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MY HAUNTED CITY....WILMINGTON NC
Tales from the Coast!
A Wilmington Murder - 1760
From England, in the year 1760, a young, personable gentleman named Llewellyn Markwick came to settle in a sea-port city along North Carolina's coast.
Claiming he had relatives among the titled families of the old country, he wore a most unique ring which he told his friends was a duplicate of his family crest. The ring was in the shape of a snake's body with a large diamond clasped between it's jaws.
A great lover of horses, young Markwick rode off one fall afternoon, never to return. His horse returned, riderless, but no clue was found to Markwick's disappearance for eight years.
In the summer of 1768, a great rainstorm brought a 24-hour deluge of water, flooding streets. The next day, one of Markwick's friends noticed a brightly shining object along side the street . Unable to pick it up, he discovered it was ring, still attached to a bony hand. The bony hand was attached to a skeleton, which on detailed examination turned out to be Markwick, murdered with a bullet embedded in his skull.
No reason for the slaying nor the identity of the murderer was ever discovered. Story-tellers recall that until this street was improved with a hardsurface pavement, an indentation where the skeleton was found always remained in spite of frequent efforts to fill it up to street level.
The Maco Light Fourteen miles west of Wilmington, North Carolina lies the small railroad station of Maco. One rainy night in the spring of 1867, the conductor, Joe Baldwin, of a train was tidying up the rear coach as it approached the homestretch into Wilmington. Holding his lantern in front of his body, he prepared to step forward into the next car when he realized there was no car ahead! Somehow his coach had come uncoupled from the rest of the train and was quickly losing speed. Knowing another train was following close behind, he raced back through the car, pulled open the heavy door and began to swing his lantern back and forth, back and forth, as the huge, fiery eye of the approaching train grew larger and larger. The heavy fog and dark night thwarted his signaling attempts, and with a terrific impact, the two trains collided. In the collision, the conductor's head was severed from his body. Over the years, especially on dark, rainy nights, reports of a strange light, swinging from side to side has been seen along the tracks as the Joe Baldwin still haunts the tracks, searching for his head. UPDATE BY SHEILA: The railroad tracks have been taken up in the past 10-15 years. After the tracks were moved, the light suddenly disappeared. Did the ghost find his head during the uprooting? Or was it the tracks themselves that were connected to this spirit? The Maco Light is gone. But it was sure a sight to see about 15 years ago at midnight when it was dark and misty. I know. I was there. http://www.icw-net.com/tales/maco.htm Other haunted places to come..coming up...Thalian Hall (the haunter theatre)..The last time I stood alone in the balcony, chills went up my spine as someone was watching me from the stage. Problem was, no one else was there! Or was I really alone? Sheila Anderson-Lewis listowner