We Salted Nannie - A True Southern Ghost Story - The BITTER SOUTHERNER
We Salted Nannie - A True Southern Ghost Story - The BITTER SOUTHERNER
We Salted Nannie - A True Southern Ghost Story - The BITTER SOUTHERNER
Content warning: This story, published in October 2016, includes historical information and unexplained
experiences as remembered by the author and his family or as told to them by friends and neighbors. It includes
mention of rape, violence, war, and excavated human remains.
We Salted Nannie
“When the earth was new just one deer emerged from it, but he returned
below in search of a companion. Thus there are two names in the Deer Clan,
‘He Who Appears First,’ and ‘He Who Returns.’ When the deer came to earth
they encountered the first fireplace, but it only contained smoldering embers.
So they blew upon it until it blazed.”
“Salt is good: But if the salt have lost his saltness, wherewith will ye season it?
Have salt in yourselves, and have peace one with another.”
— Mark 9:50
A few days later, Brooke and her mother went for a walk.
As they paused in the pasture in front of the house,
Brooke noticed, from her periphery, a figure standing
under a small maple about 20 yards away. She turned her
head to see a woman, staring at them. The woman’s hand
was against the tree. She wore a white bonnet, a white
smock and a long brown dress. Brooke looked at the
“Brooke?”
The house James Hogg built has stood for centuries, even
as his first Hillsborough house crumbled into the earth. It
would see additions and half-hearted renovations, and be
moved once — only a few hundred yards as the crow flies.
It would also collect, inside and out, an absolute army of
paranormal inhabitants. Maybe they accrued like
emotional residue on the usurious intent of its several
owners. It can’t help — at least in our cultural
imagination — that it stands, quite literally, on Indian
burial ground. This was Nannie, the house of our short
and terrible tenancy.
After the war, Carr received a $4,000 loan from his father
to purchase interest in a Durham tobacco company.
Trading on the famous Bull Durham logo, and ultimately
acquiring dozens of other businesses, Carr soon became
very wealthy.
The house was set on its new foundation and put back
together, although not in a way that was entirely
consistent with its historical nature. A hurried plumbing
addition was tacked onto the west side, just large enough
for some small upstairs bathrooms with low ceilings and
plastic shower inserts. An incongruous picture window
was framed into the ground floor mud room.
The house began life as Banks of the Eno, for a man who
emigrated across an ocean to freely use people the way he
had been used; Poplar Hill for a vocal proponent of the
Lost Cause and enthusiastic member of the ownership
class; the Rape House because of another man’s
monstrous exploitation; and finally Nannie for us, a
transient family looking for a home, and not finding one.
“Yup.”