supplies. They ask that you not bring fire wood from else where because of invasive bugs. So budget for several bundles of fire wood which locally range from $4 to $7. Also, at the primitive sites, you're in the woods, there is some amount of small branches and twigs you can use. (Only, use dead dried out wood.)

Strategies For Staying Warm in Winter Weather

     I have several strategies for beating the winter weather. Dress for success. That means layers. I usually wear leggings under my jeans, and a tee shirt and hoodie under my leather jacket. Always warm socks and boots or non slip shoes. Layers also are my strategy for prepping a site for winter camping. I like to create a large outer tent using popups and tarps. I set up the kitchen area and a bedroom tent inside the large space. When it is really cold I use fabric to line the inside. I set up my tents facing the fire and the woods. With the tarps I can create a pretty weather resistant wall towards the trail. You can never have too many tarps. 

    

With the tent structure facing the fire, private, and protected from wind I can concentrate on extra things to create a warm cozy camping trip. I like to bring lots of tapestries and extra fabric to make sure I am extra weather proof. I usually try to get the picnic table in the tented space, I have a table cloth and pieces of leather I put on the benches. I have small rugs and a canvas drop cloth that I use on the ground inside the tented area. Always take camp chairs, with a cozy throw for each chair. 

    When I winter camp with electricity I bring all sorts of things, like a coffee maker and a space heater, but with no electricity I'll be concentrating on things that generate warmth with out electricity. Open flame generates heat no matter how small, you'd be surprised how much warmth can be generated by simple candles. Never leave them unattended or put them close to any fabric. I usually have some citronella candles for the picnic table. I also bring incense and sage to burn to keep away bugs, (and evil spirits). I like to bring tiki torches for the area outside of the tent, they provide light, heat, and keep away critters. Propane heaters are a good way to heat up a large camp spot.  I suggest they are kept well ventilated and away from anything flammable. 

Glamping   

 Sleeping accommodations are where I tend to go from camping to glamping. Air mattress with a cordless pump. Mattress pad cause the plastic air mattress can get cold. Sheets, blankets, comforters, and extra pillows. I like to give the tent an extra layer of fabric for insulation, though I place the tent inside a popup with tarp walls that are already lined with fabric, there is usually a side open facing the fire and that extra layer helps late at night when its coldest and the fire has gone out. 

   

Food 

 When I camp I usually take lots of snacks that don't require cooking, however when cold weather camping I like to bring things that are sure to warm me up. Sweet potatoes are amazing baked over a fire. Bring a camp pot and any soups or noodles can warm you up. I like to make mac and cheese with tuna and sweet peas. Instant coffee and tea are also great. It is easy to leave the park and go into town for groceries, so a steak dinner is not out of the question either. 

    

Light

   

Light sources other than tiki torches and candles: Battery operated LED lanterns are fantastic. I also love to bring a few strands of 'fairy lights' to make things extra magical. Since this trip is a special occasion, my 40th and New Years, I'll probably bring extra things to decorate with! A wagon is always helpful to carry all your stuff to the site, or to the beach.

   Click HERE for a LIST of everything I'm taking. 

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.

The Truth about the Carolina Shag

The Carolina Shag

A story about the end of segregation.

The geographic origins of the Carolina Shag are obvious by it's name, but it's history is more of a mystery to most people.

You may not even know what the Carolina Shag is if you're not from the east coast. Perhaps you can think of pop culture references to the dance. In 1997 the country music band Alabama had a hit song called, "Dancin', Shaggin' on the Boulevard". The song, written by Randy Owen, Teddy Gentry and Greg Fowler, peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard magazine Hot Country Singles & Tracks chart. It was about the band's early days playing beach music in Myrtle Beach, SC at bars on Ocean Boulevard. 

You might think of the dances in the musical "Hairspray". This campy musical is actually a good hint to the truthful history of the Shag. The musical is set in 1962, following a "pleasantly plump" teenage girl named Tracy Turnblad. She is pursuing stardom as a dancer on a local TV dance show. The tension in the plot is due to her anti segregation views. She danced at places that were for nonwhite people and rallied against racial segregation, because the dance moves that made her popular had come from people of color she'd been dancing with.

