A ghost at Cumberland Island | zilphia's Blog

This is kind of a two part ghost story.

First a little about the Island.  This is a National Park or a State Park.  It is located about 45 minutes off St. Marys Georgia, very near the border of Florida.  A ferry takes you to the island.  There are no vehicles on the island except those of the Park Service or the scant number of residents.  The Island is Pristine and so very primeval and gorgeous.  It was once the property of the Carnegie family and the burned out shell of their fabulous mansion that served as the family's summer house  is still there on the terraced lawn.  The widow of the man who owned the island back at the turn of last century lived the rest of her life there year round.  She is the one that we  have to thank for the privilege of visiting there, for she is the one who made sure her children couldn't sell the island off...they had houses to live in, but those  houses could not be sold.  When she knew she was going to die, she had her stable of Arabian Horses released and now there are beautiful little horses all over the island.  Fierce little stallions fighting and  little herds galloping over the short turf. 

Before the Carnegie's had the island it changed hand several times, but before that it belonged to the Native Americans.  The Ranger told us that it was a Healing Island-- a kind of Indian Club Med, where important people came to be healed.

Here is the first story of the two experiences with ghosts that I have had out there.

I was there with my sister and my ex, not long after we moved to this area of the coast.  We were fortunate enough to have a campsite, something very hard to get. It was April 4th, my then husband's birthday.  Shane, my ex, never met a stranger  in his life and was soon buds with the Ranger Woman.  She told him that if he met her back at the Marsh at 5 o'clock she would take him to hunt fossilized shark's teeth with a group of boy scouts.  We were on our way, but my sister was getting a blister from her sandal and it was clear that we were impeding his progress and told him to go ahead.  We were mostly alone on the path, only occasionally  passing other hikers.  The path wound thru a forest of live oak, dripping with swaying Spanish moss, and palm trees and other kinds of trees too.  This forest had never been harvested, it was virgin, and the size of the oaks just astounding.  Go yourself and see! 

My sister is a quiet person, she lives in the mountains and spends a lot of time camping alone, with just a Bible and a shotgun.  My sister told me she was hearing voices in the woods around us.  "Oh," I said, 'It's the wind in the trees and the bamboo stems rubbing together, there is lots of ambient sound, easy to mistake for voices. ' But she insisted that she  heard people talking.  Well we kept up our journey although it was clear that we would not overtake Shane my ex.  It was about a mile and a half that we  had to travel and Carol kept on about hearing the voices. 

So we finally arrived at the ruins of the old house and the lawns still terraced with the fountain in the middle and the balustrade enclosing the lawn from the forest.  We crossed the lawn and made it back onto the forest trail, looking closely for any sign of Shane, The Ranger Woman and The Boy Scouts.  Then we  heard some loud excited voices...they sounded pleased or excited.  We thought of course we'd found the group.  But when we went a little further on, we found only Shane, and he looked very freaked out.  This is what he told us: He'd hadn't found the Scouts and he was on his way back from the Marsh, when he saw a tall thin man in a brown leather shirt and called to the man, but the man had vanished into thin air in front of his eyes.  Shane was a little scared, and the idea of disembodied excited voices was weird for all of us, but we went back and had a lovely time camping and swimming at the delectable beach, and that was the end of that story.

The second Story;

This happened just last mid-July.  My friend Stefan came down from up North, and he wanted to go to Cumberland.  His health is not good, he is Type 1 Diabetic and has severe asthma.  I told him it would be best if we did not go...the heat index was in the 100's, but go he would and nothing stopping him.  So off we went with a six  pack of soda in a little cooler and a pack of little Debbies which I insisted that we buy, thank god, because  turns out her forgot his needle for  his second insulin shot and had already trashed the first one.  It was as bad as I feared and we got out at the first ferry landing because he primarily wanted to see the ruins.  It would be about a 4 mile walk to the beach.  We took it very slow, because he had to rest so very often.  His blood sugar was dropping and the Debbies came in very handy.  I talked  him OUT of smoking a special Doobie that he was saving for the occasion, because I feared that if he smoked it he would need to be air lifted out. 
 

We were sitting on a picnic table beside the path that my sister and I had walked years before.  The path was almost as deserted, but it was about 2 o clock pm and hot as blazes.  I am pagan and I got up from my seat and stood under the big live oak and did what is called in my religion "Calling the Quarters."  This is a ceremony in which you face the four directions and call to the Elements that represent each of them.  Air to the East, Fire to the South Water to the West and Earth to the North.  I ask the spirits of each element a favor.  Of Air I asked that we have a cool breeze, and of Fire I ask if the Sun could please go behind a cloud for awhile, and of Water I asked refreshment (for we intended to swim) and of Earth I ask that we children of the Earth have protection.  I also invited any spirit that wanted to show itself to us, to feel free.  I forgot to say "any good spirit" which I really should have remembered.  Then I closed the Quarters, which is just thanking the Elements for their attendance and for any help they give. 

Almost immediately a wind sprang up and a  huge Black Mourning Cloak butterfly floated directly in front of us on the path and led us for a very long way.  The sky clouded up and the Sun no longer beat down so fiercely.  We went quite aways following the butterfly, when we saw a figure very thin and very tall in a brown loose shirt or poncho and long brown pants with long black hair, pass before us about 10 feet away on the path.  The face was turned towards us, but it shone brightly, like a mirror.  The figure did not seem to come from one side of the path and proceed to the other, rather we only noticed it from the middle of the path to the side.  At first thought I thought it was a hiker and that were were nearer to the crossing of the paths than I had thought.  Then something just seemed wrong about what I saw and I asked Stefan, "Did you see that?"  "Thank God! You saw it too!" he said.  Well we reached the place where the figure had been, now without our butterfly guide, and we found that it really wasn't the crossroad at all.  A person would have had to come from the snarl of scrub at the side of the path and to enter it again at the other side.  We would have heard crackling and sticks breaking. Besides, what person would go off into that wilderness, infested with fire ants and rattlesnakes, and little ponds where gators sleep.  We looked about and saw no one. 

And saw no one for the rest of the day.  I only got to swim for about 5 minutes for by the time we got to t he beach there was a lighting storm, and we barely made it back to the ranger station and got undercover before the Element of Water undertook to refresh us in such a big way that people in boats were having to take shelter at the the ranger station too and little girls were crying to their daddies and it actually got chilly. 

But our ghosts sounds very like the one my ex said he saw.  I wonder if my sister would have heard voices if she had been with us that day.