From the pristine Outer Banks to the majestic Blue Mountains, North Carolina is a land of contrasts. Its history reflects this fact; historic landmarks abound, and through their preservation and restoration the past breathes again. Of course, in some places, the past doesn'¬"t need to be resuscitated, since it never left. North Carolina is home to a great number of ghosts and legends, which testify to the human experience: * The spectral Maco Light appears when the spirit of brakeman Joe Baldwin returns to search for his severed head. * In the Devil's Tramping Ground, the Prince of Darkness himself is said to roam. * In Bentonville and Fort fisher, sites of two of the bloodiest battles ever fought on North Carolina soil, Civil War specters rise from the mists to walk the earth again. * The Brown Lady, dead of a broken heart when her true love never returned from the Civil War, now haunts Chowan College. * A century and a half after their hanging, the bodies of 50 marauders still swing from the trees in Hannah's Creek Swamp, pleading for mercy.

* These are but a few examples of hundreds of stories that comprise the Tar Heel State's haunted folklore.