The Shag originates in the Jim Crow segregated south. Historians say the term shag was coined at Carolina Beach, NC. It wasn't always called that. The dance was popular from Wilmington, NC down to Georgetown, SC. White people doing swing dances like the jitterbug started calling a dance they were doing the Carolina Jitterbug. The name they had been using before that paid homage to its true origins; the Little Apple was the white version of a dance called the Big Apple. Called little because white dancers performed a less flamboyant version of the dance. The Big Apple got its name from a SC club for people of color in the 1930's where the dance originated. Fictional Tracy Turnblad wasn't the only white person "jumping the Jim Crow rope" and going to the segregated clubs.

Dancers on the coast popularized the Shag just as segregation was coming to an end. Beach music, which was heavily influenced by the blues, became popular on commercial radio as baby boomer teenagers wanted something they could swing dance to. Beach music bands of all races were played on the radio and allowed to perform for mixed audiences. The popularity of beach music was pivotal in a wider acceptance of music from musicians of color. The musicians who'd developed their beach music in the segregated clubs also played Rhythm and Blues. White musicians began covering the R&B songs from musicians of color. This, as we all know, led to the invention of Rock and Roll. Today 'cultural appropriation' is a hot button topic but it's nothing new. Eminem rapped about it in the 2002 song  'Without Me.'  

"Though I'm not the first king of controversy, I am the worst thing since Elvis Presley, to do black music so selfishly, and use it to get myself wealthy."

If you listen to popular music today you can't escape the influence of the Carolina Shag. From hip hop to pop country, dance music still breaks down racial barriers. That next dance craze the kids are into might even spur a revolution, you never know.

Inside A Bombed Out WWII Chemical Weapons Plant

Warning: Enter at your own risk!

Click HERE for a detailed story about Dow Road Woods and the ruins.

Deep in the woods, along the Cape Fear River, sits the mysterious ruins of an old chemical plant.

Dow produced bromine from salt water. During WWII bromine was a chemical used in warfare.

(Some of these are older cell phone pictures, I apologize for any lack of quality.)

Some of the tunnels are more accessible than others.

 

There is often water in the low lying areas. 

Some tunnels are in better condition than others. All are covered in art.

The graffiti and other art changes constantly as new explorers discover the ruins. 

The local legend is that a Nazi sub bombed the plant from the river.

The woods are patrolled by Military Police.

More Graffiti

Fairy Land

"Jump In! It Feels so good to lie down!" 

This tunnel has "Fairy Land" made of fiberglass, broken bricks, and rebar.

Close up of "Fairy Land" The wall above says, "Touch me!"

The View from the Top

On top of the tunnels is a massive pile of brick rubble.

At the top of the brick you are above the trees and can see there are two piles of rubble.

That's not dirt on those ankles. It is hundreds of tiny ticks. 

I wish this piece was still there. One of my favorites. 

Go Inside this Coastal South Carolina Castle

Atalaya

Huntington Beach State Park is my favorite place to camp and my favorite place to blog about! If you read my first post, you went down the rabbit hole of history with me and met the colorful cast of characters that add layers to the history of this Carolina castle. This post is meant to give you a closer look inside the beautiful castle. I searched YouTube to find the best tour to share with you because I know my pictures don't do it justice. 

This is the best video I have found of the Castle. Check it out!

My first encounter with the castle was just before dark. It was not open, so I walked around the exterior taking pictures and imagining the life of the couple who built this as their winter home. I could hear an owl in the woods. 

This is the 'front' of the home, facing out towards the ocean. The rooms on the front from left to right are; the Huntington's bedroom, the secretary's room, the library, the sunroom, the breakfast room, the dining room, a food service room, and the staff's living room. Sitting on that patio I could hear the ocean waves.

This side of the home had storage and utility rooms on the outside and staff rooms on the inside. Each staff room has a fireplace and a window looking out to the courtyard. The parts of the structure on the right side of this picture are the laundry and cold storage. 

This is in the outer courtyard at the entrance. To the left were garages and an oyster shucking room and to the right animal enclosures for the dogs, horses, and bears. Click here to read my DETAILED blog about Huntington State Park.

My mom standing with one of many giant palm trees in the inner courtyard. The water tower for which the castle is named is in the background. An extreme animal lover, Mrs. Huntington had 'bat holes' installed so the bats could roost inside the tower.

Ivy growing on a wall in the courtyard.

 Mrs. Huntington designed the signature turquoise wrought iron.

Inside the brick is exposed and cracked in places from years of settling.

Most of the windows no longer have glass in them.

I saw a bat snuggled up taking a snooze in the secretary's closet.

Make a reservation today to camp in beautiful South Carolina paradise beside the Atlantic Ocean, and check out this Castle for yourself. If you want to know more about the Huntington's check out my blog post.