The Headless Skeleton of Deer Island

Aaarrrghh!  Today is Talk Like a Pirate Day, and here on Theresa's Haunted History, I'll be celebrating the best way I know how---with a pirate ghost story!  Today's addition to my Haunted America page is an eerie one from a small island just off the coast of Biloxi, Mississippi, known as Deer Island.

It was the early 1800s and two fishermen had just set up camp on the sandy shore of Deer Island.  As they sat around the fire, preparing their evening meal, they began to hear rustling coming from palmetto bushes nearby.  At first, they assumed that an animal must be causing the racket, as the wind was too calm to produce such activity.  But then, the rustling intensified to the point that the fishermen turned around...only to find themselves face to face...uh, well maybe not face to FACE...with a HEADLESS SKELETON! 

Understandably, the two fishermen began backing up from the eerie bone man, and when they realized it was following them, they took off towards their boat at top speed.  The men left the island and all their belongings there overnight.  The next morning brought sunlight and bravado, and the men returned to collect their things.  There was no sign of their skeletal guest, but it is noted that later on, some money was found near the campsite.

The idea that money was found near the site sparked rumors that the headless skeleton must surely be the ghost of a deceased pirate.  A tale was told that many years before the fishermen made camp on Deer Island that fateful night, a pirate ship had landed on that same shore.  After the booty had been buried, the captain asked if any of his men wanted to volunteer to guard the treasure.  A naive, young man responded that he would do it, not knowing that it was customary for the designated security for buried pirate treasure was to be...supernatural.  The captain took out his cutlass, lopped off the man's head, and threw the body in the palmetto bushes.  The young pirate was true to his word, and his spirit, in the form of a creepy, headless skeleton, watched over the treasure for many years.  It seems as though he has finally retired, as no 21st century encounters with the skeleton have been recorded.

This fascinating bit of local lore was first recorded in a Mississippi newspaper column titled "Back With Father Time in the Early Days of the Mississippi Coast."  The article,"Headless Ghost Haunted Deer Island In Olden Times," appeared on May 20, 1922 and was written by local historian, Anthony Ragusin, aka Mr. Tony.

Mr. Tony was introduced to the story of the Deer Island skeleton by 78 year old local, Eugene Tiblier Sr.  The Tiblier family had been in the Biloxi area since the French Colonial times and were respected citizens with a deep knowledge of the area's history.  

*Information for today's blog came largely from a SunHerald article dated 17 October 2015:

Coast Chronicles: Stories of ghosts on Deer Island

Carolina Beach: The Weirdest Beach in the World

Lifeguard Stand where faceless apparition in gray was seen

If you follow me on Facebook at Theresa's Haunted History of the Tri-State, you've probably seen me post about my recent vacation to Carolina Beach, North Carolina. We had a wonderful family beach vacation, yet still managed to cram in as much haunted fun as we could.  We had beach and boardwalk days, but then we also had ghost walk and museum days and just overall had a really fun time together.  One day in particular we combined our beach fun with our spooky fun....

It started with a Google search.  Although I had read several books about the hauntings around Wilmington and Pleasure Island, I hadn't taken much time to just peruse what the online community had to say about the Carolina Beach area specifically in terms of spooky happenings.  The first website that came up was Ghosts of America.  Now, this isn't necessarily a site I would recommend to a serious researcher, but I've found some pretty off-the-wall stuff posted on there for West Virginia, so I wasn't too surprised to read what someone had submitted for Carolina Beach.

Apparently there is a stretch of Carolina Beach located off the  800 block of Carolina Beach Avenue that sounds like it must be the most haunted beach in all of America, if not the world!  (LINK to original post) The person submitting the tale had witnessed or had heard about the following at this location:

*A full-bodied apparition wearing a gray hoodie, which flapped in the breeze, come up out of the surf and head towards the lifeguard stand before disappearing.

*A giant cigar-shaped UFO

*Seneca Guns---strange, unexplained booming noises that seemingly come from the ocean. These are heard throughout the Carolina Coast and I'll be dedicating a special blog post to them later on!

*A giant manta ray estimated to be the size of two pick-up trucks

*Waterspout and various dangerous riptides

*A large bale of marijuana covered in barnacles

*A Civil War era button marked with the word 'Liverpool'

Haunted beach's public parking lot, across from Kupboard Grocery

Pretty crazy, right! That's a lot of stuff to happen in one little stretch of beach, so I knew we had to go.  Our main access point to the beach was at the boardwalk, since it was near our rental house, restaurants, etc. But, this location was actually sort of a hidden gem.  We easily found the place the person from the ghost site was talking about.  When we got there, there was only a few public parking spots, but they were all empty. The walk to the beach was nearly level and we had the majority of it to ourselves.  Seriously, there were only about 3 other families there when we arrived.

Unfortunately for me (because I'm a weirdo) nothing weird happened during the 4+hours we were there. But, we actually had a pretty cool time. My son, Luke, enjoyed collecting shells, building sand castles, and testing himself on how deep he could go out into the surf without me freaking out.  I stayed where it was pretty shallow since the waters were kinda rough from all the recent storms we had, but I had a fun time.  And while I'd like to remember this stretch of beach as being 'that haunted beach we went to,' I'll remember it instead as the location where I got the worst sunburn of my life!

Luke playing in the haunted surf