16. Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill Cultural Feast

The cultural and educational offerings in the State Capital area will appeal to even the most sophisticated of visitors. Excellent history and natural science museums, the North Carolina Symphony, the North Carolina Museum of Art, Duke Gardens at Duke University and more great outings can keep interested visitors busy for weeks!


17. Cape Fear Coast

Historic Wilmington and the Cape Fear Coast islands of Carolina Beach, Kure Beach and Wrightsville Beach offers one of the state’s largest historic districts (230 blocks!), uncrowded beaches, natural preserves and a regular watersports paradise. Take a ride on a riverboat, enjoy some fine dining, go beachcombing at sunset, or just enjoy the fresh sea breeze in this relaxing vacation area!


18. Blackbeard’s Ghost

North Carolina boasts some of the most famous ghosts and hauntings anywhere, but the most famous of them all is the notorious pirate Blackbeard. The historic town of Beaufort on North Carolina’s Crystal Coast offers a Ghost Walk Tour that takes visitors deep into the oldest parts of town to see haunted cemeteries and the famous Hammock House where Blackbeard is reputed to have hanged one of his 14 wives. A hair-raising experience!


19. NC’s Outer Banks

America’s first English settlement, the site of the Wright Brothers’ historic flight at Kitty Hawk, the nation’s first designated National Seashore at Cape Hatteras, and the country’s first outdoor drama. North Carolina’s Outer Banks are a true national treasure. This 130-mile long string of sandy barrier islands host wildlife reserves, quiet beaches, the North Carolina Maritime Museum and an outdoor drama telling the story of the Lost Colony at Roanoke Island.


20 – 25. America’s Finest Lighthouses

Currituck Beach, Bodie Island, Cape Hatteras, Ocracoke Island, Cape Lookout, Oak Island… The most famous, the tallest, the oldest, the most battled-over… North Carolina’s wealth of wonderful lighthouses offer photo opportunities to visitors that are unmatched anywhere in the world! And for a freebie, there’s “Old Baldy” too.

Links with historical, technical and visitors’ information for all NC’s lighthouses can be found at Carolina Lights, so don’t forget to put some or all of these on your travel itinerary!

There you have it. 25 – or, 26 with Old Baldy – great reasons to visit North Carolina this year, covering enough ground to keep you coming back year after year!

Posts to This Series:
Part 1: Reasons 1 – 5
Part 2: Reasons 6 – 10
Part 3: Reasons 11 – 15
Part 4: Reasons 16 – 25

While in the coastal region, you may want to investigate some of the coastal legends that have accumulated over the centuries, from the storied Lost Colony through ghosts, pirates and even ghost ships, to a Dismal Swamp said to be home to a tragic Lady of the Lake.

To begin planning your trip to the beautiful and storied North Carolina coast, check out some of the offered information and links at CoastalGuide: New Bern.

Coverage of some of our other famous ghosts can be found in the following posts:

Hauntings: The Brown Mountain Lights

Hauntings: Crystal Coast’s Most Famous Ghost

Enjoy!

In the late autumn of the year the forest’s umbrella of summer green turns ten shades of red and as many hues of yellow – with some impossible combinations in between. As they fall to blanket the ground and reveal bare, spiny branches, the view opens up to reconnect the mountain earth with the sky. Right around Halloween and into November a mysterious phenomenon draws hundreds of watchers hoping to see some ghosts.

Mentioned in Cherokee legends originating as long as 800 years ago, the mysterious Brown Mountain Lights have dazzled watchers by zipping and dancing through Linville Gorge and along the Brown Mountain ridge near Morganton in Burke County, North Carolina.

They’ve been described as glowing balls of fire, bursting skyrockets, or pale, white ‘bubbles’. They”ve been seen to drift, fade and brighten, whirl like pinwheels, then dart away playfully. A short hike from a parking area along a gravel Forest Service is Wisemans View in the Pisgah National Forest.

Cherokee legend holds that their ancestors fought a great battle against the Catawba Indians near Brown Mountain in the year 1200 a.d. According to the legend the lights are spirits of maidens who search in vain for their loved ones lost in the battle. When the white frontiersmen came, they attributed the lights to the spirits of the Indian warriors on both sides who died in the battle. Others through the years claim the lights are candle-bearing ghosts destined to wander the mountain forever.

In more modern times the lights have drawn a number of researchers and paranormal investigators who attempt to explain them in less spooky terms. One theory suggests it’s a combination of minerals in the rocks reacting with gases in the air. Another thinks it might be uranium or pitchblende deposits in the rocks exciting gases.

Some skeptics have dismissed the lights as a mirage, reflected lights from nearby towns. Though that would hardly explain historical eyewitness reports. The U.S. Geological Survey concluded in 1913 that the lights were train headlights reflected from the Catawba Valley, but hardly anyone believed that. More recently the same agency revised their conclusion to claim it’s the spontaneous combusion of marsh gases, even though there are no marshes on or around Brown Mountain.

The lights have been popular with paranormal investigators and UFO fans as well. One fascinating report published in Alternate Perceptions Magazine details an expedition in 2003, when the lights were videotaped by Dr. Greg Little and his crew.

Little’s hypothesis is that the Brown Mountain phenomenon is a manifestation of “Earthlights,” which are luminous balls of light that appear over geological fault lines. They’ve been seen and photographed by seismic crews and satellites. It’s believed to be a piezoelectric effect of changing seismic pressure on quartzite rock deep in the fault, which escapes at relief points as charged plasma.

Little reports that Canadian neuropsychologist Michael Persinger, who has studied Earthlights for many years, has reproduced the effect in the laboratory. Persinger noted some psychoactive effects of the plasma’s magnetic field. Including altered states of consciousness and vivid hallucinations – ghostly apparitions, alien abductions, Bigfoot sightings and encounters with fairies, Leprechauns and gnomes.

The actual close-up encounters with the real Brown Mountain lights don’t mention Bigfoot at all, though one did claim the lights are created by aliens who live inside the mountain. Perhaps what he views as alien is what someone else would report as gnomes or Leprechauns or fairies. A couple of close encounter stories report a sizzling fire – a ball or a length, like the curtains of the aurora borealis (but smaller and closer).

Whatever the Brown Mountain Lights are, scientifically speaking, they are a well known phenomenon and genuine NC attraction. Still unexplained and perhaps unexplainable by science, still holding to those native and frontier legends that interpreted the lights to be unhappy spirits of the long dead.

Links:

Fields at Catawba Meadows: Things to Do

Mysterious America: The Brown Mountain Lights

ASU Physics: The Brown Mountain Lights

Brown Mountain Lights of Burke County

Morganton, NC Accommodations

Linville Falls Village