by Kala Ambrose
A local TV station was once located in the building next to the Grove Park Inn, and it is said that a ghost would often interfere with the equipment and enjoyed playing pranks on the staff. Some believe that the ghost is Alice, a servant who haunts the building, which originally was the Battle Mansion owned by Dr. Samuel Battle. Others believe that the ghost was the Pink Lady from the Grove Park, who enjoyed visiting the grounds and nearby home. The ghost of Dr. Battle was also seen on occasion at the TV station. The TV station has since moved out of the Battle Mansion, and the building was later demolished. New construction is ongoing on the site of the old Battle Mansion. It will be interesting to see if any haunted activity is reported during construction by the workers or by the new residents of the building.
The Grove Park Inn is a beautiful, warm, and welcoming place to stay. I’m surprised that it doesn’t have more ghosts that check in and never want to leave.
The Legendary Brown Mountain Lights
In the mountains of North Carolina, ghost stories and other paranormal occurrences are plentiful. The Brown Mountain Lights have been reported as ghosts rising from the ground, aliens landing on the mountain, and demons flying through the night. Little is known about the true nature of these lights. What is known is that they occur often and they remain an unsolved mystery to all who have observed and studied the paranormal activity.
Brown Mountain is located in the ancient Pisgah Forest on the border of Burke and Caldwell counties. Cherokee and Catawba Native American tribes shared reports on seeing the lights over Brown Mountain, as did Scots-Irish settlers and soldiers during the Civil War. Over the years so many reports were documented that the U.S. government conducted several investigations with the U.S. Geological Department to determine the cause of the lights appearing over the mountain. To date, no conclusive evidence on what the lights are or what could cause them has been released. Basic theories like swamp gas have been ruled out at this point. Some scientists theorized that automobile lights shining from distant roads were the cause, but that theory was quickly discounted as the lights have been viewed and reported in the same way for hundreds of years, before electricity or the automobile were invented.
Locals state that on most any clear night, if one is patient enough to spend time in the vicinity of Brown Mountain, the lights can be seen. Interested locals, tourists, and paranormal researchers are often found gathered in small groups around the area hoping to see the lights as evening approaches. The best place to see them is on the Blue Ridge Parkway near mile post 302. The lights appear in clusters and will flash for a minute or so and then disappear and reappear again.
What I found incredibly interesting about the Brown Mountain Lights beyond their unexplained occurrence is that the people who have seen them have varied descriptions as to how the lights move. Some describe them as moving quickly, bouncing from place to place, while others report seeing them hovering in one space for the full time.
CHAPTER 21
Ghost Walking in Latta Plantation
CHARLOTTE
The Latta Plantation House showcases live demonstrations of plantation life.
“There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.”
—Joseph Conrad
LOCATED ABOUT TWENTY MILES north of Charlotte, the Latta Plantation began as a cotton plantation and is now referred to as a living history farm. James Latta had moved from Ireland to America, and after working as a traveling merchant, he had earned the money to purchase 100 acres in 1799. One year later, he had built the home referred to as the Latta Plantation. As he worked the plantation with 34 slaves it prospered, and he expanded the plantation by purchasing more than 700 acres of land. James married Jane Knox, and they had four children: Betsy, Polly, Nancy, and Ezekiel.
James Latta died in 1837 at the plantation. His wife passed on a few years later, and in 1841, one of their daughters and her husband sold the plantation to David Harry.
The heirs of the estate of David Harry sold the home to William Sample in 1853, who renamed the plantation Riverside. In 1877, William died and the home was willed to his son, Hugh. In 1922, the Sample family deeded the land to Duke Power.
In 1973, a subsidiary of Duke Power donated the Latta Plantation and three acres of land to establish Latta Place, a nonprofit organization that then placed the Latta Plantation on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1975, the Latta Place organization deeded the house and land to Mecklenburg County, and at that time the county also purchased acreage that is now called the Latta Plantation Park. The Latta Place organization still operates the living history museum at Latta Plantation.
As my husband and I drove out to the plantation, I reviewed its history in great detail, for the home had changed hands more frequently than any other historic site I had visited. A history of many owners presents a challenge in paranormal research when trying to document reported hauntings and paranormal activity. So many people interacting in the home bring their own stories and history.
To make research even more complicated, part of the acreage was used as a Boy Scout camp in the 1940s, and at other times military exercises were conducted on the property. Latta Plantation may be the most difficult place to research that I have visited in North Carolina, since the ghosts could be connected to so many different families and events.
Latta Place is an extremely active museum and encourages children to visit the property, especially for school events. The live demonstrations include examples of plantation life, including farming and how slaves worked and lived on the property, and a taste of what occurred during the Mecklenburg County gold rush. This type of living history activity frequently contributes to haunted activity, as the ghosts and their energies are stirred up by seeing people in period costume as they reenact plantation life of the 1800s.
