Campfire Stories - Legends

As mountains go, low-lying Brown Mountain in Burke County is not impressive. Yet it is one of the most famous mountains in North Carolina. On certain evenings soon after dark, when observed from the eminence of Linville or Wiseman’s Gap, small but brilliant lights can be seen on it, bobbing up and down for a minute or so, then disappearing, …

none Long ago when animals could talk, a bear was walking along. Now it has always been said that bears think very highly of themselves. Since they are big and strong, they are certain that they are the most important of the animals. As this bear went along turning over big logs with his paws to look for food to …

A long time ago when the world was first born, it was always dark in the north where the Inuit people lived. They thought it was dark all over the world until an old crow told the them about daylight and how he had seen it on his long journeys. The more they heard about daylight, the more the people …

Back in the old days, Bear had a tail which was his proudest possession. It was long and black and glossy and Bear used to wave it around just so that people would look at it. Fox saw this. Fox, as everyone knows, is a trickster and likes nothing better than fooling others. So it was that he decided to …

none Two Ojibwa Indians in a canoe had been blown far from shore by a great wind. They had gone far and were hungry and lost. They had little strength left to paddle, so they drifted before the wind. At last their canoe was blown onto a beach and they were glad, but not for long. Looking for the tracks …

Once there was a widow who wished to marry a rich nobleman. However, the nobleman did not want to raise another man’s children and he dismissed her. The widow was determined to have the nobleman for her own, so the widow drowned her children to be free of them. When she told the nobleman what she had done, he was …

Once a poor man was married to a beautiful woman who lived in his village. The couple was very much in love, but the man insisted that they were too poor to have any children. When he found out his wife was pregnant, the man was very angry. He told the woman they could not keep the child. After the …

Once a Spanish soldier married a beautiful native woman and they had two children whom the soldier loved very much. However, the soldier came from a rich family. His parents and relations disapproved of his wife and threatened to disown him unless he married a Spanish woman. Not wishing to lose his inheritance, the soldier put away his native wife …

In Levy county I own a hunting cabin were me and my family frequently go. We went there for a weekend trip, as we have hundreds of other times. Even though strange things had happened there before, Sept. 1999 was the worst night I’ve ever had. We showed up at about noon that day and opened everything up. I noticed …

On a night in 1867, at the small Brunswick County station of Maco fifteen miles west of Wilmington, a slow freight train was puffing down the track. In the caboose was Joe Baldwin, the flagman. A jerking noise startled him, and he was aware that his caboose had become uncoupled from the rest of the train, which went heedlessly on …

She was just another poor, bedraggled woman, struggling to feed her family. He saw them all the time, their faces careworn, and blank. The Depression had created hundreds of them. He was one of the lucky ones who still had his grocery and money coming in to feed his family. She came one day to his shop, carrying two empty …

The Palatine gleamed in the sunlight as she set out with a full crew, a long list of passengers, and a hull full of merchandise for the American Colonies the winter of 1750-1751. Certainly, there was no indication that morning of the destiny fate had in store for her. It was not until the first of the storms blew the …

Ringwood Manor you say? A lovely old house. But no place, my child, to go on a dark night with no moon. Built in the 1700’s, the original house was a collection of smaller buildings patched together to create a Manor. The current Manor House was built by Martin Ryerson in 1807. Ringwood Manor was the home of General Erskine, …

During the Carolina gold rush of the 1830s and 1840s, a miserly old codger called Skinflint McIntosh owned a rich vein in southern Cabarrus County. So tightfisted was he that he wouldn’t pay adequate wages to the miners to dig for the gold, nor would he provide sufficient safety measures to prevent accidents in his mine. The vein of gold …

Once in old New Amsterdam, there was a brave trumpeter named Anthony Van Corlaer who would blow his trumpet when Peter Stuyvesant wanted to call the people together. One night, Peter received word that the English were going to attack New Amsterdam. He sent Anthony to warn the Dutch colonists along the Hudson and to call the people to fight. …

Once,there was a little girl going to camp.Before she left, her parents gave her a little ragdoll. Even though she hated it, she pretended to like it. When she arrived at camp she stuffed it in the back of her drawer and went to meet the other girls in her group. Later, when she was sleeping, the doll came out …

If you travel to Bear Lake in Utah on a quiet day, you just might catch a glimpse of the Bear Lake Monster. The monster looks like a huge brown snake and is nearly 90 feet long. It has ears that stick out from the side of its skinny head and a mouth big enough to eat a man. According …

There is an old tale which claims that at midnight, on Christmas Eve, the cattle will kneel in the barn and speak with one another. Once an old Maryland man decided to test the tale by hiding in the barn at midnight to listen. So he climbed a rope to the window in the hayloft. He lay down on the …

Once long ago, Man went hunting along the water’s edge for seals. To Man’s delight, many seals were crowded together along the seashore. He would certainly bring home a great feast for Woman and Son. He crept cautiously towards the seals. The seals grew restless. Man slowed down. Suddenly, the seals began to slip into the water. Man was frantic. …

The train rumbled around him as he adjusted the throttle. The night shift was always the toughest, in the engineer’s mind. He had rumbled through Timpas a few minutes ago and was on his way to Thatcher. Not a bad stretch of road, and there was no better train in the entire Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad. He stretched …

One day, the King of Sharks saw a beautiful girl swimming near the shore. He immediately fell in love with the girl. Transforming himself into a handsome man, he dressed himself in the feathered cape of a chief and followed her to her village. The villagers were thrilled by the visit of a foreign chief. They made a great luau, …

It was a warm summery day, and Jonathan and Robbit were resting in the sunshine. Robbit scratched his ear in a comfortable, absent-minded sort of way. “I was wondering,” He said, “Why nettles have stings.” Jonathan couldn’t think of a good answer. “Let’s ask Farmer Jack,” He said. And off they went, Jonathan’s little round shell glinting in the sunlight. …

MANY YEARS AGO, the Sioux Indians whose head village was at Minnewakan were roused to great excitement by the arrival of a friendly French trader who warned them that their inveterate enemies, the Ojibways of Minnesota, were preparing an immense war party to attack them. Since these Ojibways were known to have accumulated plenty of guns and a great store …

bag of jelly beans, a few pink feathers This story is best used when you’re on a hike/nature walk with the kids. There is a particular breed of exotic bird that migrates down to this very campsite every year, at about this time. (use as appropriate- kids think this one is fantastic). It’s called a Timbuktutuian Jelly Bean Bird. These …

The year was 1838. As the first rays of early morning light crept through the dark and misty mountain valley, Tsali gazed out of his tiny cave with a heavy heart. As a young boy, he spent days running though the thick woods and scampering up the steep, rocky hillsides that surrounded his Cherokee village in western North Carolina. The …