Here’s our detective work so far in chronological order…
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This is what happened to me…
I haven’t stepped foot in Eno River State Park, North Carolina, for years – not since I was attacked.
On that awful day, the park was quiet. I had gone hiking alone. I felt like it was only me and Mother Nature, but then I crossed paths with this creepy guy.
He followed me.
I walked faster, slower, stopped in places, anything to lose him, but nothing worked. He was stalking me. I kept hoping someone else would show up, but it was a weekday. No one was around.
Then he made his move. He ran at me and knocked me down. As he fumbled with his pants, I grabbed a rock and smashed him in the head.
I ran for my life. He chased.
I thought I was heading back to the car, but I got turned around and somehow ran deeper into the park. He kept chasing and I kept running. That park is acres and acres.
The sun was setting and I had no idea where I was. This dark, remote part of the park felt more alive. I looked over my shoulder and I swear a tree root moved, tripping him. I saw him hit the ground. He swore.
I kept running. I heard this eerie snapping of twigs and whistling of the wind. It sounded like some weird tree language – like they were watching me, talking about me, talking to me. I’ve never heard anything like it.
I was too scared to look back. Then I heard him scream.
I ran faster and smacked into this creepy two-foot spiral made of twigs. I don’t know how to describe it. The opening was circular, but the spiral twisted outward into three dimensions. It made me think of a vortex, but it was organic, like it was growing out of the ground. I looked around and they were everywhere! Endless stick spirals. Some were flat in this weird spiral shape like a sea shell. Others were 3D as they twisted. They were on the ground, above my head, growing out of trees, rising from the ground, near twisting vines… I’ve seen enough horror movies to know I had to get the f out of there.
The creepy guy screamed again, but it was further away, like he hadn’t moved. It sounded like something was attacking him.
I upped my pace. The more I ran, the more distant his cries became. He was trapped in there by something. I kept going and eventually stumbled out of the park late that night. I never stopped running. I swear I ran all the way home.
A few days later, I made a friend go to pick up my car with me. I don’t know if that guy lived. I never told the cops. What if he was dead and they blamed me? What if they thought I was crazy? But something’s definitely in there and I want to know what it is.
6 comments on This is what happened to me…
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The Cabelands
Over the years I’ve told a few of my closest friends. My best friend who took me to pick up my car thought I was out of my mind after being attacked. She didn’t believe me. Only my oldest friend took me seriously. He suggested I google The Cabelands.
The Cabelands are known as the haunted part of Eno River State Park.
Although it’s documented online, no official trail leads to this historic area. You need to take an overgrown dirt path to reach it. One haunted part is the cemetery. There are 12 marked graves, but they say there are 51 people buried there.
The markers are old since John Cabe became the owner of 320 acres in 1780. Even the unmarked ones are noticeable thanks to sunken, coffin-shaped areas where bodies are decomposing beneath your feet.
Hikers who find the cemetery talk about shadow figures appearing. Some hear whispers. Or feel a person next to them blowing on their ear. When they turn, no one’s there.
Some people are invited into the graveyard by a female voice. Others hear screams from the woods.
According to ABC11, a paranormal investigator went to the cemetery named Keith Campbell. He spotted a shadow human before he even took out his equipment. When he finally tuned into the deathly frequency, he heard a female voice periodically saying, “Hello.”
The most haunted part according to a man named Herb Englishman is the homestead area. He heard the voices of a man, a woman and a young girl. The Cabe family lived up on a bluff overlooking the Eno River.
According to Englishman, the young girl was chatty. She felt like she was right next to him. He could make out other words from the man including “noise”, “miller,” “flags,” and “years.”
When I tried to click the links to the Herb Englishman story, the web pages were no longer there, like the Eno River Association wanted to erase any evidence of the hauntings.
These stories sound like traditional ghost stories. I’m not saying they’re not real, but they’re nothing like what I experienced. I saw no headstones or shadowy people. I didn’t see the remains of the homestead or a view of the river. And none of the stories featured the twig vortexes at all.
I’ll keep digging.
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No Spirals
I can’t find any article on Eno River State Park that mentioned twig spirals.
There are other ruins in the park. The two-story Anthony Cole house looks almost as creepy as the photo I found of him and his wife, but the only supernatural story I uncovered was a website that mentioned seeing a ghost in the upstairs window.
His poor “spinster” sister was given a shack known as Sister’s House, a lovely reminder of how shitty it was to be female. The sketchy remains don’t have any mysterious stories behind it. One of the old Cole mills might be haunted, but again it’s more like traditional ghost stories. No twig spirals, no weirdness of nature.
One article I found had researched slaves purchased by Anthony Cole and family. I’m sure there are many unmarked graves of enslaved people in there, but I didn’t find any stories of hauntings or strange phenomena connected to them. Then I started pondering the indigenous people who used to live there. Maybe they knew?
Eno River State Park is named after the Eno tribe. According to the Eno River Association, “…the land we are on today is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Eno, Shakori, Sissipahaw, Occaneechi, other people of Siouan descent, and their descendants, the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation.”
This quote is logged in the search, but again, that webpage no longer exists on the Eno River Association website. That’s the same site that no longer has the haunted stories either. Could they have been forced to pull this information to hide what’s really in there?
Maybe the spirals mean something to one of those tribes?