At Latta Plantation, there are events for children ages eight–twelve in which they can pretend to be Revolutionary War soldiers for a day and, at other times, Civil War soldiers. The children engage in a wide variety of war activities, including learning how to drill and battle. At the end of the day, they receive souvenirs to take home as reminders of their adventure. Visitors can also learn about open-hearth cooking, how to make cornhusk dolls and herb bracelets, observe blacksmith and knitting demonstrations, and participate in English country dancing. There are also reenactments with World War II veterans. Truly, I have not seen a plantation yet that is so involved with living history.
This makes it an interesting place for ghosthunting, since the more active an area is, especially with reenactments and activities that are familiar to the ghosts, such as the ones seen here, the more familiar the surroundings seem to them.
Latta Plantation also has a nature preserve with a full equestrian center providing guided horseback rides, pony rides, horse shows, lessons, and a tack store, as well as the Carolina Raptor Center, a rehabilitation facility dedicated to the conservation of birds of prey. It’s also the home to the southeast’s largest eagle aviary. The more I researched the place, the more I liked it. I can only imagine that if Mr. Latta is still hanging around the homestead, he must be pleased with what they’ve done with the place.
The ride was pleasant up to Charlotte, and it was a beautiful day to explore the plantation and grounds. As we approached the Latta House, I expected to spend most of my time at the plantation home. This is where the majority of the ghost reports shared by both employees and visitors have been reported. The stories center around hearing noises in the attic and experiencing paranormal activity in the children’s rooms, where ghost children have been heard playing. They’ve also been heard on occasion in the dining room. I had also heard a rumor about a guide handing a tourist a cane and the cane stood on its on and moved around the room as if a ghost were using it. After a minute, it stopped and then dropped lifeless to the floor.
During my visit, the house was quiet, as were the surrounding ar
eas, including the kitchen, which is in a separate building by the house. It was common at that time to build the kitchen in another building away from the house, as fire was always a danger; better to have a small kitchen building burn down than to take the entire house with it.
As we walked around and got the lay of the land, I was thinking how quiet Latta Place was that day and that I would wrap up my investigation soon. The quiet, dull part of ghosthunting isn’t talked about often. You hear about the creepy noises and see the scary moments on the TV shows, but in the field investigating it’s a little different, and many times there are long periods of waiting, watching, wondering, and hoping not to be bored out of your mind.
Any time you approach a new location, there’s always a sense of apprehension and wonder and you are on guard, preparing yourself that this could be a place where you experience something large on the supernatural Richter scale. Most times, you wait for hours before anything happens, and many times nothing occurs. Many researchers experience little out of the ordinary, and only when they look at the EVP and video recordings the next day do they catch an anomaly that they were unable to detect while at the scene.
Even with psychic ability, there are many times when I feel something strange or supernatural and that’s the most that I feel about the situation. Not every ghost or spirit is waiting to open up, greet me, and tell me his or her life story. They can be as shy and cautious as they were in real life. In most cases, the best reports and evidence of a haunting or paranormal activity are presented by someone who either lives in the home that is haunted, works in a building that is haunted, or spends an extraordinary amount of time in a location that is haunted. The more time spent in a location, the more you experience what is going on, and the chances are increased that you will be around when something paranormal occurs. It’s rare to find enough statistical data to show proof of paranormal activity by traveling to a haunted location to spend only one day or evening there. If any activity is found, it’s difficult to accurately determine what the anomaly is and why it is occurring.
Everything has highs and lows of activity, including ghosts. Their activities peak due to reasons that are not completely understood. The earth’s magnetic field appears to have a connection with ghost sightings. There is research being conducted to study the effect of certain atmospheric conditions that can charge the magnetic field. When the magnetic field is highly charged, ghosts are able to use this energy in order to appear and communicate on the earth plane.
There are some areas around the world where the magnetic energy field may be naturally stronger, and this would allow for heightened paranormal activity to appear and perhaps for otherworldly beings to gather and absorb this energy. In addition, solar storm cycles and solar flares affect the geomagnetic field on earth, and they have been studied to see if they correlate to heightened paranormal activity. The general consensus is that they do. It appears that to materialize, ghosts need to pull energy from an outside source, which is why batteries are drained from equipment during paranormal investigations and why when paranormal activity occurs in a home or building, the lights blink on and off as the noncorporal being attempts to pull enough energy from other sources in order to manifest or move things around or communicate.
Many of the original buildings still stand where reenactments are held on the property.
The full moon also is often connected with heightened ghost sightings and other supernatural activity. The full moon effect is reported by emergency room staff in hospitals, emergency medical technicians responding to calls, and by police officers on duty. They report that people seem more irrational and prone to outbursts than during other cycles of the month. The energy produced by thunderstorms and lightning also seems to heighten paranormal activity and ghost sightings, as the air is charged with electricity from the storm. I’ve also noted that the negative ions created near the shore, as the ocean waves crash against the land, provide a charge that seems to allow ghosts to pull from this energy to manifest as well.
