Blackbeards Ghost Is The Most Notorious Haunting In All Of North Carolina

The Tar Heel State is swirling with ghost stories and creepy tales that’ll send chills up your spine, like those surrounding these 10 haunted hotels, and the chilling tale of this haunted bridge. The legends spread all the way from the mountains to the sea, in fact. The coast of North Carolina has been nicknamed the Graveyard of the Atlantic, so it only seems fitting that one of the state’s most haunting stories comes from the coast.

For two entire years the notorious pirate Blackbeard and his crew terrorized the waters between North Carolina and the Caribbean, attacking and pillaging ships passing through.

Flickr Evangelio Gonzalez

Stories of pirate’s brutality range from cutting the fingers off of ship passengers who didn’t remove their rings fast enough, all the way to feeding body parts to the circling sharks below.

Flickr Ashwin Chaugule

In 1718, troops were sent down from Virginia to North Carolina to put a stop to Blackbeard’s reign of terror.

Flickr Jason Mrachina

The troops and Blackbeard came face-to-face in a bloody battle around Ocracoke Inlet — which was known as Teach’s Hole after Blackbeard’s given name Edward Teach, because it was one of the pirate’s favorite places to anchor.

Flickr Claire Macnamara

During the conflict the entire pirate crew was killed or captured. Blackbeard himself was shot and stabbed multiple times before he actually died. Then the Lieutenant in charge, John Maynard, demanded that the pirate’s head be cut off and threw his body into the water.

Flickr Carlo Mirante

Even then the pirate put up a fight, witnesses claimed that Blackbeard’s headless body swam around Maynard’s ship three times before sinking into the depths below.

Flickr Johannes Richter

As a final act to signify his victory, Maynard hung Blackbeard’s head from the ship’s bowsprit before it sailed back to Virginia.

Flickr Eduardo Arcos

To this day, it’s said that Blackbeard’s ghost still haunts Teach’s Hole. Many claim to have seen a headless entity wandering the beaches looking for its head. Others say you can hear a ghostly voice calling in the wind on stormy nights calling out “Where’s my head?”

Flickr artt miss

Believe it or not? Let us know in the comments if you think Blackbeard still haunts Teach’s Hole.