Thrills and Chills on the Crystal Coast

Yea....so every town has their Halloween spookfest that's purported to be scarier and more thrilling than the next. And we don't doubt that. But we've found an interesting twist on the Crystal Coast of North Carolina that provides thrills and chills with a supernatural glimpse into the history and mystery of the past. You could say that it's all about ghosts on the coast.

Made up of 85 miles of coastline along the southern Outer Banks, the Crystal Coast (including Beaufort, Morehead City, Emerald Isle, Atlantic Beach, Cape Lookout National Seashore and more) is loaded with historic towns with mysterious pasts including swashbuckling pirate tales, maritime heritage and wartime triumphs and tragedies, haunted houses and legendary ghost soldiers. A sampling of the spooky sites on the Crystal Coast include:

*The Old Burying Grounds in Beaufort, dating back to 1731, which serve as the final resting place for Revolutionary War heroes and villains, famous privateers, and even a young girl buried in a keg of rum.

*Searching for soldiers who haunt the top of Fort Macon, which served during the Civil War, WWII and, most notably, Blackbeard's crew in the 1700s after they sunk and abandoned the legendary Queen Anne's Revenge.

*Haunted houses in historic Beaufort including the Hammock House, where ghostly activity has been seen from in the form of a young lady hung from a live oak tree by Blackbeard himself and three Civil War soldiers found buried under the porch.

*Mysterious wild Spanish Mustangs along Shackleford Banks, a nine-mile long island where these survivors of Spanish galleon shipwrecks have roamed freely for more than 400 years.

*The 150-year-old Cape Fear Lighthouse which bared witness to many of the more than 2,000 ships that sunk in the "Graveyard of the Atlantic".

October seems like a great time to check out the ghosts on the coast!