With apologies to The Sound of Music, the Mountains and Foothills in the Carolina Blue Ridge Mountains are alive with oral histories handed down from one generation to the next. And virtually any mountain district you travel to, will have a ghost tale or two to share where the shadowy apparition is still allegedly viewed from time to time.
Today’s excerpted tale below is about the Sunbonnet Girl, courtesy of the Transylvania County Historical Society website. Follow the preceding link to read this ghost story in it’s entirety.
Even then, though, the cool mountain country of western North Carolina was known by Piedmont farmers and lowland planters from South Carolina as a good place for summer homes; and those who could afford it were already traveling to Asheville and Flat Rock and areas north and west, to ease the heat of lowland summers. It seems that sometimes during the war years, there was a bunch of draft evaders and deserters who had a hideout near the road at the foot of the hill somewhere just below Dunn's Rock. These were a lawless bunch of hoodlums, the kind called 'Outliers' and 'Bushwackers' by the local people. They hung out at hideaways in the thinly populated country, boozing it up and fighting among themselves when they weren't murdering and robbing the women and children and old men who were all that were left after the younger men had gone off to fight in the Civil War.
One rainy day a man and his daughter came through the gap on foot. Where they were from or why they had left, nobody knows, but they had a little money and were coming to Brevard looking for a place to buy and make their home. As ill luck would have it, they were caught at nightfall at the foot of Connestee Mountain and sought shelter at the Outlier's hideout. They were brutally murdered and their money taken.
Looking to soak up some Blue Ridge Mountain History and possibly take in your own sighting of the Sun Bonnet Girl Ghost? Then make plans to stay for a long weekend getaway vacation at our luxury vacation rental on Caesars Head just down the road a few miles from Connestee Falls and explore to your heart’s content.
