05/24/2025
The Witch of Nags Head
Peggy Schmidt wrote about The Witch of Nags Head in her book Ghosts of the Outer Banks on pages 19 to 24. The old witch lived in the woods on Nags Head with her husband and young son. One day, her husband disappeared, thanks to the pirates who visited this area. After he disappeared, she became friendly with the local fishermen, who allowed her son to tag along, keeping the fish he would catch. Often, the fishermen would stop by the old shack to check on her, dropping food off so she and her son would have plenty to eat.
The old witch thought the world of her son until a band of pirates showed on her doorstep one day, demanding the young lad. The boy was forced to work on a pirate ship until he lost his life in battle at sea. At least, the band of unsavory characters showed up at her door to announce his death to the old witch and paid her a handsome portion of their b***y for her troubles. She became bitter and heartbroken, cursing the captain that he would never feel the joy of becoming a grandparent and would never have a grandson to carry on his name.
Word traveled to the captain's wife about the curse, who believed in the hex. She was scared of what might happen, so she packed up and moved back to Charleston, South Carolina, with her daughter.
Finally, the daughter of the cursed captain grew into a beautiful bride and was to marry on New Year's Eve. People gathered in the Charleston home, awaiting the bride to make her way down to greet her husband. The music played, but the young woman never appeared. Her mother remembered the promise the old witch had made to her husband. Finally, the young woman replied from the other room, asking her husband to catch her from the stairwell. The mother was relieved to hear her voice, but also agitated that she was acting like an adolescent. They quickly went to the staircase, but the bride was nowhere to be found. A search party quickly assembled to locate the bride. Days and weeks passed, but the woman had vanished into thin air. Her mother moved from the home, heartbroken that her daughter was gone.
The following year, one year after the wedding was to take place, on New Year's Eve, a group of children was playing by the home when they noticed a young woman in the window calling to them. She would reappear in the same window every year.
One day, a man decided to spend the night there, hoping to meet the spirit. The man fell asleep around midnight and had a crazy dream that felt real. He dreamed that he watched a wedding from the stairwell of the home. The bride ran down the hallway, calling for her husband, and tripped against a wall. When she did this, she accidentally hit a lever and plunged into a room below the floor, with it shutting behind her, basically burying herself alive.
The man was jolted awake by this, hearing a cackle that only a witch could make. When he went down the hallway, he found the lever on the wall and found the skeleton remains of the young bride at the bottom of the steps.
She never appeared again in that window.
Other variations to the story exist.
Written By: John G. Clark Jr.
Image: Resort Realty
