Ghosts in love hide for the night
Church plays host to story of heartbreak, haunting

By Erin Rickert
The Daily Reflector

Tuesday, October 31, 2006

SNOW HILL— My car crept up a dark, narrow stretch off Fourth Street late Sunday.

As we crossed a tiny bridge, I leaned into the windshield for a better view of the dimly lighted path.

“You sure this is right?” I asked Daily Reflector photographer Jason Frizelle, seated beside me.

He shrugged his shoulders, consulting the scrap of paper with directions to a supposedly haunted old Episcopal church. Glancing to the right, the words etched on a granite stone answered my question: “St. Barnabus Episcopal Church and Cemetery Est. 1884.” Behind it, black wrought iron rails led to a cemetery on the hill.

Nearby, darkness nearly masked the white outline of a one-room chapel hovering near the treeline and surrounded by gravestones.

I’d located the church and cemetery on a Web site listing St. Barnabus Episcopal Church and cemetery among about 200 of North Carolina’s most haunted locations. In a quest for an unusual Halloween scare, Jason and I ventured into the dark. We hoped — sort of — to see the ghosts of two 19th century youths in love, or so went the St. Barnabus tale. The story claims a young girl died of a disease, then two years later the boy she cared for died of a broken heart. To see the girl on her knees crying in front of the boy’s unmarked grave, the Web site specified it was necessary to make 10 trips around the church.

At completion, the girl was supposed to appear, the boy standing behind her. The boy would run if he saw us, though …

We would, too — straight to the the unlocked car — if he decided to chase us. But we screwed up our courage and climbed the worn path toward the church.

Shining a borrowed flashlight on our surroundings, we eased off toward the likeliest location of the unmarked graves — squeaking branches and other unidentified sounds accompanying us. We stood side by side as we started the first revolution, a notepad under my arm, Jason’s digital camera around his neck.

As we rounded the last corner before coming full circle, I shined the flashlight onto the front of the church. One of the white double doors was open a crack.

Pausing, we looked at each other: “That wasn’t like that before, was it?” we recited at almost the same instant.

Eerily, the door opened more and more as we continued our revolutions around the church. By the fifth trip, it had cracked nearly a foot.

Eyes fixed on the door, we took time for a pep talk. We remembered to factor in the important points: It was pitch black, we had a flashlight that worked intermittently, and we’d seen just two cars pass by on nearby Fourth Street since our arrival nearly 30 minutes earlier.

But, hungry for our own conclusion about the ghost story, we pushed on. My knuckles, white from strangling the flashlight, appeared dimly as we made our sixth and seventh revolutions around the church.

But as we walked, we heard footsteps. Or did we?

Then we saw something fleeting? Didn’t we?

Palms sweating and heart jumping, it was finally the 10th revolution. We psyched ourselves up: Ghosts in love, here we come …

The light from the flashlight pierced the darkness and hit the area of the suspected unmarked grave — but there was nothing, only leaves, a broken headstone and spooky shadows cast by trees.

No kneeling ghost and nothing chasing us.

Then I shined the light on the door. Jason heard a creak: He claimed it was coming from within the church. We hightailed it to the car …

We whirled from the experience on the nearly 30-minute ride home. Despite weird noises and that creaking door, we concluded that the St. Barnabus ghost story was a myth.

Except for that darn door. It was closed when we started our revolutions: Jason’s pictures didn’t lie.