Other stimuli seem to heighten ghostly activity, including reenactments of a highly charged emotional event, anniversaries of an event, and, at times, the appearance of descendants from the family whom the ghost might recognize and connect with on a deeper level. Children often experience ghosts first, as some ghosts feel more comfortable approaching a child. Children have not closed down their natural intuitive ability like most adults do over time and thus are more apt to see and sense ghosts.
Lastly, though some researchers do not subscribe to this theory, I see in my work that there are various cycles on the earth plane that correspond to heightened times to connect with the spirit world when the veil between the planes is lifted. Halloween is one of these cycles, as are the summer and winter solstice and the spring and fall equinox.
I continued to walk around Latta Place with these thoughts in my head about ghost research and investigations. I began to muse over past experiences and what I’ve seen throughout the years. It’s interesting work, but the conclusion that I have come to is that throughout my life, I’ve seen the majority of ghosts when I wasn’t looking for them or expecting them to appear. I had to chuckle when coming to this revelation, as it reminded me of the old saying about love, that you never find it when you look for it—it always comes when you least expect it. It has been that way for me for the most part in paranormal experiences. I lived in a haunted house in Florida; when I first toured the home, I felt no unusual activity, and it was months before any activity began. Evidently, ghosts can go dormant for a time, like some plants during the winter season. My Florida home had been unoccupied for a long time, and it’s likely that so much energy was drained from the home while it remained empty that it took a while for it to charge back up with a new occupant’s energy before the ghosts could appear again.
Also, I never expected to see the little boy ghost outside my home when I was little, nor had I expected or even known about the Pink Lady ghost at the Grove Park Inn. I had only been living in North Carolina for a short time at that point and knew little about the history of the state.
Pulling myself out of my thoughts about ghosthunting and paranormal research, I realized that I had wandered quite a bit away from the Latta Plantation. In front of me was a structure called the Miner’s cabin. This building is the farthest away from the Latta house and is tucked away in the trees. I stood there for a moment taking in the natural surroundings. I love being in nature and had enjoyed my time looking around the Latta Nature Preserve.
As I took in a deep breath and looked up at the trees, I realized something was wrong. It was too quiet here. Everything was too still. If you spend any time in nature, you know it’s never completely quiet—the breeze rustles through the trees, moving their limbs and shaking the leaves, the birds are singing, there’s often a noisy drone of insects, and sometimes you can hear the sound of small animals moving on the forest floor. There’s a peaceful quiet in nature, but it’s never truly silent.
This concerned me, as it was silent, unnatural; something was here, and what that something was had the ability to pull a great amount of energy from the surroundings. It also had a negative presence that had convinced the birds and any other animals around the area to take off elsewhere. I stood my ground, waiting to see what would happen next. There was a pause as I looked for this energy source and it looked for me. I could sense the energy, but nothing had appeared to me. I also had the sense that it felt my energy and presence, but it was not fully formed and its eyes were not yet able to open to detect me.
I held my arms out to my side, raising them slightly into the air as I surrounded myself with an energy field of light. I then scanned the area psychically to see what I could sense in the land. Then I caught it, my first glimpse of the being in shadow form. It moved quickly around the side of the cabin. Hoping to catch a glimpse of it again, I rounded the cabin to find it waiting for me. As I stood and stared, it rose to a larger height. We continued to face each other for anot
her few moments, and then it turned and disappeared quickly into the woods.
This entity was not a ghost; it was dark, and though it was attempting to take on the form of a body, it never quite made it to a full human-looking body. There are several theories behind these shadow-type beings. In my work, I’ve encountered several different types of these beings, some being entities from other planes appearing here on the earth plane and others being what I would refer to as thought-forms come to life.
Thought-forms are basically a manifestation of energy created by strong mental thoughts and intense emotional energy over a focused period of time. If enough energy is created around the same thought, it begins to take form, first as an energy manifestation, and if enough energy continues to build, it can become what is known as a homunculus. A homunculus is a being that takes on a subhuman form and has a small modicum of will and intelligence.
Typically, when I experience seeing a dark form or shadow being of this nature, most times it is a thought-form that has developed from the energy in the land, buildings, and surroundings. This being was not as well formed as some I have encountered, but it retained enough energy to hold a form. Most likely, it was created from trauma and emotional energy released by the slaves on the property, as well as the energy created during the Civil War. In some cases, enslaved women who knew how to do magical practices from their ancestral upbringing would draw upon natural forces for protection against their owners. Other times, they would create something to wreak havoc upon the owners of the plantation. This dark being may be a combination of all of these things, and it continues to live in the woods and draw energy from some source.
As soon as it retreated deeper into the woods, its energy rapidly dissipated from the area. Within a few moments, the natural sounds that I am used to hearing in the forest returned, including the sound of chirping birds. It did not appear to be interested in coming back anytime soon, so I gathered my things and headed for home.
