The Headless Man of Williamson Creek
Sometime during the Civil War, a group of Union soldiers were discovered camping alongside Williamson Creek near Brevard. Nearby Confederate officers were sent to investigate, and upon seeing the men, killed them. One of the soldiers was decapitated and when the bodies were buried, they could not find the head. Not long after that, locals began reporting mysterious sounds and occasional sightings of a headless man near Glen Cannon Falls at night. He roamed the creekside, mourning his fallen comrades and searching for his missing head.
(If you would like to spend some time exploring the more charming ambiance of Brevard, get details on our more family-friendly museums here.)
The Hanging Tree of Pisgah Forest
Back in the old days, a farmer’s son from Pisgah Forest met and fell in love with a beautiful rich young woman recently arrived from Florida. Though many local young men vied for her
affections, she gave her heart to the farmer’s son, and they secretly courted for a year or so and intended to wed. But the farmer’s son was rudely denied when he went to the girl’s father to ask for her hand in marriage. He was poor, not good enough in her father’s eyes, and thus was ordered to drop his pursuit and stay well away.
The young lovers, however, would not be parted, and made plans to meet in secret. One night the father discovered his daughter was missing, and he went out into the forest to search for her. He found the two lovers kissing beneath a maple tree. So enraged was the father, he unholstered his gun and tried to shoot the farmer’s son, but at the last minute, his daughter jumped in front of her lover. She took the bullet to save his life.
Though she begged in her dying breath to spare the farmer’s son, her father was enraged. He ordered the young man hung from that very tree, over his own daughter’s grave. They say sometimes you can still see the figure of the two lovers, intertwined forever beneath the
branches of that maple tree.
The Mysterious Beast
In 1945, a local farmer went out to feed his prize-winning pigs one night and was surprised to see two of them being carried out of the pasture by an enormous creature,10-12 feet tall.
Thirty years later, a car was found nearby the same pasture with the doors ripped from the
hinges. Hunters assembled to track the creature down, but their dogs would never go further than the edge of that pasture.
Horseback Rock
In the upper end of Transylvania County between Balsam Grove and Wolf Lake, there is a rock in the mountainside mysteriously printed with hundreds of hoof prints of different shapes and sizes. They say if you approach it at night, you will hear chanting and screams coming from the stone.
(If you would like to know more about the upper end of Transylvania County, check out the
Historic Toxaway website.)
